romance – Page 9 – Down the Rabbit Hole

They Both Die at the End meets The Butterfly Effect in this YA novel by Joan F. Smith, where a teen uses her gift of foreknowledge to help a lifeguard save a drowning man―only to discover that her actions have suddenly put his life at risk.

It was supposed to be an ordinary day at the pool, but when lifeguard Nick hesitates during a save,
seventeen-year-old December uses her gift of foreknowledge to rescue the drowning man instead. The action comes at a cost. Not only will Nick and December fall in love, but also, she envisions that his own life is now at risk. The other problem? They’re basically strangers.

December embarks on a mission to save Nick’s life, and to experience what it feels like to fall in love―something she’d formerly known she’d never do. Nick, battling the shame of screwing up the rescue when he’s heralded as a community hero, resolves to make up for his inaction by doing December a major solid and searching for her mother, who went missing nine years ago.

As they grow closer, December’s gift starts playing tricks, and Nick’s family gets closer to an ugly truth about him. They both must learn what it really means to be a hero before time runs out.

Overall Recommendations:

The Other Side of Infinity packs a punch while also drawing a more reflective side in its readers. Following an intriguing protagonist who knows everything, past and future, I loved learning how December sees the world while also figuring out what happened to her mother, the one thing she didn’t know. Balancing both complexities in character with an underlying plot driving the story, there’s something about this book that stays with you long after the final page is turned. A definite must read!

**The Other Side of Infinity comes out April 25, 2023**

Thank you SparkPoint Studio for this copy in exchange for an honest review

What would you do if you knew everything that has happened, and everything that has yet to pass? Do you let these events occur as you know it will, or do you wish you could be more than just a passive observer, especially for bad events?

That’s something that was super interesting about our omniscient protagonist, December. All her life she knew what has happened to other people, both present and past, as well as events directly related to her. Knowing something will happen is largely different from feeling what it would be like in that moment when it is about to happen. And that is how December finds herself changing events by her interactions with Nick.

Before I dive more into Nick and December’s story, I just want to say that Joan made such an interesting analogy about December’s ability. It’s hard to understand from her perspective otherwise, but comparing each memory or event to a gumball in a large jar was super helpful. December just happens to have access to more than only her own past gumballs, but also everyone’s that she can mentally search through if she wanted. I love that analogy and it made December’s POV very enjoyable to read.

The storyline with Nick was what I anticipated. The only reason why this isn’t a 5 star read is the rapidness of their growing relationship. When December knows they’re going to fall in love and Nick just fell super hard super quickly, it doesn’t leave us much room to allow feelings to grow organically with these two at the pace they did. However, I did end up loving their relationship and how they each tried to help the other in their own way.

There is one major plot line focused on each of them. Nick’s guilty conscience as a hero when he might not have deserved all that praise alone took perhaps too much page time, especially the lead up to the big reveal for whatever event in his past that further aggravated his feelings of guilt in the present. I feel more time could’ve been given instead to December’s missing mother, the big Blank Spot among her gumballs of knowledge. What happened to her and why is anything related to her disappearance missing in her ability? I didn’t feel this wasn’t focused nearly as much, and the resolution left me yearning for more.

That being said, I don’t want to give away anything more, but I will add that I enjoyed the ending. I thought it was fairly predictable – if you know other books and what this one is being compared to – but I thought it was perhaps a lovely way of bringing this book to an end. Do I wish for more? Sure. It felt a bit rushed and abrupt at the end with no real build up to this climactic peak, but perhaps that’s just how things were meant to be.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book when I first jumped into it, but I can say it was hard to put down and I’m still processing all of my feelings now that I’m done. I fervently hope you give this book a chance when it comes out! It just may surprise you like it did for me.

2.5 star, YA

ARC Review: Someone Is Always Watching by Kelley Armstrong

April 6, 2023April 5, 2023 Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

Blythe and her friends—Gabrielle, and brother and sister Tucker and Tanya—have always been a tight friend group, attending a local high school and falling in and out of love with each other. But an act of violence has caused a rift between Blythe and Tucker . . . and unexpected bursts of aggression and disturbing nightmares have started to become more frequent in their lives.

The strange happenings culminate in a shocking event at school: Gabrielle is found covered in blood in front of their deceased principal, with no memory of what happened.

Cracks in their friendship, as well as in their own memories, start appearing, threatening to expose long-forgotten secrets which could change the group’s lives forever. How can Blythe and her friends trust each other when they can’t even trust their own memories?

Overall Recommendation:

Someone Is Always Watching is more of a dystopian than a mystery as we dig into the secrets buried inside of a group of teenagers who start noticing disturbing behaviour among themselves. It’s different than what I would have thought the story would be about initially. While that’s not inherently a bad thing, I didn’t connect well with any of the characters, and the overall mystery was less central to the plot than expected. I think the world of Kelley Armstrong but this wasn’t among my favourites from her.

