A side note: Doesn't that look like Keira Knightly on the cover?
An amazon summary to begin, "Anna and Bennett were never supposed to meet: she lives in 1995 Chicago and he lives in 2012 San Francisco. But Bennett’s unique ability to travel through time and space brings him into Anna’s life, and with him, a new world of adventure and possibility. As their relationship deepens, they face the reality that time might knock Bennett back where he belongs, even as a devastating crisis throws everything they believe into question. Against a ticking clock, Anna and Bennett are forced to ask themselves how far they can push the bounds of fate—and what consequences they can bear in order to stay together.
Fresh, exciting, and deeply romantic, Time Between Us is a stunning and spellbinding debut from an extraordinary new talent in YA fiction.
"A beautifully written, unique love story." --Melissa Marr, New York Times best-selling author of The Wicked Lovelyseries " AMAZON LINK OF JUSTICE
I'm just going to ignore the summary because what the heck. What the heck.
Anna has a nice life in 1995; she likes to run, she loves music, she loves to think about traveling (although her traveling experience is very minimal), and she likes to read, about traveling. Maybe other things, but that didn't come across in the book (yes, I will nitpick about that a little bit). Anyways, the important bit is that Anna loves to run and dream about traveling.
One morning she's at the track running to keep up for cross country season when she comes around for another lap and there happens to be a guy sitting in the bleachers with a black parka on. When she finally just stares at him, she gets a tentative smile, and she quickly looks away. When she looks back, he's just gone. Bewildered, she hops up the steps to the bleachers and sees the imprints in the snow where he was sitting, but no prints leading away from his spot. Trippy.
The next day, her best friend Emma picks her up for school where she happily announces that there will be a new student. It turns out that the new student looks exactly like Anna's guy from the bleachers, but he acts like he's never met her before. Once they're introduced and he's asked about the track/bleachers incident, he gets a little cold, but after finding out her name is Anna, he gets rigidly frigid towards her.
Anna is basically all, "What the heck, moving on with my life but still slightly curious about him," and begin a romantic adventure set in 1995.
There were a lot of ups and downs with this book and a few moments where I was very skeptical of what was happening, but it pulled through for itself in the end.
Something I really liked about the book was that Anna wasn't perfect, she wasn't annoying, she seemed like a very real person: a perfect blend of flawless and faulty. There were times where she handled things well and times she freaked the heck out. All of the 'side characters' were well done and consistent with their personalities.
However, as much as I enjoyed this little romantic trip around Anna and Bennett, I don't want to see more of them. I want to let the ending be what it was, and that be that.
There were some segments that took place in far off places that I have no idea what they're like and can't really imagine where they are (geographically impaired here). How the author described them was clear enough that I didn't wonder where they were on the globe necessarily, but more of what the place was like. What the culture was like there, and how they dealt with the people they ran into.
There romance came off very believable, even with the time traveling quirkiness thrown in. There were a few times where I felt like it was slightly like The Time Traveler's Wife, but I think the book managed to pull itself away from that for the most part. The concept of a time traveler being in romantic relations is always going to be very challenging to not have it compared to anything else that is remotely similar to it.
Overall, this was still a romance story, a kind of 'finding yourself' story, and as such, it wasn't anything spectacular, but that doesn't mean it wasn't good.
The book seemed to drag slightly for me, but I would like to chalk that up to my life currently being intensely busy more than any fault of the book itself.
A minor quibble and SPOILER LAND moment: The absurdly small amount of drama created between Justin (Anna's childhood friend) and Emma (Anna's best friend) going on dates and whether Anna was okay with it or not (Justin likes Anna and asked Emma out though) seemed really rushed and poorly put together. There didn't seem to be enough emphasis on it to matter. There was one moment where it was more of a lesson to Anna and a frightening dramatic moment for Justin, but that was about it. Just kind of a healthy, 'Beware of consequences/messing with time' moment.
Happy reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment