To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is about a group of Oxford-based "historians" who travel through time to experience history first-hand. These particular historians are appropriated by a terrifying, headstrong woman who is dead-set on rebuilding a medieval church that was destroyed during World War II--complete with disgusting Victorian artifacts.

This is a very clever novel and--unlike many convoluted time-travel plots--it actually made sense in the end. I loved the characters, the setting, the style, and just about everything about this novel. I kept forgetting it was science fiction while I was reading it. It comes off as an engrossing story rather than an explicitly sci-fi work. The majority of the plot takes place in the Victorian era, which is a lot of fun because the book picked up on lots of conventions of Victorian novels, as well as paying attention to the real societal pressures and limitations that the characters would be experiencing. But what's even more fun than actual Victorian novels is that the narrator is from 2057 so you get built in snark and amusement. Aside from Cyril the English Bulldog (one of the only creatures with sense in the entire novel), my favorite thing has to be "time-lag." Time-lag is what happens when you go on too many "drops" or time-travel trips. You basically become an overly-sentimental mess who cannot hear properly, see properly, or function at all. Sleep deprivation on steroids. And in the end, the very core of the novel is just a simple love story between the two main characters from 2057 as they try and fix the rift created in the time-space continuum when one of them brings a cat back through the net.