Review: While You Were Gone (Duplexity #2) by Amy K. Nichols

First, thanks to Knopf Books for Young Readers and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an egalley of this sequel to Now That You're Here.  The first book had an interesting take on the whole alternate universe idea, and I was interested to see how they continued with it in this book.  Although actually, it wasn't a sequel really, because it was what was going on at the same time as the first book, only in the other universe. 

It is basically the same main characters, Danny and Eevee.  Only this time we're in the world that the Danny we got to know in the first book was from, and we get to know the Danny from the world more like the one we live in.  This Danny has been dropped in a world where his parents are still alive.  And that right there is just like waking up in a perfect dream.  Things are definitely different in this world. Eevee is the governor's daughter, and she goes to a fancy school.  She ran into Danny at an art exhibit.  In this alternate world, the art that we are used to hearing about as the classic, famous works of art are forbidden.  And when Eevee found a book of them, she was caught by her nemesis, the daughter of her father's governorship competitor.  And now she's blackmailing her, and forcing her to help her get into the art school that Eevee had wanted to.  And what's worse is that all of Eevee's art for the school's application gets ruined in a fire, and now she has to start over as well. 

While Danny has his mom and dad back, and what seems like a happy family, there is something going on with his dad that he doesn't seem to know about.  He tries to keep his being from another dimension secret, and he does okay, until his best friend Germ figures it out.  Then he has to decide who he can tell, and who he shouldn't tell.  All of this leads into his figuring out that the new security system Eevee's dad is trying to get going is probably what is causing the two Dannys to switch worlds. Every time it is turned on, Danny can feel the other Danny trying to get back home. Of course this book basically ends where the other one did, only going a little farther as Danny and Eevee have to come to terms with the person they love being in the opposite world from where they are. 

I definitely enjoyed being back in this story.  I feel like while it had an ending, there is more that we need to know, more that I want to know.  I hope for another in the series, but don't know that there will be.  A good read. You get a little more science in this one, which was something I'd wanted in the last book.  So I was glad to read that.  Definitely a good read that I will recommend.

Review: Broken Symmetry by Dan Rix (TBR Challenge #4)

I won this book in a giveaway back in 2013!  I just finally got around to it this year.  I won it from the author and it is autographed with a message from the author.

Overall this was a pretty good book.  Towards the end I got a bit confused as it got deeper and deeper into some of the physics type parts of the story.  But then it switched to DNA, and that was cool because I've always been very interested in all things genetic.

The main character is Blaire. She's been on her own since her father disappeared almost a year ago.  In the middle of almost getting asked to prom by "the" popular boy Josh Hutchinson, she gets a call from the police saying they've found her dad.  Only there is something strange about this dad, according to him, she disappeared when she was a baby.  Her dad dies very shortly after she gets to see him, basically hemorrhaging from organs that have turned to mush. He doesn't have any disease, nothing contagious.  But it seems he showed up at the nearby military base where they've been supposedly having a drill.  Blaire's whole life is thrown into chaos.  She gets her DNA compared to this man just in case maybe her dad had an identical twin. But it is her dad.  (Although, wouldn't identical twins have the same DNA? From the little research I've done since I read this, I guess it is possible they don't)  When they do the test they find out that Blaire has an extra chromosome, two actually, like her dad.  And these extra chromosomes mean something strange. She finds out what they mean when she goes to visit her dad's old business partner.  She soon finds out her dad wasn't in the interior design business. They had a scientific practice where they tested walking through mirrors.  Inside the mirror everything was pretty much the same, other than backwards.  And as long as you were the one who "broke" the symmetry of the mirror, then there wouldn't be another you there.  But there are all kinds of rules about going into the mirrors and how many times you can go in, and having to come back out of the same mirror you went into. Her father's partner Charles isn't the only one who can do this that they know of.  His daughter Amy is able to, although she doesn't handle the travel so well, so her dad is "retiring" Amy and hoping to have Blaire fill in.  And there is a hot guy named Damian who also does it.  He should retire, the traveling is killing him the way it did her dad as well.  What they're trying to figure out is what the military has at the base, some kind of artifact that has something to do with this traveling.

There will be lots of disasters and almost disasters in this story.  Blaire will have a playful romantic interest in the brooding, sarcastic Damian.  And in the end, well things turn out in a pretty good way, if not what was really expected at the beginning, and definitely after some moments of being sure that all will be lost for Blaire.

