whitneydaniell

by: Lauren Thoman
Published: Apr 1, 2023
Genre: Mystery, Fiction, Young Adult
446 Pages, E-Book ARC courtesy of NetGalley
GoodReads Link

*deep sigh* Where to begin?

There were many moving parts in this story and, by “moving parts” I mean, many characters. Filler characters, to be exact. Stories and interactions that didn’t move the story along but instead, complicated it. Around chapter ten, I started taking notes in my Notes App and tracking all the characters and their “story”. Twenty-Five! 25 characters that I was keeping track of.

Halfway through, there was a time jump and then I had to go back and reevaluate the timeline of all the characters I had so far. Marking the ones I knew with (1985) or (2023) as I learned of their existence in the timeline. It was a lot to keep track of.

This book is categorized as a mystery thriller however, it is much more YA and sci-fi than a thriller. I must say, with the multitude of characters, it did take me a while to figure out who did what but, thanks to a few interludes, which bring us out of the time warp and directly into a character’s point of view, I figured it out.

This wouldn’t have been a book that I would have picked up myself but, here are my positive takeaways:

• The writing style is suitable for YA. Each chapter is short and not too overrun with big words when little words work just fine.
• The ending wrapped everything up nicely without an epilogue; touching rather.
• All of the dialogue sounded believable for both timelines.

That’s all I’ve got positive. On the other hand, while the writing style was perfect for YA, I found that the character descriptions were wordy and lengthy. I have a few characters on my list that were mentioned once, and described in detail but were essentially never mentioned again and didn’t offer anything to the story. For example, the Pat Shaw (that’s not a spoiler) character could have simply been a concerned student or written in a totally different manner – IDK, just my opinion.

One-Word Summary: Sure