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. 

A to Z April: D Reviews - The Dewey Decimal System of Love by Josephine Carr/Double Helix by Nancy Werlin

Again I'm finding it will be easier to share the synopsis from Goodreads and then give a quick couple sentence review/reason that I liked it.  Like yesterday I have two very different types of books I'm featuring today. First is another chick lit book, and the second is another YA, again kind of a science fiction type of story.

First is The Dewey Decimal System of Love by Josephine Carr.  As someone who wanted to be a librarian for quite a few years before I finally got a library job (more than 10 years, wow!) the title itself grabbed my attention.  At the time I read it I wasn't quite to the 40 year age, but now that I am, it might be something I should go back and re-read.  Here's the synopsis:
Behind a french twist and sensible clothes, forty-year-old librarian Alison Sheffield hides an extravagant nature. But after last night, even her most proper attire can't disguise the signs-the pink cheeks, the extra-poufy hair, the bounce in her step. Alison Sheffield is in love.
The heart-palpitating, nausea-inducing, silly, inexplicable, absurd and pointless kind of love found in a romance novel. And for once in her life, what Alison needs to know she can't find in any reference book-she can only live it...

Second is Double Helix by Nancy Werlin.  I am a fan of this author, and this is a good sci-fi story about something that has always been a subject of interest to me, genetics.  A little bit older story, came out in 2004 I believe, but a great book for anyone interested in science fiction YA stories.  It also includes a male protagonist, so that could be a good push for getting a boy to read it.  Here's the blurb from Goodreads:
Eli has lucked into a job at Wyatt Transgenics offered to him by Dr. Wyatt, the famed scientist. The salary is substantial, the work is interesting, and Dr. Wyatt seems to be paying special attention to Eli. It's almost too good to be true. Is there a catch?
Eli's father is vehemently against his taking the job, but won't explain why. Eli knows that there's some connection between Dr. Wyatt and his parents something too painful for his father to discuss. Something to do with his mother, who is now debilitated by Huntington's disease. As he continues to work at the lab, and to spend time with Dr. Wyatt, he begins to uncover some disconcerting truths about himself about his very makeup.  
Rich and suspenseful, with a hair-raising conclusion, this is Nancy Werlin's most dynamic novel yet one that explores the ethics and amazements of genetic engineering.

Have you read either of these books?  Josephine Carr doesn't have as many other books available as Nancy Werlin does, so maybe you've read some other of Werlin's books.  Do you think you'd want to read either of these?

While you're here, make sure you enter my giveaway below!


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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?

The Hazards of Working at a Bookstore Vol. 3.2 Part 2

This is the 2nd part to my regular posts about the books I see when working at the bookstore that I want to read. As I said in part 1, this is actually a couple weeks' worth of books, so this part will be the 6 teen books on my lists.
First is Between by Jessica Warman. This is a ghost story, but with a realistic fiction slant of anorexia. The main character is Elizabeth, who is a popular girl. She wakes up after a party to find her body drowned in a swimming pool. She meets another ghost, a boy named Alex, who died in a hit and run accident. Together they try to figure out what happened to her, and they learn that no one in her group, including herself, can be called completely innocent in this death and situation.












Second is Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay. It turns out we have the whole story wrong. Juliet didn't kill herself, she was murdered by Romeo. He made her a sacrifice so that he could be immortal. But Juliet was granted immortality as well. She's spent the last 700 years fighting for true love against those that Romeo would destroy. Until, of course, she finds someone she wants to love, but can't, and now Romeo is working to destroy her love.














Third is Tankborn by Karen Sandler. Now I'm excited to say I was able to get this as an e-galley on Netgalley, so I will get to read it soon! It is a sci fi book, about genetics, which I am intrigued by. Kayla and Mishalla are best friends, they also are GENS, Genetically engineered non humans. They were gestated in a tank, then raised in slums, and at the age of 15 sent to work as slaves. They are the lowest of all beings. Kayla goes to work for a trueborn, or highest of all begins. Mishalla goes and works for children who are disappearing in the night. When they happen to meet up again, they decide they must figure out where these children are disappearing to because Mishalla has a feeling something horrible is happening to them.






Fourth is The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab. The Near Witch is an old story told to frighten children. Or at least that is what Lexi believes until a boy that no one knows shows up one night outside her home. Another saying the village has is that there are no strangers. The night after he shows up, children start disappearing. Sounds like a good mystery, and is described as part fairy tale, part love story. Another that I'm anxious to read!














Fifth is The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills by Joanna Pearson. The main character is Janice Wills, and she is really into anthropology. She figures you can learn a lot just by knowing basic anthropologic theories. Like how dancing can be a good mating ritual, if you're good at it. Janice is a smart girl, and so isn't used to hot guys talking to her, until it happens, and then she must become a part of the group of people that she's been making her observations about.














And finally, the last teen book for this post is The Twin's Daughter by Lauren Baratz-Logsted. The main character is Lucy, and one day a woman shows up at her doorstep who is identical to her mother. Turns out her mother has an identical twin that she was separated from at birth, and both grew up in totally different environments. Lucy's mother decides to give her sister the life she didn't have growing up. But soon Lucy has trouble telling the two apart, and is unsure what exactly this twin is after.
Tomorrow, or later tonight maybe, I'll blog the 6 adult books on my list.

Terminal Freeze by Lincoln Child

Another book that was a strip copy. I picked it up because I love the books Lincoln Child writes with Douglas Preston, and I did enjoy Utopia and Deep Storm.

This was a fun science type book as well. There is a creature in it that was flash frozen in ice a long time ago. It is a strange unknown creature. There are many theories thrown around about it. One I wonder if it is a real theory, that scientists say every so often nature creates a creature that is just to weed out some sort of species or something. I'll have to look that up at some point, because it is very interesting. I don't like how it does talk about Global Warming. Yes, maybe the polar ice caps are melting, but once again, as I've posted before, that happens in nature! So anyway.

Another good, quick read by Lincoln Child. I think there is only one other book by Lincoln Child, Death Match. Not sure what it is about, but I'll have to look it up and check it out. I still need to get back to the series he writes with Douglas Preston that started with Relic one of these days. I do have to note, that as I was looking for an image of the cover for this book, I really like the British cover better, so I posted it above as well.