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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
I unfortunately read this book under false premises (I thought the main character was bisexual) and that probably contributed to my disappointment, but overall I was fairly unimpressed.
Alison is a teenage girl who admits to killing her classmate and ends up in a mental ward. She is ranting about seeing her disintegrate before her very eyes.
Alison can see sounds, taste words. Her conditions has worried her mother since a young age and Alison has learned to keep that side of herself hidden. Then one day a classmate she can't help but notice starts causing her senses to go haywire.
The author takes time to unfold this tale of mystery. The main character suffers from mental illness, or so we think. Her associates in the mental ward have their own issues and when she talks to Dr. Minta or Faraday it seems that perhaps she is unwell too.
As we get to know Alison we see that her condition is special. She has an ability that is unique. The story does take a twist towards the. End that explains the dramatic exchange between Tori, the classmate that disintegrated, and Alison. This is also a bit of a romance which wad nice since I am a fan of romance novels. The main point of interest I would have to say was seeing Alison discover her ability.
This was my first time reading RJ Anderson. I enjoy reading a book that keeps you guessing. Also that has characters that support the story. I would recommend this book to people that like mystery mixed with with a dash of romance and an unique storyline. It definitely could continue on as a series.
Alison can see sounds, taste words. Her conditions has worried her mother since a young age and Alison has learned to keep that side of herself hidden. Then one day a classmate she can't help but notice starts causing her senses to go haywire.
The author takes time to unfold this tale of mystery. The main character suffers from mental illness, or so we think. Her associates in the mental ward have their own issues and when she talks to Dr. Minta or Faraday it seems that perhaps she is unwell too.
As we get to know Alison we see that her condition is special. She has an ability that is unique. The story does take a twist towards the. End that explains the dramatic exchange between Tori, the classmate that disintegrated, and Alison. This is also a bit of a romance which wad nice since I am a fan of romance novels. The main point of interest I would have to say was seeing Alison discover her ability.
This was my first time reading RJ Anderson. I enjoy reading a book that keeps you guessing. Also that has characters that support the story. I would recommend this book to people that like mystery mixed with with a dash of romance and an unique storyline. It definitely could continue on as a series.
I wrote about this book on my blog
http://804-notassigned.blogspot.com/2011/12/this-time-tomorrow.html
http://804-notassigned.blogspot.com/2011/12/this-time-tomorrow.html
“Everybody has a story, Alison," he said. “Everybody has things they need to hide--sometimes even from themselves.”
To set a novel mostly in a mental institute was something I just couldn’t miss. And Anderson pulls it off brilliantly. Here we have the experience of a teenager finding herself in such a place, trying to deal with her situation. Why is she here? What happened? How is she going to adapt to this restricted and indeed disturbing ‘asylum’? Through her own experience and what she sees of others, the author paints a raw picture of how people with mental illnesses are treated, chipping little by little at all the taboos and unsavoury aspects, shining a torch at them, all to make us understand that nothing is as bad as imagined. Yes, there is pain and injustice and violence and anger and plenty of other emotions, but that is not the whole thing, and our perceptions can and often are totally askew.
The many characters and relationships offered here are complex, and hidden in a way. The author does choose some very interesting paths that don’t become visible until the end, playing with our understanding of the people around us, and especially ourselves. Then, Anderson adds the synaesthesia card, and again I’m beyond sold. I’ve been fascinated by this for quite a while now, wondering how it would be to taste or see sounds. Sadly, it is only too easy to understand how people could have misunderstood this and seen only schizophrenia.
The story does dip into science fiction, which wasn’t needed - the book would have been perfect without it - but I can see the appeal of it too. Under the umbrella of this genre, the author could probably reach a wider audience :O)
To set a novel mostly in a mental institute was something I just couldn’t miss. And Anderson pulls it off brilliantly. Here we have the experience of a teenager finding herself in such a place, trying to deal with her situation. Why is she here? What happened? How is she going to adapt to this restricted and indeed disturbing ‘asylum’? Through her own experience and what she sees of others, the author paints a raw picture of how people with mental illnesses are treated, chipping little by little at all the taboos and unsavoury aspects, shining a torch at them, all to make us understand that nothing is as bad as imagined. Yes, there is pain and injustice and violence and anger and plenty of other emotions, but that is not the whole thing, and our perceptions can and often are totally askew.
The many characters and relationships offered here are complex, and hidden in a way. The author does choose some very interesting paths that don’t become visible until the end, playing with our understanding of the people around us, and especially ourselves. Then, Anderson adds the synaesthesia card, and again I’m beyond sold. I’ve been fascinated by this for quite a while now, wondering how it would be to taste or see sounds. Sadly, it is only too easy to understand how people could have misunderstood this and seen only schizophrenia.