**Someone Is Always Watching comes out April 11, 2023**

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review

I’ve been a Kelley Armstrong fan for a long time now, having the pleasure of meeting her when I was in high school when she started writing YA novels. With that said, I thought I had a fairly good understanding of her writing styles and genres.

This book changed things. And I’m not entirely certain how I feel about it even after waiting a little while to write this review.

We follow mainly one girl, Blythe, in this story, but we’re immediately immersed in this friend group that grew up together in a small town due to their families’ connections to the organization that employs them all. I’m not sure about you, but immediately that raises all sorts of red flags in my head. Perhaps I’ve read far too many dystopians, but this is precisely more the genre this book lands in than the mystery of what is happening with these teenagers.

I won’t say that the “mystery” relating to what’s been going with Blythe and friends, their loss of memory of strange occurrences and direct involvement in suspicious deaths/behaviors, was all too hard to guess. The only thing that may have took me slightly by surprise is the identity of who has been leaving Blythe cryptic messages about her and the others’ past. It definitely got more predictable as the story went along but that was one intriguing aspect of the story.

For a shorter length book, the pacing did leave me wanting more. It wasn’t as suspenseful as I had hoped because the mystery wasn’t all too hard to predict. But what makes a book beyond its plot are the characters, especially if the plot didn’t drive the story as much as one would expect. Would I say the characters were beloved in any way then? No, unfortunately I really can’t.

Right off the bat we are introduced to Blythe and Tucker, their younger selves, as individuals with a darker side who wants to cause a little destruction. Fast forward to their older selves, Blythe has tried hard to rein in her darker side and Tucker has a reputation for being dangerous, even from the grown ups around him. I’m all for having well-rounded morally gray characters but it was hard to find the sides of Blythe and Tucker to love.

The others in the friend group we follow sometimes but not in depth. Tanya doesn’t display much emotion, and is even characterized to have sociopathic tendencies. The only person she can fathom loving is her brother, Tucker. Sure, that’s great at least, but doesn’t inspire me to want to know her better. Gabrielle was the first one of them to display a loss of control and acting erratically so knowing her normal self wasn’t really something that was explored.

Then it seemed that a romance was being pushed between Blythe and Tucker. I’m sorry, but this forbidden relationship felt too forced in some ways. Sure, they may have both loved one another since they were young but could not be together because Tucker was “dangerous”. However, making their love more of a central piece of the story didn’t make one difference to me. So much of the focus was on what is currently happening to them and their search for the truth that having this romance appear felt disconcerting. I love romances in stories but this was more of an add-on. And all I could feel was apathy.

All this being said, I love Kelley’s stories regardless of my lack of enthusiasm for this one. Perhaps my expectation coming in was for the mystery to be more central and shocking. If you’re new to Kelley’s writings, I will say you should come in open minded, and this book is just one among the breadth of her stories in the YA sphere.

3 star, YA

ARC Review: Begin Again by Emma Lord

January 23, 2023January 23, 2023 Andge @ Down the Rabbit Hole

As usual, Andie Rose has a plan: Transfer from community college to the hyper competitive Blue Ridge State, major in psychology, and maintain her lifelong goal of becoming an iconic self-help figure despite the nerves that have recently thrown her for a loop. All it will take is ruthless organization, hard work, and her trademark unrelenting enthusiasm to pull it all together.

But the moment Andie arrives, the rest of her plans go off the rails. Her rocky relationship with her boyfriend Connor only gets more complicated when she discovers he transferred out of Blue Ridge to her community college. Her roommate Shay needs a major, and despite Andie’s impressive track record of being The Fixer, she’s stumped on how to help. And Milo, her coffee-guzzling grump of an R.A. with seafoam green eyes, is somehow disrupting all her ideas about love and relationships one sleep-deprived wisecrack at a time.

But sometimes, when all your plans are in rubble at your feet, you find out what you’re made of. And when Andie starts to find the power of her voice as the anonymous Squire on the school’s legendary pirate radio station–the same one her mom founded, years before she passed away–Andie learns that not all the best laid plans are necessarily the right ones.

Filled with a friend group that feels like family, an empowering journey of finding your own way, and a Just Kiss Already! romance, Begin Again is an unforgettable novel of love and starting again.

Overall Recommendation:

As college stories go with a coming-of-age trope, Begin Again made itself unique with its fun, personable characters that feel like your friends and an intriguing ribbon hunt organized for freshmans in their second term only. It made me reminiscent of my own college days (though with not quite so much drama). I thought the themes and message were great, but the pacing sometimes was a little slow to the point it became a struggle to push to the end. Otherwise, a solid book by Emma Lord although not what I consider her finest.

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