As I said at the beginning.  A good read, fun science fiction, although a bit dense in parts, which made me skip over if I didn't feel I had to know it to read the story.  A good read. 

Review: Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer (TBR Challenge #3)

This is an ARC that I was lucky enough to pick up last summer at BEA.  I could have sworn I'd met the author, but it's not autographed and I don't have a picture with her.  :-(  I finally got back around to it in order to work on my TBR Pile Challenge.  It was definitely an interesting read.  I knew there would be some kind of big reveal at the end, but I didn't figure out what the twist was going to be, and I feel like it was a really good one.  Don't worry, I won't give it away!

The main character is Jam Gallahue.  Jam has just been sent to a special school called The Wooden Barn.  This is a boarding school for teens with emotional problems.  Jam is there because she lost her British foreign exchange student boyfriend.  Now, we don't know till the very end how she lost him.  So you'll speculate until the very end.  Jam is one of only a few students selected to be in a special honors English class.  In this class they are given journals to write in as the study an author, and this semester the author is Sylvia Plath.  The title of this book, Belzhar, is pronounced basically like the name of Plath's book, The Bell Jar.  But what Belzhar is in the book is kind of a different dimension, one where Jam and her friends in the class get to go and things are like they were before whatever their big traumatic event was.  In Jam's world, her boyfriend Reeve is there, and they get to spend every time together.  One girl who is now paralyzed gets to run and walk, and use her legs again.  Another person in the class gets to go back and spend time with her brother before he disappeared.  While they are in this other dimension, they write five pages in their journal.  They have figured out that by the end of the class, they will have written on every page in their journal.  And when they reach the final time? Well now they must come to terms with this big event, and they must decide how they will go on to live their lives. Will they continue to let whatever happened to them define the rest of their lives, will they choose to try to keep the wonderful times in this world, or will they move on and give themselves another chance?

I love when we learn about all the other students' past experiences, and I love the ways their final journal entry affects them.  And the way they choose, some are very emotional, and again, I have to say wow at the twist in what really happened with Jam's boyfriend.

A good read, pick it up if it sparks your interest!

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!

Review: Now That You're Here by Amy K. Nichols

First, thanks to Knopf Books for Young Readers and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this book.  I have to say that it wasn't a bad read.  I wasn't blown away by it, but it was a quick read because it did keep me wanting to know what would happen next. 

There are two main characters, Danny and Eevee.  Yes, that's how her name is spelled, although once in awhile they will spell it as Eve, and I'm not sure if it was really pointed out why, or if it made a difference when it was. That was one thing that bugged me.  But anyway, the chapters were alternated between the two characters' points of view.  The story starts with Danny.  Danny and his friend Germ are taggers, they like to spray paint and do graffiti, and currently they've got someone who is paying them to paint specific pictures or symbols, at certain locations.  In Danny's world there are cameras everywhere, watching everyone's every move.  And so they have to be careful about it so they don't get caught.  But Danny and Germ have determined that it is probably a certain rebel group that is behind them getting paid, so they've decided this will be the last time they do it.  Only there is an explosion this time, and somehow Danny lands in a strange world.  This world is where Eevee lives.  At first when Danny sees her, he thinks he knows her. But in Eevee's world, Danny is not someone she'd ever hang out. Eevee is a major science geek.  With her friend Warren, they do a lot of science projects with a teacher they call Mac.  It is this science stuff that may help Danny to get home, but may also cause problems for Eevee and Warren as they start noticing a van that seems to be following them, and their teacher starts being absent from school a lot.  Danny's life in Eevee's world isn't great.  Eevee's home life is okay, she has both parents, although they do have a strange living arrangement. 

There is a lot of good science ideas in this.  The ending leaves you  hanging, so it's good to know that there is going to be a sequel next year.  While this wasn't the best book on this topic, I did find it pretty interesting and entertaining.  Talk about parallel universes and EMPs and other current popular science topics made it a very perfect read for anyone interested in those types of issues these days. 

