The title comes from the quote (source unknown) “Love is just one damned thing after another,” and Jodi Taylor, the author adapts the quote at the front to, “History is just one damned thing after another” in her first book in the “Chronicles of St. Mary’s” series dealing with romance and time travel. My first note I wrote about this novel is “I want to read the sequel”, which I knew had been published summer of 2016.

The cover of One Damned Thing …describes it as “A carnival ride through laughter and tears, with a bit of time travel thrown in for spice” (Publishers Weekly), an accurate description. St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research has an unassuming exterior, but inside, the researchers, historians, and technicians don’t time travel but “investigate major historical events in contemporary time.”

Max, Madeline Maxwell, PhD is the main character, best described as “a disaster magnet.”and her team go here and there in time, first on training missions, then back to the time of the dinosaurs, where the action really gets hairy as the team encounters other time travelers, not all of them good guys.   All of the characters are well drawn, and the twists of plot satisfy even this reader who is so fond of them. There is plenty of action as witnessed in this quote from the book describing a raptor attack on some time travelers:

“I watched as the first two (raptors) leaped in a pincer movement… and it’s true, they don’t wait until their prey  is dead before eating.  I watched them rip and tear…I watched them snarl and growl and gobble.” This is the most violent and most graphic scene, I have read, fully worthy of any Jurassic Park movie.

The book series, “St. Mary’s,” would make a great TV series.