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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a thoroughly entertaining historical fiction, intergenerational family story with a time travel plot. Told from the perspective of three incredibly smart women whose lives are intertwined in ways we only fully discover as the story unfolds.
Anna is one of the nuclear scientists responsible for building Chernobyl and when the reactor goes of in 1986 she feels forever guilty, becoming obsessed with finding a way to go back in time and prevent the disaster.
In the meantime Molly is growing up in 1960s America being raised by Russian immigrants. A troubled teen, Molly just wants to pursue her art and her life gets off track when she falls in love and runs away with a drug dealer. Addicted to drugs and alcohol Molly ends up pregnant, scared and afraid she won't be able to stay sober, so she returns home to her parents to give birth to the baby.
When Raisa is born things are going well for the first few years until her father shows up again, dragging Molly back into the life she fought so hard to escape. In one timeline Raisa ends up in foster care, yet with intervention from Anna, she gets another chance and is able to grow up as a teen math prodigy.
The way these three stories came together at the end kept me on the edge of my seat. This book is perfect for fans of the tv show Timeless or The time traveler's wife. Great on audio with a full cast narration, including Natalie Naudus. Highly recommended and I can 't wait to read the author's debut novel next. I couldn't put this book down, even with its substantial length, I didn't get bored for a minute!
CW: drug addition, death of loved ones, parental imprisonment, parental abandonment
Anna is one of the nuclear scientists responsible for building Chernobyl and when the reactor goes of in 1986 she feels forever guilty, becoming obsessed with finding a way to go back in time and prevent the disaster.
In the meantime Molly is growing up in 1960s America being raised by Russian immigrants. A troubled teen, Molly just wants to pursue her art and her life gets off track when she falls in love and runs away with a drug dealer. Addicted to drugs and alcohol Molly ends up pregnant, scared and afraid she won't be able to stay sober, so she returns home to her parents to give birth to the baby.
When Raisa is born things are going well for the first few years until her father shows up again, dragging Molly back into the life she fought so hard to escape. In one timeline Raisa ends up in foster care, yet with intervention from Anna, she gets another chance and is able to grow up as a teen math prodigy.
The way these three stories came together at the end kept me on the edge of my seat. This book is perfect for fans of the tv show Timeless or The time traveler's wife. Great on audio with a full cast narration, including Natalie Naudus. Highly recommended and I can 't wait to read the author's debut novel next. I couldn't put this book down, even with its substantial length, I didn't get bored for a minute!
CW: drug addition, death of loved ones, parental imprisonment, parental abandonment
Fragmented storyline, mainly a running narrative of activity, little development of the characters. Didn’t keep me interested.
I really wanted to like Atomic Anna and, in the beginning, you're literally dropped into the action of the story as Chernobyl's Reactor Four melts down and triggers a device that Anna has created. She happens into a situation that she has the power to stop, six years in the future with her estranged (kind of) daughter and instructions on how to save her granddaughter.
You get all three's perspective during the story, and you see how their lives spiral out of control, but you also see how those "spaghetti moments" (see: The Flash) come together, critical events for each person that will happen no matter what. The meeting of a specific person, the death of a loved one, the creation of a parallel timeline where some things are different, but most things are the same. In the end, Atomic Anna is not a story about time travel, it's the story about inevitability and how the choices we make (mostly bad ones) affect those around us. How a decision made with good faith can come back to be the worst thing for a person, or how the resilience of another individual can never be detoured, even in the face of extreme adversity. You could say this book is about the human condition, how it takes a lot to take us down, and, even in the worst situations our first instinct is to help each other out.
The problem is that that "helping" is rarely something that is good for everyone. Those expecting to see something akin to The Butterfly Effect or Back to the Future, were a very small change ("My Pine!") can have a big effect on the future will be disappointed. The theory of time travel here and how it can be accomplished leaves out the standard questions that we've all chosen to ignore (the galaxy is moving so time travel will not put you into the same spot) and adds in new wrinkles like a two-hour time limit.
The characters are fleshed out, but you end up hating them for various reasons. Secrets are the name of the game, and maybe it's because each of the characters is coming from the USSR with Jewish beliefs and persecuted after the Revolution in that country and during World War II, but you grow to hate each of them equally. You're fed tidbits about the past via recollections from Anna, but when it seems like a simple question being answered could stop outright chaos you're left with that character withholding, causing harm to themselves, other characters and the readers patience.
Great premise, good ideas, characters you can't stand and at least and ending that leaves you satisfied, even if it all wraps up a bit too neat. Recommend but not love.
You get all three's perspective during the story, and you see how their lives spiral out of control, but you also see how those "spaghetti moments" (see: The Flash) come together, critical events for each person that will happen no matter what. The meeting of a specific person, the death of a loved one, the creation of a parallel timeline where some things are different, but most things are the same. In the end, Atomic Anna is not a story about time travel, it's the story about inevitability and how the choices we make (mostly bad ones) affect those around us. How a decision made with good faith can come back to be the worst thing for a person, or how the resilience of another individual can never be detoured, even in the face of extreme adversity. You could say this book is about the human condition, how it takes a lot to take us down, and, even in the worst situations our first instinct is to help each other out.
The problem is that that "helping" is rarely something that is good for everyone. Those expecting to see something akin to The Butterfly Effect or Back to the Future, were a very small change ("My Pine!") can have a big effect on the future will be disappointed. The theory of time travel here and how it can be accomplished leaves out the standard questions that we've all chosen to ignore (the galaxy is moving so time travel will not put you into the same spot) and adds in new wrinkles like a two-hour time limit.
The characters are fleshed out, but you end up hating them for various reasons. Secrets are the name of the game, and maybe it's because each of the characters is coming from the USSR with Jewish beliefs and persecuted after the Revolution in that country and during World War II, but you grow to hate each of them equally. You're fed tidbits about the past via recollections from Anna, but when it seems like a simple question being answered could stop outright chaos you're left with that character withholding, causing harm to themselves, other characters and the readers patience.
Great premise, good ideas, characters you can't stand and at least and ending that leaves you satisfied, even if it all wraps up a bit too neat. Recommend but not love.
4.5 stars. I liked the characters and the alternating times/perspectives, as well as the overall story and all the issues that were raised. Really enjoyable read!
Not my usual book genre, found this one quite interesting.
Time travel books go wrong when they try to explain the way the time travel works. Just handwave it like the rest of us and move along. The writing is flat and all of the characters talk the same and are very difficult to like. Yes, people are flawed but no one here seemed to exhibit any self awareness about their own role in the pain surrounding them. It’s a book led by women, about Chernobyl, and time travel — all things that should have been up my alley but I was mostly underwhelmed.
This story follows Anna, a Russian scientist who’s work is ultimately responsible for the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear plant. She uses energy to travel back in time to try to prevent this tragedy. This book started off strong and had a super cool plot of time travel but it was about 100 pages too long and just fizzled out as the book went on. Overall this was just an average read to me and I give it a 3/5.
Multi-generational time-travel story
I enjoyed the mix of Soviet and US setting, and the cold war and Chernobyl background. The book was cleverly written with the time travel complementing how the characters' relationships with each other evolve. The plot masterly spans four generations.
I enjoyed the mix of Soviet and US setting, and the cold war and Chernobyl background. The book was cleverly written with the time travel complementing how the characters' relationships with each other evolve. The plot masterly spans four generations.