3:59 by Gretchen McNeil

I was lucky enough to get a copy of this at the RT Convention back in May of 2013 when it was in my hometown of Kansas City.  I got to meet the author, and of course got the ARC autographed.  I've had it up by my jacuzzi tub, and have been reading it whenever I get a chance to take a nice relaxing bubble bath.  Once again I have to say that this book wasn't quite what I was expecting, but this time it kind of blew me away!  A really great story!
When it talks about being scared of the dark, it has to do with an alternate universe, one where in the dark there are creatures that kill.  Yet somehow they now seem to be in our main character, Josie's universe.  We start out and Josie's life is just going downhill.  Her dad has moved out, her mom seems to have changed a lot, almost a different person.  She's been so stressed about her parents that she'd not been spending as much time with her boyfriend.  Which leads to him breaking up with her.  And not just breaking up with her, but having been seeing her best friend all this time.  So now she's not only lost her boyfriend,  but her best friend.  And she's been made the laughingstock of the school.  She also loses her job, another reason that has kept her away from her boyfriend.  She's had trouble getting there on time, and this one day, as she gets stuck at the train track, she seems to fall asleep, and be woken up by an explosion, and all of a sudden it is much later than she remembered.  This little episode occurred at 3:59 pm.  That night she can't sleep, and notices as she looks into her mirror that she sees another room, like hers, but not exactly.  And she sees herself, kind of.  It turns out that the mirror is a link to this other world.  In this world it seems that her alternate self is still with her boyfriend, Nick.  And she still has her father living at home.  And it seems like a wealthier house, the furniture and decorations much more expensive looking.  Eventually she figures out how to communicate with her "self".  And they agree to switch places for just a day.  Only, when Josie tries to see Jo at the end of the day to switch back, after finding out things aren't quite as good as her twin, "Jo" made them out to be, the mirror is no longer facing her room.  It is facing a wall.  And Josie has no way to get home.  Now she is stuck in this alternate universe, and all she wants is to get back to her real world.  But she learns things here have affected her own universe, and she must do what she can to make things right here, in order to stop things from going wrong in her own universe.
This was a great story.  Lots of twists and turns that kept me guessing until the end.  I really enjoyed this story, and look forward to reading more of this author's books.

Horrible shot of me, but here I am with the author, Gretchen McNeil.

Here is the autograph in the 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?

77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz

My first "adult" book of the year! I told myself that this year I need to try to read at least one adult book a year, as I mostly read Teen/YA.  And this book was good, but I know now why I read so many more YA these days.  I realized just how wordy Dean Koontz can be.  Some sections just went on and on, and I was ready to get to the point.  In fact, I'm sure I skipped a bunch of paragraphs, and sometimes had to go back, because I was skimming trying to get on to some actual action.  It makes me think about how I'm teaching my students about figurative language in my Communication Arts class right now. Figurative language is great!  Helps you feel like you're right there in the story sometimes!  But too much can be a bad thing.  Whole paragraphs or pages even.  Okay, I did enjoy the book, it was a pretty good story, so let me talk about that now.

I figured there would be more to do with short story The Moonlit Mind that I read last year, and that made me very excited to read this book.  There wasn't, and maybe I need to re-read the short story, but I don't quite see the connections.  I'll have to read it again.  Anyway, as many Dean Koontz books do, we followed several different characters.  All of which live in a huge mansion turned into condos, called The Pendleton.  Every 38 years strange and terrible things happen.  Murders, people disappear.  And this is the 38th year coming up.  Strange things start happening.  People see ghosts from the past, the years that people disappeared.  There are strange shapes swimming in the pool.  When they look outside, during the thunderstorm, sometimes the lightning lights up showing there is no city out where there should be.  All of the people we meet begin experiencing things.  Some have worse things happen.  And some are able to figure it out better.  We of course have one evil character, a murderer, who all of them are locked in with.  We have two children with single moms. We have a former military man, two elderly women, a woman who lost both her parents to lightning strikes.  A woman who was a country singer, a man who grew up in Viet Nam during the war, and a scientist?  There is also one guy researching the history of the Pendleton.  Eventually the curse or time warp or whatever goes all the way through.  In this other dimension, or the future as we learn, there is The One, who is like a god in a way, controls everything.  There are no humans, other than one named Witness, although he is not technically human.  One of the characters recognizes him, and we find out exactly what has happened.

One other issue I had is that while I feel there was a ton of build up and all, that we get to the end we're barely let in on what the actual deal is, and then we're back in the present and it's kind of over.  I liked the way it ended, again, don't get me wrong, just was a bit anti-climactic.  Not a bad Dean Koontz book, just hard to read that kind of book again with what I've been reading lately.  And hey,  some of those YA books are big too, think of Divergent!!