The story does dip into science fiction, which wasn’t needed - the book would have been perfect without it - but I can see the appeal of it too. Under the umbrella of this genre, the author could probably reach a wider audience :O)
The first half of this book was utterly engrossing, amazing, authentic and had me staying up past my bedtime. Alison wakes up in a psych ward convinced her odd way of seeing shapes and sounds and colors where no one else does has caused her to somehow disintegrate a mean popular girl at school.
She`s so intent on hiding her experiences so she`ll be let out of the looney bin, that she ends up sabotaging herself. It`s only when a foreign researcher comes to her hospital to test people and discovers she experiences the world as a synesthete (crosswired senses) that Alison begins to truly unravel what happened that fateful afternoon the popular girl disappeared.
Alison`s voice hooked me right away. Her attempts to manipulate her doctor while self-sabotaging her own progress were painful and real to experience along with her. Finding out why her best friend visits her, and the development of her relationship with co-inmate Kirk also kept me pinned to my Kindle. This first half was utterly real, and while as a reader I knew Alison had to be wrong about some part of her memory of the popular girl`s disappearance, I was totally blown away by the truth revealed in the last third of the book.
And then it got wonky. I`m sorry to say that for me, the last third of the book, while very interesting and maintaining the sense of urgency I felt about discovering Alison`s true actions, felt so very strangely disconnected and not bound by the same character rules and problems the first half set up that I had to downgrade my original enthusiastic love of the book from 5 to 4 stars.
Don`t get me wrong. This book is totally worth your time. If you liked Unraveling or the Mysterious Case of the Dog in the Nightime or Harmonic Feedback you will like this book. If you`re looking for some excellent YA genre crossover, you will also like this book. Actually, even if you don`t fit either of those two categories, you should still read the book because the beginning about Alison`s synesthesia and her experience with the psychological/medical establishment is just that good.
This Book`s Snack Rating: A box of Cheeze-it Duoz for combining the utterly gnoshable cheddar cheese pysch reality with slightly less exciting parmesan of fantastic in one story
She`s so intent on hiding her experiences so she`ll be let out of the looney bin, that she ends up sabotaging herself. It`s only when a foreign researcher comes to her hospital to test people and discovers she experiences the world as a synesthete (crosswired senses) that Alison begins to truly unravel what happened that fateful afternoon the popular girl disappeared.
Alison`s voice hooked me right away. Her attempts to manipulate her doctor while self-sabotaging her own progress were painful and real to experience along with her. Finding out why her best friend visits her, and the development of her relationship with co-inmate Kirk also kept me pinned to my Kindle. This first half was utterly real, and while as a reader I knew Alison had to be wrong about some part of her memory of the popular girl`s disappearance, I was totally blown away by the truth revealed in the last third of the book.
And then it got wonky. I`m sorry to say that for me, the last third of the book, while very interesting and maintaining the sense of urgency I felt about discovering Alison`s true actions, felt so very strangely disconnected and not bound by the same character rules and problems the first half set up that I had to downgrade my original enthusiastic love of the book from 5 to 4 stars.
Don`t get me wrong. This book is totally worth your time. If you liked Unraveling or the Mysterious Case of the Dog in the Nightime or Harmonic Feedback you will like this book. If you`re looking for some excellent YA genre crossover, you will also like this book. Actually, even if you don`t fit either of those two categories, you should still read the book because the beginning about Alison`s synesthesia and her experience with the psychological/medical establishment is just that good.
This Book`s Snack Rating: A box of Cheeze-it Duoz for combining the utterly gnoshable cheddar cheese pysch reality with slightly less exciting parmesan of fantastic in one story
Okay... Alison, the main character, has synesthesia, and since I loved A Mango Shaped Space, I thought I’d give this one a try, even though it looked a lot more gritty.
And it was a good read. For the first 225 pages. Then over the next 70, the author threw us into WTF World. Honestly.
The main part of the book is great, with the main character, Alison, coming to grips with her synesthesia in a mental institution because her mother is convinced she’s crazy. Then suddenly…
And it was a good read. For the first 225 pages. Then over the next 70, the author threw us into WTF World. Honestly.
The main part of the book is great, with the main character, Alison, coming to grips with her synesthesia in a mental institution because her mother is convinced she’s crazy. Then suddenly…
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I found this somewhat clumsy and annoying and just plain...off. Like, synesthesia as mental health problem set in a time where a good Google would've dispelled the main character and her mother's misgivings? But I guess then the author couldn't insert it to lead down an impossible warren of misunderstandings and subterfuge to make this feel more of a mystery than it really is. :/ It just threw off the internal consistency required for me to suspend my disbelief to enjoy this. And ultimately, it's really about [spoiler] and you could've built to that WITHOUT all the 'sinister asylum' bits.
