Beautifully woven story with complicated morals
Maria is about to give birth to her third child. She is exhausted and overworked and she kind of hates her life. She thinks of what life would be without her children, how much further in her career she could be. And then she wakes up in the body of her seventeen year old self and all she wants to do is get back to her family. She has been sent back in time, her mind sent into her past self’s body, in order to do something, to save someone. Maria has to decide if she wants to save that person and die in the future, or not save that person and return to her life. Could she live with herself if she did nothing? Is her future family something worth preserving, over the life of this other person?
This book is filled with twists, expected and unexpected, with everything set up in the first four chapters, urging me to keep reading. I read the whole thing in one sitting! I didn’t know what Maria was going to do until she did it. Her thoughts seemed to skew in both directions for different reasons. The layers of the story are so well crafted, the character’s stories weaving in and out of one another in a lovely tale of fate, past lives, and love.
Much of Maria’s time in the past is spent in a psychiatric hospital, which is honestly a different take than I expected, but is totally valid. If a person legitimately traveled back in time and claimed to have done so, they would be thought to be crazy, to need help. Thankfully, Maria carries future secrets with her, things she can use to prove that she’s from the future. She thinks longingly of her children and husband and what they had together, promising herself that she will be the best mother, the best wife, if only she can return to them.
Surprisingly, there are others like Maria, others that are even sent back to the same place and point in time. People who can help her understand what has happened and who carry those same secrets that only a person from the future can know. I liked this layer of believability; there wasn’t a piece of me that thought that the other person was lying in order to take advantage of Maria, to hurt her or trick her. I really loved this because it made it all too obvious that Maria had really traveled to the past and that she wasn’t just experiencing some elaborate hallucination.
Time passed quickly while Maria was committed, glancing over the time that Maria spent in the past. I would have liked this time to be spent with her family, reconnecting with her mom or just enjoying the time she had in the past, as much as she could with such a heavy fate hanging over her head. Instead, she spent a lot of time drugged, locked away in a psychiatric facility. She learned important things there, to be sure, and had time to really think of the possibilities. But still, I would have loved the opportunity to see her parents and past self expanded upon and their relationship fleshed out, especially as Maria’s mother’s death really affected her.
The turns and surprises kept me reading so I could figure out why everything was connected. Maria was a very relatable character, feeling stuck in her life and unaccomplished, as well as guilty for feeling so when she had so much. She gets the chance of a lifetime, to go back, but not for the reasons I first thought and the payoff, no matter what choice she makes, isn’t great. The story is very cohesive and wrapped up well, with extensive and succinct epilogues and chapters after the main event. This is an excellent debut, one that reminds me of some of Jodi Picoult’s better books, with aspects of the podcast, The Bright Sessions, as well as The Time Traveler’s Wife. Anyone who likes those authors will surely love this book, too! Fantasy and science fiction, lite, with more focus on moral choices and doing the right thing, even when it might cost you everything you’ve ever loved. Highly recommend.
This book is filled with twists, expected and unexpected, with everything set up in the first four chapters, urging me to keep reading. I read the whole thing in one sitting! I didn’t know what Maria was going to do until she did it. Her thoughts seemed to skew in both directions for different reasons. The layers of the story are so well crafted, the character’s stories weaving in and out of one another in a lovely tale of fate, past lives, and love.
Much of Maria’s time in the past is spent in a psychiatric hospital, which is honestly a different take than I expected, but is totally valid. If a person legitimately traveled back in time and claimed to have done so, they would be thought to be crazy, to need help. Thankfully, Maria carries future secrets with her, things she can use to prove that she’s from the future. She thinks longingly of her children and husband and what they had together, promising herself that she will be the best mother, the best wife, if only she can return to them.
Surprisingly, there are others like Maria, others that are even sent back to the same place and point in time. People who can help her understand what has happened and who carry those same secrets that only a person from the future can know. I liked this layer of believability; there wasn’t a piece of me that thought that the other person was lying in order to take advantage of Maria, to hurt her or trick her. I really loved this because it made it all too obvious that Maria had really traveled to the past and that she wasn’t just experiencing some elaborate hallucination.
Time passed quickly while Maria was committed, glancing over the time that Maria spent in the past. I would have liked this time to be spent with her family, reconnecting with her mom or just enjoying the time she had in the past, as much as she could with such a heavy fate hanging over her head. Instead, she spent a lot of time drugged, locked away in a psychiatric facility. She learned important things there, to be sure, and had time to really think of the possibilities. But still, I would have loved the opportunity to see her parents and past self expanded upon and their relationship fleshed out, especially as Maria’s mother’s death really affected her.
The turns and surprises kept me reading so I could figure out why everything was connected. Maria was a very relatable character, feeling stuck in her life and unaccomplished, as well as guilty for feeling so when she had so much. She gets the chance of a lifetime, to go back, but not for the reasons I first thought and the payoff, no matter what choice she makes, isn’t great. The story is very cohesive and wrapped up well, with extensive and succinct epilogues and chapters after the main event. This is an excellent debut, one that reminds me of some of Jodi Picoult’s better books, with aspects of the podcast, The Bright Sessions, as well as The Time Traveler’s Wife. Anyone who likes those authors will surely love this book, too! Fantasy and science fiction, lite, with more focus on moral choices and doing the right thing, even when it might cost you everything you’ve ever loved. Highly recommend.