Reviewed
by: ?wazithinkin
Genre: Young
Adult/ Time Travel/ Paranormal
Availability
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Author:
“Mia Grace lives in rural Vermont and works as a consumer
advocate and educator in New Hampshire. When she’s not hiding away in her
writer’s garret, she can be found enjoying her boisterous extended family, her
menagerie of dogs, cats, and laying hens, and her perennial flower gardens.”
To learn more about Ms. Grace please check out herwebsite.
Description:
“When the past and the present collide…
Hailey Kent knows how she wants to spend the summer before
her junior year in high school: hanging out at the pool with Jenna, her BFF;
riding her new trail bike on Vermont’s country roads; and flirting with Jenna’s
hot older brother, Cody.
Hailey’s plans are shattered when a post-graduation
accident puts her brother into a coma. Feeling guilty for not stopping him from
going out that night, she seeks solace in exploring an old house and its
overgrown gardens.
A mysterious correlation of events propels her back in
time to the Vietnam War era, where she realizes she can use her knowledge of one
boy’s fate to save his life. But first, Hailey needs to convince him of her
sanity.”
Appraisal:
Hailey Kent and Jenna Wells are pretty much typical teenaged best
friends. Hailey is brooding at the moment because her sixteenth birthday
happened to fall on her older brother David’s high school graduation day, so
she is not the center of attention. Then a tragic car accident happens and her
brother’s life hangs in the balance. The whole Kent family’s life is turned
upside down. Hailey is dealing with depression and the pressures of an unknown
future.
Jenna, whose brother was driving the car, tries to occupy Hailey’s
mind with a distraction that has recently become an obsession of her own. Cleaning
up around an old abandoned house that used to belong to her grandmother’s first
love. Hailey is not thrilled with this project but goes along with her friend
because she has nothing better to occupy her time. She finds herself
surprisingly invested in the house’s history and the people who lived there.
The first part of the story is very slow moving and I had a hard time
keeping interested in the story, which is mostly a set up for the second half
of the book. I liked the characters, and the story is laid out well, they just
didn’t draw me in. I have a problem investing myself in sad stories and all the
themes in the first half of the book are sad. However, if you hang in there,
the pay-off is in the second half of the story. The change is abrupt and it
took a while to understand what was going on. Everything has changed, no one is
the same as they were in the first half of the book.
It was interesting to see the interconnectedness of our lives and how
we can affect the lives of others who are not even close to us. The ripple
effect that we can and do cause with our actions and thoughts is a bit
mind-boggling. I found it fascinating how Ms. Grace managed to weave this story
into such a believable reality. This is a thought provoking book that I ended
up enjoying a lot more than I thought I would in the beginning.
FYI:
I viewed this story as more of a series of paranormal events rather
than a science fiction story. Perhaps that is just me, I prefer paranormal to
sci-fi.
Format/Typo
Issues:
I noticed no issues with editing or formatting.
Rating:
**** Four Stars
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