4.5 star – Page 3 – Down the Rabbit Hole

Perfect for fans of They Both Die at the End and You’ve Reached Sam, this gripping, atmospheric YA novel follows a teen with a mysterious condition that transports her to the past when she smells certain scents linked to specific memories.

Seventeen-year-old Aimee Roh has Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, a rare condition that causes her to time travel to a moment in her life when she smells something linked to that memory. Her dad is convinced she’ll simply grow out of it if she tries hard enough, but Aimee’s fear of vanishing at random has kept her from living a normal life.

When Aimee disappears for nine hours into a memory of her estranged mom–a moment Aimee has never remembered before–she becomes distraught. Not only was this her longest disappearance yet, but the memory doesn’t match up with the story of how her mom left–at least, not the version she’s always heard from her dad.

Desperate for answers, Aimee travels to Korea, where she unravels the mystery of her memories, the truth about her mother, and the reason she keeps returning to certain moments in her life. Along the way, she realizes she’ll need to reconcile her past in order to save her present.

From acclaimed author Sarah Suk comes an aching, powerful exploration of memory, grief, and the painful silences we must overcome to discover our truest selves.

Overall Recommendation:

The Space Between Here & Now delivered a capturing story about a girl’s journey in finding her mom, and in the process, finding herself. I love the themes of grief tied into memory as Aimee tackles the abandonment from her mother years later. Mixed with Asian elements woven throughout the novel as Aimee travelled back to Korea to explore her parents’ roots, this book captivated me from the start as I too yearned to learn more about Aimee’s time warp condition and her mother’s disappearance. A definitely recommendation!

You know how smell seems to always be the most powerful thing to instantly draw you back to a particular memory? I love that, being the nostalgic person that I am, but imagine this happening physically. All the time. Aimee suffers from a rare condition, Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, that transports her back into her memories at the most inopportune times when her particular sense, smell, is triggered to an associated memory.

In the same vein as If You Could See the Sun and The Other Side of Infinity, I thought this fictional syndrome was super interesting, and it never felt like just a prop to make this book more intriguing. We dive deep into what the condition entails (little is known but it varies from person to person and dependent on the sense), the people struggling to live in a world trying to avoid particular trigger senses (how awful!), and how this impacts the relationships of those suffering from such a condition.

The characters were absolutely superb. I adored Aimee as a protagonist. She felt very real as she tried navigating this condition that seemed to be triggered more often lately. Her father didn’t want her to go to therapy or additional support groups like an Asian parent may react. So how can she tough it out by herself when being in these memories were happening more frequently and taking up longer time? Her reactions and struggles just made me empathize so much for her, and it made sense she’d yearn for her mom when her dad was just a husk in the home.

The major arcing storyline was Aimee’s search for her mom who had one day just left them when she was a kid. This took her to Korea to learn more about where her mom came from in the hopes that it’d lead her to her mom in the present day. I felt this underlying plot really kept me flipping the pages as I was just as desperate as Aimee to find her mom. Did she know more about her condition? Would she be more sympathetic than her dad? Being in Korea was a plus and I absolutely loved the setting, though it never overshadowed the emotional depth to the story.

My favourite part is definitely the way Sarah Suk looked at grief and memory. Even though her mom wasn’t dead, parental abandonment sometimes hurts more because it seems like an intentional choice to leave. With the memories Aimee kept going back to somehow connected with her mom, it’s clear the years passing hadn’t helped with closure. Things didn’t happen in the way I had anticipated it would, and in that way, I enjoyed the story more. I don’t want to give away too many details so I’ll leave it at that.

There was a romantic element to this book too, but it really played more of a supporting role. He was a great help in Korea while Aimee traced her mom’s path, but he never grew larger than the arcing story about Aimee’s past and her condition. I find it refreshing that romance can have its time and place in stories without overshadowing the main plot. It’s sometimes rarer these days as audiences grow more hungry for heavy romantic subplots.

Overall, this book touched me deeply in its exploration of memory and familial relationships. It was quite different from Sarah’s first novel, but I absolutely love the direction she’s going with and cannot wait to read more from her!

4.5 star

Review: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

November 8, 2023November 8, 2023 Fives @ Down The Rabbit Hole

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.

A flying demon feeding on human energies.

A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.

And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.

The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.

She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.

This was one suggested by a friend, whom I had never taken a suggestion from previously. I’m glad I was sold by their description of this book though, because it was truly a good one! Based on the story of King Arthur, it is not a retelling, but it is definitely based on that old mythology and story. I was always a mythology buff, so this one already had a great start in my eyes.

Legendborn revolves around our protagonist, Brianna “Bree” Matthews, who is just beginning to attend her specialized program at “pre-college,” after a tragic accident resulting in the death of her mother. However, not all is as it seems at this school, when Bree realizes she can see things other people can’t seem to, and she is quickly dragged into a secret society world, a little bit reminiscent of Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House. I always like a school-related world building magic world, and this one did not fall short for me either.

Continue reading →

4.5 star, adult

Review: The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

October 30, 2023October 29, 2023 Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

Sometimes, the worst day of your life happens, and you have to figure out how to live after it.

So Clementine forms a plan to keep her heart safe: stay busy, work hard, find someone decent to love, and try to remember to chase the moon. The last one is silly and obviously metaphorical, but her aunt always told her that you needed at least one big dream to keep going. And for the last year, that plan has gone off without a hitch. Mostly. The love part is hard because she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone—she isn’t sure her heart can take it.

And then she finds a strange man standing in the kitchen of her late aunt’s apartment. A man with kind eyes and a Southern drawl and a taste for lemon pies. The kind of man that, before it all, she would’ve fallen head-over-heels for. And she might again.

Except, he exists in the past. Seven years ago, to be exact. And she, quite literally, lives seven years in his future.

Her aunt always said the apartment was a pinch in time, a place where moments blended together like watercolors. And Clementine knows that if she lets her heart fall, she’ll be doomed.

After all, love is never a matter of time—but a matter of timing.

Overall Recommendation:

A beautiful story about an apartment that slips through time when the people visiting are at crossroads in life, The Seven Year Slip continues to show how Ashley Poston shines in this genre. While setting up the story took a little time, once Iwan and Clementine met in this apartment, the tale of heartbreak, grief and love across time really took off. I loved how all of these topics were dealt with and came to love the protagonists and their journey so much! A definite must read if you loved Ashley’s previous works.

Continue reading →