Review: One Past Midnight

ONE PAST MIDNIGHT
Jessica Shirvington
Paranormal-ish Young Adult
352 pages
Walker Children's/Bloomsbury
Available July 22nd
Source: ARC from publisher for review

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Above all else, though I try not to think about it, I know which life I prefer. And every night when I Cinderella myself from one life to the next a very small, but definite, piece of me dies. The hardest part is that nothing about my situation has ever changed. There is no loophole.

Until now, that is...

For as long as she can remember, Sabine has lived two lives. Every 24 hours she Shifts to her ′other′ life - a life where she is exactly the same, but absolutely everything else is different: different family, different friends, different social expectations. In one life she has a sister, in the other she does not. In one life she′s a straight-A student with the perfect boyfriend, in the other she′s considered a reckless delinquent. Nothing about her situation has ever changed, until the day when she discovers a glitch: the arm she breaks in one life is perfectly fine in the other.

With this new knowledge, Sabine begins a series of increasingly risky experiments which bring her dangerously close to the life she′s always wanted... But just what - and who - is she really risking?

MY THOUGHTS
One Past Midnight is a story we enter into with not only enthusiasm but also a touch of wariness, knowing this is not the first book that features parallel lives or universes to make its way into our hands. So many times in these types of stories the focus is on the hows and whys of the world, and we ultimately spend our time trying to figure out which life the protagonist will choose for themselves in the end. While those same questions are present in One Past Midnight, they’re solidly in the periphery, the strength of Ms. Shirvington’s characters stealing all our attention from page one and holding on to it so thoroughly that we can’t worry about whether or not every aspect of our curiosity is sated by the time we reach the last page.

Sabine’s circumstances are a touch unusual in terms of parallel worlds in that she’s fully aware of both her lives; we don’t simply meet two separate versions of her and follow both of them thorough their respective days, instead she lives every single day twice – once with one family and once with another. She takes her memories from both lives with her when she shifts every night at midnight, and we meet her when she's finally reached a place where she’s figured out how to juggle the strangeness of her existence. 

What’s particularly interesting about this setup is the fact that while Sabine has two different roles to play depending on which life she’s currently living, we get to know her as both girls but yet also as neither, our relationship with her a unique one that exists in those quiet, empty spaces on either side of midnight as she reorients herself to her current world. We feel her fear; her unrelenting terror at the prospect of forever living out both of these lives while pieces of her true self are left behind in the life she’ll pick up again tomorrow, and as things progress, her desperation to find a way to exert some control over her situation becomes our own. 

Woven through her confusion and her desire to unburden the truth of her reality on a single soul is the type of romance that leaves an indelible mark, building so slowly that we thrum like live wires while reading, the anticipation of their emotional and physical intimacy a gorgeously addicting thing. Ms. Shirvington, as she proved with her Violet Eden series, has a gift for writing painful relationships; the love between her characters so beautifully visceral that it’s nearly impossible not to get caught up in them. The romance between Sabine and Ethan is absolutely no different, and when we reach the end, we find ourselves with tear tracks on our cheeks but a wobbly smile on our faces, thankful for the story we’ve just been treated to yet desperately in need of something adorably cute to help us recover. 

Overall, One Past Midnight should not be missed, the story not so much that of two parallel lives but rather of one remarkable girl and the unification of her self thanks to a split in her worlds.

Rating: 4.5/5 

Find Jessica:

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This book was sent to me by the publisher free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Review: Tandem

TANDEM
Many Worlds #1
Anna Jarzab
Young Adult/Parallel Worlds
428 pages
Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Available now
Source: BEA

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Everything repeats.
You. Your best friend. Every person you know.
Many worlds. Many lives--infinite possibilities.
Welcome to the multiverse.

Sixteen-year-old Sasha Lawson has only ever known one small, ordinary life. When she was young, she loved her grandfather's stories of parallel worlds inhabited by girls who looked like her but led totally different lives. Sasha never believed such worlds were real--until now, when she finds herself thrust into one against her will.

To prevent imminent war, Sasha must slip into the life of an alternate version of herself, a princess who has vanished on the eve of her arranged marriage. If Sasha succeeds in fooling everyone, she will be returned home; if she fails, she'll be trapped in another girl's life forever. As time runs out, Sasha finds herself torn between two worlds, two lives, and two young men vying for her love--one who knows her secret, and one who thinks she's someone she's not.

MY THOUGHTS
Tandem is not a story that has a wholly unique premise; instead by all appearances it's but one more in a growing group to embrace the parallel universes trend in YA fiction, complete with a romance in the form of a triangle to ensure tension and drama run high. What we soon discover after the first several chapters though is that the blurb doesn't come close to doing the story justice, and Sasha's tale stands out as memorable – a bright blinding light amidst the din – leaving the familiar aspects to which the blurb allludes at the door. While the world building doesn't necessarily wow us nor does the concept of analogs (doubles) mesmerize us with its creativity, Ms. Jarzab bleeds newness into a familiar setup with her characters, Sasha and Thomas yanking us as forcefully into their story as they themselves are yanked through the tandem and into the middle of a war.

