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A review by liralen
In Some Other Life by Jessica Brody
3.0
I was—am—head over heels for this conceptually: an alternate-universe story in which the heroine's options are a hyper-competitive school or a normal school life. (I'd be even more enthusiastic if we were talking hyper-competitive boarding school, but oh well.) And this was a fun, easy read. But two things have stuck with me since I read this.
First, the vast majority of the book is devoted to the prep-school version of Kennedy's life. There's not really a back-and-forth—it's more a leap into Kennedy's alternate-universe, incredibly stressful life, and, eventually, Kennedy wishing that she were back in her 'average' life. I'm a lot more interested in alternate universes with grey area: ones in which, if there is a choice to be made, there are multiple pros and cons to each choice. Here it sort of seems like the prep school's only 'pro' is that it's very prestigious, and literally every other thing about it is much much much worse, from family life to stress levels to relationships. It's less interesting to me when it's so clear which life will turn out to be preferable.
And second...alternate-life stories have basically two options at the end: the different universes can take them in really genuinely different directions, or they can end up with the exact same place no matter what they do. To me, the former is way more interesting, because it means that the choices characters make have actual consequences, for better or for worse. But this is another one in which not only do things end up pretty much the same one way or the other, but Kennedy gets away with a ton (gets away with expellable offenses) in order for this to happen.
Even if I'd known all this going in, I'd have leapt for a (library) copy, and I'm not sorry I read it. But I'd have loved to see a version of this where Kennedy's choices mattered, where when push came to shove there wasn't an easy choice for her to make.
First, the vast majority of the book is devoted to the prep-school version of Kennedy's life. There's not really a back-and-forth—it's more a leap into Kennedy's alternate-universe, incredibly stressful life, and, eventually, Kennedy wishing that she were back in her 'average' life. I'm a lot more interested in alternate universes with grey area: ones in which, if there is a choice to be made, there are multiple pros and cons to each choice. Here it sort of seems like the prep school's only 'pro' is that it's very prestigious, and literally every other thing about it is much much much worse, from family life to stress levels to relationships. It's less interesting to me when it's so clear which life will turn out to be preferable.
And second...alternate-life stories have basically two options at the end: the different universes can take them in really genuinely different directions, or they can end up with the exact same place no matter what they do. To me, the former is way more interesting, because it means that the choices characters make have actual consequences, for better or for worse. But this is another one in which not only do things end up pretty much the same one way or the other, but Kennedy gets away with a ton (gets away with expellable offenses) in order for this to happen.
Even if I'd known all this going in, I'd have leapt for a (library) copy, and I'm not sorry I read it. But I'd have loved to see a version of this where Kennedy's choices mattered, where when push came to shove there wasn't an easy choice for her to make.