I love me an unreliable narrator, particularly when you can’t identify what kind of unreliable he or she is. Is he sincere in his beliefs but crazy? Is she a pathological liar? Is he a con man intentionally deceiving his audience? Is she just out of the loop, a narrator who thinks she knows what’s going on but is actually being tricked by others? I stayed up until almost midnight to finish this in a marathon reading session, and I found it an incredibly addictive genre-bender.
Alison is set up as suspect right from the start, from the moment she wakes up in a sterile hospital room, arms covered in self-inflicted scratches, missing a bunch of memories and pressed with the uncomfortable feeling that something’s gone terribly wrong. The fact that she’s been involuntarily committed after a psychotic episode doesn’t surprise her as much as it should, and the policeman who escorts her, hand-cuffed, to her new home in a private psych ward for teenagers seems to think she knows something about a classmate’s disappearance. The missing girl, Tori, had an argument with Alison just before disappearing, and it was no secret they disliked each other – but did Alison do something to warrant this suspicious treatment? And do her family and friends and the doctors at the institution really want to help her, or do they all have ulterior motives?
Alison has always worried about being a little crazy because of the different way her mind perceives things: letters, numbers, names, and sounds have colors and emotions and even tastes associated with them. Telling lies taste bad and make her sick; hopefulness in someone’s voice tastes like powdered sugar; the ringing sound dishes make while washing make stars burst before her eyes; people’s names hold clues to their personality, based on the qualities of the letters. It gives her narrative an unusual sensory rich quality without being overdone or unreadable, and Anderson does an amazing job using language to convey how Alison experiences the world. Plus, being so firmly in Alison’s head makes it hard to doubt her – everything is colored by her odd perceptions, and she seems so sincere and honest – but also impossible to fully believe she knows the true story, either.
She’s been taught by her mother to keep her unusual perceptions a secret, to be ashamed of it, but it’s a real condition (and I don’t feel this is a spoiler, because even the publisher’s marketing mentions it) called synesthesia. Because I already knew this, I was predisposed to think that Alison wasn’t really crazy – she just didn’t know that there was a real explanation. But then, the more she starts remembering the events of the night Tori disappeared, the more unstable she seems, especially when she flat out admits to herself that she disintegrated Tori with the power of her mind.
Right at that moment, this book took me in wholly, because that’s when I had to admit I had no idea where Anderson was going to take this story. The best part of reading this book is trying to figure out, as Alison sorts through her memories and gets drawn into the lives of the other patients in the ward, what really happened that night. Did Alison kill Tori? And did Tori disintegrate, or is Alison just crazy? If she did disintegrate, what the hell does that mean? There is honestly no way to predict, for sure, where the story is going to go without spoilers. This is coming from someone who considers it her particular superpower to make those predictions and be right 98% of the time (what, even someone with superpowers can’t be right ALL of the time).
The book starts off as a realistic story taking place in a mental institution, but evidence stacks up, in a subtle way, that something supernatural is going on; the problem is, since we’re reading from Alison’s point of view, there’s no way of knowing if her gathering evidence that points to something otherworldly is legit. There are a lot of promising clues that turn out to be red herrings, and little moments that turn out in retrospect to be clues, while characters you like turn out to be skeevy and vice versa. The later piece of the novel, where the slow-building tension pays off and turns to straight-up action, is surprising and will put off some readers and make others squee with delight (I am one of the second ones). I did feel the transition was a little abrupt, but maybe that’s because it doesn’t get a lot of expansion compared with the rest of the story, which takes up more than half, and because it moves super fast in comparison; I think these later developments will be more focused in on book two.
I feel like I can’t discuss the plot anymore without ruining it, even though I’m leaving out a major character/love interest. Of course just saying there’s a major tonal shift is sort of setting up new readers for the experience, but that can be a good thing, too. Still, this genre-bender wouldn’t be nearly so successful without Anderson’s great writing. There are so many quotable descriptive moments, like Alison’s descriptions that are spot-on and often hilarious (for example, she introduces Tori by saying, “And where the new girl had curves, I had angles and despair”; and she introduces another person by describing his clothes as “exciting shades like Old Filing Cabinet and Dryer Lint”).
