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la_xu's review
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Rating: 3.25 stars
I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this novel and I think a lot of that stemmed from it not being what I expected. I was leaning towards a 3 star, but bumped it up a bit because I think it's unfair to rate the book based on something it wasn't meant to be.
Summary: In this world, technology allows people like Cara, our main character, to travel between alternate universes (called Traversers). Only, traverers can only go to universes where they have died. As Caras from other worlds start dying, the worlds increase for Cara. A routine jump goes wrong and Cara needs to figure out why that happened.
That was the best I could do without spoilers.
First, a few things I really loved about this book:
The novel was really beautifully written. It was really impressive for a debut novel. It was descriptive and lyrical without being too flowery. The concept was also really creative and provided a unique take on what traveling between multiverses can look like. The author did a great job at mixing science fiction with some mystery and thriller elements. I also thought it was really creative how she folded in issues such as race, socioeconomic status, and religion into the world she created. It paralleled those issues in real life such that the interactions between the rich Wileyites and poor Ashtowners made sense. Moreover, the explored themes were also so relatable to the real world, such as its emphasis on the importance of family (or found families), the double-edged sword of blind ambition, morality, and capitalism.
The novel was also incredibly diverse without being specifically about diversity. There were so many casual references to sexuality, gender, and race that so neatly and genuinely incorporated into the story.
Another impressive thing that the author did was how she kept the story moving throughout the story. I felt like she had dropped pieces and hints of the bigger picture here and there throughout that kept me reading. Starting from even just a two chapters in, we learn a big twist about Cara's past. Then as you keep reading, every few chapters reveal a new twist or just something I didn't really see coming. The reveals were done really well and each time I would be shocked until it all came together in the end.
So despite all my gushing for what the book did great, I still had such a hard time staying interested in the story. Despite those twists and reveals, the areas in between left me a bit frustrated. One of the biggest issues for me again was the book being different from what I expected: From the synopsis given on the back of the book/on Goodreads, it sounds like it is going to be a multiverse-traveling adventure. I thought we would see more of other worlds, their differences, and how Cara interacted with them. Instead, there was a lot more telling rather than showing. We would be told Cara is going on a jump to another world, then the next chapter or paragraph would start with her back on her world and telling us that the jump had happened. I guess I didn't realize that the story was not so much about adventures of traveling across different worlds, but rather we only see her traversing in detail to one world that becomes relevant to the plot of the story.
I also felt that while Cara herself was really well developed, all her relationships were not. All the other characters were not given enough time and just weren't fully fleshed out. For example, I always always always love a good sister relationship in novels. And while I still believed in and rooted for Esther and Cara's sister-relationship, I would have liked to see more of their relationship so that the impact Cara's travel to world 175 and such would have had a bigger impact. The same honestly goes for her entire family. I felt like the differences between her world and world 175 later in the story just could have been more impactful had we seen more of her family in her world. The only character that the 175 Earth successfully contrasted for me was Nik Nik. In addition to her relationship with her sister, I also felt like Cara's romantic relationship with Dell was just so underdeveloped that I honestly could not see the ending actually happening. I wish that their relationship was developed earlier on. I don't need straight-up romance in my books by any means but the sapphic relationship was hyped up and yet the characters don't even communicate (like at all) until the last few chapters of the book. I just couldn't even tell what their relationship was based on.
Another issue I had with the pacing of the novel is how the author would actually interrupt pivotal action scenes within her novel with detours of something else. For example, there was one scene where on Earth 175, Cara is traveling across the desert towards a port. It seems like it could be high stakes, the sun is unbearably hot, she might be caught, and there may be other runners or people around who can hurt her. Yet in the middle of that, we cut to Cara thinking about Dell and how much the sun's brightness reminds her of Dell... for 3 pages. This ties in with how the book is much more telling than showing. We don't see the action scenes, and we don't see the emotional, character-developing scenes. Instead we get action interrupted by Cara's thoughts and narration to TELL us about her past and feelings towards other characters. All that together made this book a slog to get through despite interesting concepts and unexpected twists.
Lastly, the ending just felt way too abrupt to me. Everything wrapped up in like 25 pages. I just could not believe that Earth 0 Nik Nik would so easily believe Cara and suddenly decide to go after Adam Bosch who he had no idea existed or was related to him until that point. I also felt like everything was just a bit too convenient at the end. Bosch seems like the type of guy who has planned everything meticulously since the beginning and yet Cara still got away with so many convenient things in the end, ranging from sneaking onto Floor 88, to sneaking into his house, to poisoning him. It was just such a fast ending that it didn't give the reader time to sit with the outcome of Bosch's poisoning. It was also too convenient to Cara how Bosch reacted to her stunt. We go from highly intense action for 20 pages of the climax to a sudden epilogue that tried to be open-ended but seemed to suggest that everything worked out perfectly in the end.
