Overview: The hourglass door has closed behind Dante. It is up to Dante to stop Zo, Tony and V. In the crossing over through the door, something terrible has gone wrong. Dante is trapped in a dark, lifeless room where he can't see, hear, or do anything. He has no way of escaping. His only hope lies in Abby.

Abby has just started to accept life without Dante for a bit. She's recruited her friends to help build another time machine and help her get back to Dante. Until what she's been dreading happens. Zo has gained control of the river, the river that controls time and everyone's life. He has started by targeting Abby's life and changing things up. Some of the change is little some is life altering.

Without Dante, Abby has no where to turn for help. She must figure out how to stop Zo from changing every one's life, and she must figure out a way to free Dante to allow him to save the world and time as everyone knows it.

Format: The Golden Spiral is the second book in the Hourglass Door Trilogy. While it's not really necessary to read the first novel, it is recommended as a lot of the events wouldn't make sense without having read the first book. It stands at 384 pages. It is a mixture of time traveling, romance, and magic.

Analysis: After reading The Hourglass Door I couldn't wait to see what happened in the second book. The first book of the series was unlike any other "paranormal" romance that I have read, it was quick paced, filled with fun realistic characters and just pulled me in. I had hoped that the momentum from the first book would carry over to the second, luckily it did.

The Golden Spiral is filled with all the same elements that made me fall in love with the first book. In fact it felt as if Lisa Mangum's writing has grown with this second book.

All of the characters that are involved with the Golden Spiral were introduced in The Hourglass Door. In this installment the characters seem to grow with the readers. Abby seems to be adjusting to understanding what Dante is and how to handle the time element. The scenes that I thought were amazingly done and the best part of the book were those that involved Abby and Valerie. There was just so much emotion within the writing that these parts of the books were captivating and the pure talent that was involved with these scenes just flows out.

While I enjoyed this book there was an issue with the pacing that I came across.

Maybe it was because The Hourglass Door was so filled with action that it felt non-stop and constant, that Golden Spiral sometimes felt as if it dragged in parts. There were a lot of sections that were devoted to teenage angst and longing. These parts were needed to make the reader feel Abby's longing for Dante, but it seemed to consume the plot and was a bit overdone. The beginning of the book started out with a bang and then the pacing started to stall, and within the last 100 pages it was quick paced all the way to the end.

As with all middle books this novel does set up all the events for what is to be a very climatic ending to the series. There is a bit of a cliffhanger feeling but not enough that I felt cheated. It had a feeling of wanting to know what happens and having to wait, but I think all the events are handled very well.

Overall, I enjoyed Golden Spiral. It had a bit of a different feel then Hourglass Door but the writing was still amazing. I'm not sure it's my favorite novel of the series but it did have some amazing stand out parts of it, for example the Valerie story element. Lisa Mangum shows that her first novel was more then just a one time deal, and she leaves me hanging for the third book (scheduled for 2011 release).