Review: Tether (Many-Worlds Trilogy #2) by Anna Jarzab

First, thanks to Edelweiss and Delacorte Press for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  I read and enjoyed the first book, Tandem, also as an e-galley, and so was excited when I found this available on Edelweiss last year.  It has been awhile since I read the first one though, so it did take a minute to remember all that had happened.  But I feel like the book kind of caught you back up in small ways, without having to go into a total info overload.  Once again, if you haven't read the first one, there will of course be some spoilers for that one, although I'll try not to give anything major away in my review for this one.

At the end of the first one, Sasha had been able to return to her world along with Grant.  However Grant's analog, Thomas, was captured and is still a prisoner.  He will be rescued though, and returned to the army, and his father, the General.  We also meet a new character in this book.  Her name is Selene, and she is another analog to Sasha and the Princess Juliana, from yet another world.  And Juliana is still being held by the Libertas as well.  Selene's world has had an eye on the other worlds, and she has finally decrypted the prophecies that will help her people save their world.  Only it will require her and her other two analogs to work together to do it. So she goes to Aurora to find them both.  Grant doesn't want to go back, which makes sense since he had been kept a prisoner only so that Thomas could go to Earth and bring Sasha back to fill in for the missing Juliana.  But Juliana loves Thomas, and wants to go back.  And so she finds someone who can help her, and she goes back.  Once she's back she is now once again in the center of all the big drama.  Selene has also arrived before her, and has refused to tell the General who she is and where she is from. And the General refuses to believe that her world, Taiga, doesn't want to come and invade Aurora.  Selene also has a connection to Sasha, and Juliana. They call it a tether.  By using this tether they are able to find out where Juliana is and try to rescue her.  When the rescue doesn't go quite as planned, and the king, who was poisoned in the last book, passes away, it is even more important for them to find Juliana, not just to save Selene's world, but also to save Aurora from the Libertas, and their ruthless leader.  We find out in this one that their leader, the Shepherd, has his own connection to the royals and has his own reasons for bringing down the King. 

While some of the story may be resolved at the end, there is still more that must be done.  Some people will not make it, some will betray the trust of their friends, and more problems will arise.  New love will be found for Juliana, and Sasha and Thomas will have to fight to keep their love alive and possible.

This was a very quick read.  While I did really enjoy the character and world building of the last book I read, I also enjoy a good read like this one, that gets down to the nitty-gritty action throughout the book, and the down time is only as needed and is only as would probably be realistic.  If you enjoy a good alternate dimension story, this is definitely one to pick up.  After you get the first one that is.  And now, I must wait as patiently as possible for the 3rd book!

Tandem (Many-Worlds Trilogy #1) by Anna Jarzab

First, thanks to Edelweiss and Delacorte Books for Young Readers for allowing me to read an e-galley of this.  When I first picked it up, I had a bit of trouble wondering if I would actually be able to get into it.  I mean, the premise sounds really good, alternate universes, and the promise of some science aspects as opposed to just fictional parts.  But, once I picked it up and gave it a chance, I was very pleasantly surprised!
The main character is Sasha Lawson.  She lives with her grandfather, who is a physicist, because her parents died when she was young.  The stories he used to tell her when she was little were about parallel universes.  They used to imagine what they could be like, and make things up.  But one day, Sasha finds out they are real.  A boy she's known almost her whole life, named Grant, all of a sudden begins to show interest in her.  In fact, he even asks her to the dance.  But it turns out that Grant, well he really isn't Grant.  He is Thomas, from this other universe, and you might say he is Grant's twin, or doppelganger, or in this book, from Thomas's universe, they call them analogs.  And he has come to take Sasha back to his world to replace her analog.  See, Sasha's analog is the princess, Juliana to be exact.  And she is needed to help bridge a peace contract between their country, the United Commonwealth of Columbia and Farnham.  Basically the United States split into two different countries.  Princess Juliana has disappeared.  Now we know from the beginning of the book, and other chapters, that Juliana had left of her own will, thinking it would be best if she left, rather than marry someone she didn't want to marry. Sasha is basically kidnapped, taken against her will to the universe, and told by "the General" that she must portray Juliana for 6 days, until the marriage takes place, to help get their world back to where they want it.  Fortunately Sasha doesn't have quite as hard of a time, she has memories from what she thought were dreams of being a princess.  Somehow she has always had a link to Juliana.  But things in the alternate universe aren't quite as they seem.  Thomas's analog has also been kidnapped, and it turns out Juliana was betrayed by her conspirator and is now a prisoner as well.  The King was shot, and now seems to be mostly out of it.  But as Sasha visits him, she begins to feel that his random mutterings, may not be so random, and maybe be clues to figure out something.  She becomes friends with Thomas, and her assistant Gloria, even as she must deal with the hatred between her step-mother and Juliana.  She meets the prince from the other country that she must marry, and feels maybe he might not be such a bad guy, and the marriage might be a good idea.  The ending is a total cliffhanger, and about 20-40 pages before the end I kind of thought they might be able to end the story and not have it have to continue.  But no, it was left off with a very good cliffhanger, one that now I have to wait a whole year to read on!!
Some things I didn't like, I wish there had been a bit more science, I kind of wonder how taking the analog to the other universe, while the normal person was still there didn't cause any problem unless they touched.  My other complaint is that knowing genetics as well as I do, I'm not sure how Sasha and Juliana's parents could not be the same people.  So that's only two things I had a problem with, and they are kind of science related, as opposed to story related.  There are many more things I enjoyed I guess!  I really liked the characters, although once or twice when Sasha got mad at Thomas I thought she was being a bit silly, and some thing Thomas did were kind of annoying on the same thread.  But I loved hearing where the two universes began timelines in different directions.  How before that everything seemed to be the same.  The story reminded me a bit of the tv show Fringe.  The different universes that were very similar other than little differences that changed things, like on the tv show I loved how the Statue of Liberty hadn't corroded in the alternate universe, as it has here for us.
I highly recommend this book, and will be hand selling it at the store where I work, as well as adding it to my list of books to order for the high school library where I now work.  Oh and one last thought, how incredible is that cover?