Another plus is the ensemble cast – while this book is really all about Alison for most of the time, her fellow patients, her mother and father, the doctors and nurses and orderlies, and a certain potential love interest, all have enough depth to hint that there’s more going on with them than Alison realizes. They are believable background players, and when a few of them move into the spotlight, they become as complex as Alison.
Sheer curiosity kept me turning the pages -- I had to know what really happened to Alison and Tori -- but the writing made it worthwhile, and I admire Anderson for really going there with the ending. Can't wait to read the next one!
Alison is set up as suspect right from the start, from the moment she wakes up in a sterile hospital room, arms covered in self-inflicted scratches, missing a bunch of memories and pressed with the uncomfortable feeling that something’s gone terribly wrong. The fact that she’s been involuntarily committed after a psychotic episode doesn’t surprise her as much as it should, and the policeman who escorts her, hand-cuffed, to her new home in a private psych ward for teenagers seems to think she knows something about a classmate’s disappearance. The missing girl, Tori, had an argument with Alison just before disappearing, and it was no secret they disliked each other – but did Alison do something to warrant this suspicious treatment? And do her family and friends and the doctors at the institution really want to help her, or do they all have ulterior motives?
Alison has always worried about being a little crazy because of the different way her mind perceives things: letters, numbers, names, and sounds have colors and emotions and even tastes associated with them. Telling lies taste bad and make her sick; hopefulness in someone’s voice tastes like powdered sugar; the ringing sound dishes make while washing make stars burst before her eyes; people’s names hold clues to their personality, based on the qualities of the letters. It gives her narrative an unusual sensory rich quality without being overdone or unreadable, and Anderson does an amazing job using language to convey how Alison experiences the world. Plus, being so firmly in Alison’s head makes it hard to doubt her – everything is colored by her odd perceptions, and she seems so sincere and honest – but also impossible to fully believe she knows the true story, either.
She’s been taught by her mother to keep her unusual perceptions a secret, to be ashamed of it, but it’s a real condition (and I don’t feel this is a spoiler, because even the publisher’s marketing mentions it) called synesthesia. Because I already knew this, I was predisposed to think that Alison wasn’t really crazy – she just didn’t know that there was a real explanation. But then, the more she starts remembering the events of the night Tori disappeared, the more unstable she seems, especially when she flat out admits to herself that she disintegrated Tori with the power of her mind.
Right at that moment, this book took me in wholly, because that’s when I had to admit I had no idea where Anderson was going to take this story. The best part of reading this book is trying to figure out, as Alison sorts through her memories and gets drawn into the lives of the other patients in the ward, what really happened that night. Did Alison kill Tori? And did Tori disintegrate, or is Alison just crazy? If she did disintegrate, what the hell does that mean? There is honestly no way to predict, for sure, where the story is going to go without spoilers. This is coming from someone who considers it her particular superpower to make those predictions and be right 98% of the time (what, even someone with superpowers can’t be right ALL of the time).
The book starts off as a realistic story taking place in a mental institution, but evidence stacks up, in a subtle way, that something supernatural is going on; the problem is, since we’re reading from Alison’s point of view, there’s no way of knowing if her gathering evidence that points to something otherworldly is legit. There are a lot of promising clues that turn out to be red herrings, and little moments that turn out in retrospect to be clues, while characters you like turn out to be skeevy and vice versa. The later piece of the novel, where the slow-building tension pays off and turns to straight-up action, is surprising and will put off some readers and make others squee with delight (I am one of the second ones). I did feel the transition was a little abrupt, but maybe that’s because it doesn’t get a lot of expansion compared with the rest of the story, which takes up more than half, and because it moves super fast in comparison; I think these later developments will be more focused in on book two.
I feel like I can’t discuss the plot anymore without ruining it, even though I’m leaving out a major character/love interest. Of course just saying there’s a major tonal shift is sort of setting up new readers for the experience, but that can be a good thing, too. Still, this genre-bender wouldn’t be nearly so successful without Anderson’s great writing. There are so many quotable descriptive moments, like Alison’s descriptions that are spot-on and often hilarious (for example, she introduces Tori by saying, “And where the new girl had curves, I had angles and despair”; and she introduces another person by describing his clothes as “exciting shades like Old Filing Cabinet and Dryer Lint”).
Another plus is the ensemble cast – while this book is really all about Alison for most of the time, her fellow patients, her mother and father, the doctors and nurses and orderlies, and a certain potential love interest, all have enough depth to hint that there’s more going on with them than Alison realizes. They are believable background players, and when a few of them move into the spotlight, they become as complex as Alison.
Sheer curiosity kept me turning the pages -- I had to know what really happened to Alison and Tori -- but the writing made it worthwhile, and I admire Anderson for really going there with the ending.