Review: The Tapestry of Time

I should have loved Kate Heartfield’s novel, The Tapestry of Time, which was published last fall. But even though this historical fantasy had not one, not two, but three of my World War II catnip storylines, I just…struggled. I finished it, because I was curious, but it was just fine. And I wanted more than just fine.

Here’s the book’s description:

Love, heroism and the supernatural collide in the midst of war.

There's a tradition in the Sharp family that some possess the Second Sight. But is it superstition, or true psychic power?

Kit Sharp is in Paris, where she is involved in a love affair with the stunning Evelyn Larsen, and working as an archivist, having inherited her historian father's fascination with the Bayeux Tapestry. He believes that parts of the tapestry were made before 1066, and that it was a tool for prediction, not a simple record of events.

The Nazis are also obsessed with the convinced that not only did it predict the Norman Conquest of England, but that it will aid them in their invasion of Britain.

Ivy Sharp has joined the Special Operations Executive – the SOE – a secret unit set up to carry out espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance. Having demonstrated that she has extraordinary powers of perception, she is dropped into Northern France on a special mission.

With the war on a knife edge, the Sharp Sisters face certain death. Can their courage and extrasensory gifts prevent the enemy from using the tapestry to bring about a devastating victory against the Allied Forces?

I think one of my main issues was that the book featured four sisters but they weren’t given equal billing. Kit took centre stage, even when Ivy’s story was (to me) more dynamic. Then there were Rose and Helen, sisters who each had their own chapters and stories but they were so minimal that one had to wonder why they even needed to be written into the novel.

I also struggled with the Second Sight that the family apparently had. I say apparently because they were all so skeptical even when the evidence was piling up that, um, yeah, something was going on. I suppose it was the 1940s and during wartime so it’s not like the sisters would have been able to compare notes over a group chat. But they had all heard the stories growing up (which were repeated…over…and over…and over again) and then doubted that they were seeing visions. I’m all for a healthy amount of doubt and scientific reasoning but this book just took it to another level and I never really understood how it was all supposed to work.

I loved that Ivy was recruited by the Special Operations Executive (well, maybe recruited is the wrong word - she was sent there by someone her family knew). I loved that Kit was trying to save art in the Louvre from the pillaging Nazis. I loved that Rose ended up at Bletchley Park. And I know this is a historical fantasy so there had to be a fantasy element but I really wanted their work to play more of a role. These were three areas where women shone during the war and were really able to make an impact. But no, the focus was on a poorly explained Second Sight and a history of a tapestry that made my eyes glaze over (in part because it was also described in the same way many, many times - I was bored).

Kate Heartfield almost had a winner with The Tapestry of Time but so much about this historical fantasy novel just didn’t land with me - even though it should have. If you love fantasy and stories about seeing the future and the Second Sight, you might like it more than I did.

*An egalley of this novel was provided by the publisher, HarperCollins Canada, via NetGalley in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*