Tandem requires a slight adjustment period in the beginning, the format throwing us off ever-so-slightly as we're bounced from Sasha's first-person perspective to short chapters detailing Thomas's actions in third-person to brief snippets of the real Julianna and her current predicament. Majority of our time is spent with Sasha however, and we quickly see how valuable our brief detours with Thomas and Julianna are in deciphering the political complexities of Sasha's new world. Though we suspect certain things before they're revealed to us in truth, it's clear to us that identifying all the players complicit in both Julianna's absence and Sasha's presence in the United Commonwealth of Columbia is only a single thread of a much larger web, one we see glistening out of the corner of our eyes as we focus straight ahead only to have it disappear when we turn our heads in an effort analyze it more closely.

Though the synopsis suggests a love triangle between Sasha, Thomas, and Prince Callum (who we learn early on is betrothed to Julianna as part of an attempted peace agreement), he doesn't come into play until midway through the story, and by then Sasha's heart – a bit battered and bruised – belongs only to Thomas. She doesn't play games or waffle between the two of them, and though Callum is upfront about his desire for their marriage to be real and not a mere facade to appease their families, the only real drama created by his presence is the guilt Sasha feels about having to play her role. Her relationship with Thomas is one full of just enough hurt and betrayal to have lumps take up permanent residence in our throats, but the two of them are never frustratingly dramatic, their pain genuine and believable even as the weight of their situation starts to crush us into so much dust.

We're left with things far from concluded, the unrest in Julianna's world at an all time high just as we're forced back to our own reality, but though we have lingering questions, they're not the kind that haunt us and drag our overall enjoyment down the more we think about them. Tandem is full of twists and turns but yet is not altogether unpredictable, rather it feels as though we've traveled a highlighted portion of a maze, granted a false sense of comfort thanks to the things we're allowed to uncover seemingly on our own, but out there off the beaten path we've traveled in this first book lie all the dark offshoots we've yet to see, and I for one can't wait to discover where they lead in book two.

Rating: 4/5

Find Anna:

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This book was given to me by the publisher at BEA  free of charge for the purpose of a review. 

I received no other compensation and the above is my honest opinion.

Review: Parallel

PARALLEL
Lauren Miller
Young Adult/Parallel Lives
432 pages
HarperTeen
Available May 14th
Received from publisher via Edelweiss

THE STORY (from Goodreads)
Abby Barnes had a plan. The Plan. She'd go to Northwestern, major in journalism, and land a job at a national newspaper, all before she turned twenty-two. But one tiny choice—taking a drama class her senior year of high school—changed all that. Now, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, Abby is stuck on a Hollywood movie set, miles from where she wants to be, wishing she could rewind her life. The next morning, she's in a dorm room at Yale, with no memory of how she got there. Overnight, it's as if her past has been rewritten.

With the help of Caitlin, her science-savvy BFF, Abby discovers that this new reality is the result of a cosmic collision of parallel universes that has Abby living an alternate version of her life. And not only that: Abby's life changes every time her parallel self makes a new choice. Meanwhile, her parallel is living out Abby's senior year of high school and falling for someone Abby's never even met.

As she struggles to navigate her ever-shifting existence, forced to live out the consequences of a path she didn't choose, Abby must let go of the Plan and learn to focus on the present, without losing sight of who she is, the boy who might just be her soul mate, and the destiny that's finally within reach.

MY THOUGHTS
Parallel is a story it takes a little while to warm to, Abby’s character someone we instantly like and look forward to learning more about, but the complexity of a multiverse collision and the resulting ramifications create a barrier of confusion between her and us for the first several chapters. Despite the sci fi nature of parallel universes, the explanation Ms. Miller provides for Abby’s predicament is surprisingly believable–due in part to the level of detail and description provided–but it’s that same careful crafting of the science behind it all that has our eyes crossing at times the more we try to understand it. Luckily, Ms. Miller never so overwhelms us with facts or theories that she loses us entirely, and we’re easily drawn back into the lives of our two Abby’s once some of the information has time to settle.

Abby is a young woman who’s funny, down-to-earth, and understandably baffled but the sudden overnight upheaval of her entire world. Though she’s obviously panicked initially, she never lets it show, rather she seeks out best friend Caitlin to explain absolutely everything instead of simply moving forward and trying to figure things out herself. There’s something hugely appealing about a character who’s able to admit they can’t handle everything on their own and is humble enough to ask for assistance, and that humility combined with a sharp sense of humor that occasionally catches us off guard makes her a heroine we genuinely enjoy spending time with.

Abby's story unfolds in an extraordinarily fascinating way, the two versions of her living lives a full year apart in terms of their separate timelines, with the “younger” Abby acting as the dominant player in a game neither realized was even possible. Whatever decisions younger Abby makes directly affect older Abby, and the realization that even the smallest flap of younger Abby’s wings can create gale force winds for older Abby keeps us completely riveted throughout. Adding to the intrigue is the circular nature of both Abbys' circumstances, with pieces of their separate lives consistently repeating and making themselves known in each of the girls’ realities. Their connection then becomes more than a simple uninterrupted circle, transforming instead into a celtic knot that consists of a number of intersecting fragments that weave in and out of one another but ultimately lead back to the very beginning.

There are strong romances for both the younger and older versions of Abby, and Ms. Miller keeps us on our toes with a variety of twists and turns, as well as cause and effect situations, that constantly show us how all the pieces of the girls’ lives relate back to one another. Many a reader may take a stutter step or two (or ten) as they try to navigate the time discrepancy between younger and older Abby and exactly how that influences all the people around them, but ultimately this story makes us think, question, and constantly ask “what if”, ensuring it’s one we don’t easily forget the minute we pick the next book up.

Rating: 4/5
 

Find Lauren:

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