I think that the author has so much potential for her sophomore novel and I will still be interested in picking up what she writes in the future. I just hope she can incorporate a bit more showing rather than telling in her writing, as well as pacing out the conclusion of her stories a bit better.
I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about this novel and I think a lot of that stemmed from it not being what I expected. I was leaning towards a 3 star, but bumped it up a bit because I think it's unfair to rate the book based on something it wasn't meant to be.
Summary: In this world, technology allows people like Cara, our main character, to travel between alternate universes (called Traversers). Only, traverers can only go to universes where they have died. As Caras from other worlds start dying, the worlds increase for Cara. A routine jump goes wrong and Cara needs to figure out why that happened.
That was the best I could do without spoilers.
First, a few things I really loved about this book:
The novel was really beautifully written. It was really impressive for a debut novel. It was descriptive and lyrical without being too flowery. The concept was also really creative and provided a unique take on what traveling between multiverses can look like. The author did a great job at mixing science fiction with some mystery and thriller elements. I also thought it was really creative how she folded in issues such as race, socioeconomic status, and religion into the world she created. It paralleled those issues in real life such that the interactions between the rich Wileyites and poor Ashtowners made sense. Moreover, the explored themes were also so relatable to the real world, such as its emphasis on the importance of family (or found families), the double-edged sword of blind ambition, morality, and capitalism.
The novel was also incredibly diverse without being specifically about diversity. There were so many casual references to sexuality, gender, and race that so neatly and genuinely incorporated into the story.
Another impressive thing that the author did was how she kept the story moving throughout the story. I felt like she had dropped pieces and hints of the bigger picture here and there throughout that kept me reading. Starting from even just a two chapters in, we learn a big twist about Cara's past. Then as you keep reading, every few chapters reveal a new twist or just something I didn't really see coming. The reveals were done really well and each time I would be shocked until it all came together in the end.
So despite all my gushing for what the book did great, I still had such a hard time staying interested in the story. Despite those twists and reveals, the areas in between left me a bit frustrated. One of the biggest issues for me again was the book being different from what I expected: From the synopsis given on the back of the book/on Goodreads, it sounds like it is going to be a multiverse-traveling adventure. I thought we would see more of other worlds, their differences, and how Cara interacted with them. Instead, there was a lot more telling rather than showing. We would be told Cara is going on a jump to another world, then the next chapter or paragraph would start with her back on her world and telling us that the jump had happened. I guess I didn't realize that the story was not so much about adventures of traveling across different worlds, but rather we only see her traversing in detail to one world that becomes relevant to the plot of the story.
I also felt that while Cara herself was really well developed, all her relationships were not. All the other characters were not given enough time and just weren't fully fleshed out. For example, I always always always love a good sister relationship in novels. And while I still believed in and rooted for Esther and Cara's sister-relationship, I would have liked to see more of their relationship so that the impact Cara's travel to world 175 and such would have had a bigger impact. The same honestly goes for her entire family. I felt like the differences between her world and world 175 later in the story just could have been more impactful had we seen more of her family in her world. The only character that the 175 Earth successfully contrasted for me was Nik Nik. In addition to her relationship with her sister, I also felt like Cara's romantic relationship with Dell was just so underdeveloped that I honestly could not see the ending actually happening. I wish that their relationship was developed earlier on. I don't need straight-up romance in my books by any means but the sapphic relationship was hyped up and yet the characters don't even communicate (like at all) until the last few chapters of the book. I just couldn't even tell what their relationship was based on.
Another issue I had with the pacing of the novel is how the author would actually interrupt pivotal action scenes within her novel with detours of something else. For example, there was one scene where on Earth 175, Cara is traveling across the desert towards a port. It seems like it could be high stakes, the sun is unbearably hot, she might be caught, and there may be other runners or people around who can hurt her. Yet in the middle of that, we cut to Cara thinking about Dell and how much the sun's brightness reminds her of Dell... for 3 pages. This ties in with how the book is much more telling than showing. We don't see the action scenes, and we don't see the emotional, character-developing scenes. Instead we get action interrupted by Cara's thoughts and narration to TELL us about her past and feelings towards other characters. All that together made this book a slog to get through despite interesting concepts and unexpected twists.
Lastly, the ending just felt way too abrupt to me. Everything wrapped up in like 25 pages. I just could not believe that
I think that the author has so much potential for her sophomore novel and I will still be interested in picking up what she writes in the future. I just hope she can incorporate a bit more showing rather than telling in her writing, as well as pacing out the conclusion of her stories a bit better.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Medical trauma, and Drug abuse
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