So I have to admit I have a love/hate relationship with E. Lockhart books. I really didn't like We Were Liars, man I was so mad at the end of that book! But I did feel like it hooked me and it had really great writing.
I did really enjoy this book. It was a little confusing at points with it being a multi-layered novel. But I think that how it is told from a different perspective really draws you in. A thoughtful book about longing, forgiveness, and family, while trying to find love. It was a quick read that I think a bunch of my teens will like.

Well, I have so many feelings! For the beginning few chapters, I found myself very confused. There were things I loved, and there were things I didn't enjoy about this book. This review will contain spoilers!

I loved the ending - with the lack of multiverses throughout, it was more fun to read. It was a little jarring to all of a sudden have a whole new version at the end, but I enjoyed the characters so much during the final storyline. I think I would've preferred reading different versions of the whole story like that then in bits and pieces.

I also loved her brother. He felt like the only believable character. I kind of wish I could just read a book about him. He had genuine emotions and feelings, and her responses were lame (I know she explains this, but still).

I couldn't handle the text messages. Hopefully it was just because it is an uncorrected proof, but wow that format was confusing.

Overall, I think this book will appeal to a specific group of readers - people who like books that make you think and are different than the norm.

A sort of alternate, somewhat less expansive/extensive with possibilities, but also tighter and more personal Jane, Unlimited. There are also certain similarities to The Last True Poets of the Sea. I like all of these books for their inventiveness and riskiness, each in their own way, with the tried-and-tested "young-adult romance" genre—though each also has its own unique weaknesses.

I couldn't put this book down and read it in one sitting, but was left a little underwhelmed. I've never read a book in this style before, and was really intrigued by it.

I really enjoyed this book. I was afraid it was going to be confusing with all the alternate possibilities/conversations, but I was able to follow the story well. I felt like I really got to know Adelaide and deeply felt her fears and frustrations with her brother. This is the first YA books I've read that dealt with opioid addiction. It's an extremely timely and important topic to address.

E. you have got to stop doing this to me!

I only have the one heart! You can only fill it to the brim and then break it so many times before I drop dead!

The concept of the multiverse is a very, very hard one to nail in fiction.

(Please see my review of Blake Crouch's enormously awful attempt in "Dark Matter" for more on how easy it is to screw this up).

It turns out simplicity and truth are the key.

Adelaide is a teenage girl about to start her senior year at a pretty prestigious private school that she attends because her dad is the new English literature teacher there. Well, she'll be starting her senior year if she doesn't flunk out. As the book, and her summer, begin she's got one chance left to create a set model for her theater design class in order to pass or she'll be looking for a new school come fall. To add insult to injury her boyfriend has just broken up with her and later dayed it out to Peurto Rico. Then there's the matter of her brother who is battling an incredibly serious illness.

Adelaide has a lot on her plate in other words and any number of things could happen to disrupt the tenuous, taught tight rope she's currently walking on.

What better subject then a teenage girl to explore the endless possibilities of the multi-verse with? Its that time in your life when all you do is consider the possibilities, what will happen if you do or don't talk to that boy, finish that project, say what you really mean when your mom asks how you are? Everything that happens to you is the most heart breaking, monumental, earth shattering, life changing thing that has ever happened in the whole history of the universe.

E. Lockhart is also the perfect author to take on this kind of story. She is an absolute master of what I'm coming to think of as "a touch of strange." Her stories are incredibly grounded, her characters are very real people. But she manages to infuse her world's with just a bit of magic, enough to make it seem like it could be real. She takes Adelaides moments of indecision or tragedy or romantic hope and branches them out to give the reader multiple stories that somehow blend seamless together into one larger one.

This isn't some hamhanded soap opera where you're constantly re-reading the same scenes over and over again. Its more like watching the waves come in while you sit on the beach. This wave comes up high enough to wipe away your sand castle, this one doesn't, this one comes all the way up and soaks your towel. Adelaide texts with a boy she likes and we see three quick versions of the conversation, each one totally believable and likely. She tries to show her project to her teacher, three different teachers respond to it in three different, totally viable ways. There's no transition between moments but it never feels stilted or stumbly.

You start to realize how even the smallest of changes completing reframes the story but its hard to pinpoint exactly what happens to make things turn out differently becomes Adelaide herself stays fundamentally the same. She comes to certain realizations at different times but grows in the same organic, believable way. In some versions of her story she's a bit more sympathetic, more likable. In some she's clingy and insecure and harder to like.

I wish books like this had been around when I was a green girl with so many feelings and hopes and needs and angry neediness. This is a total treasure, as I'm beginning to realize all E. Lockhart's books are.

#AgainAgain
#MustReadYa2020
I really enjoyed this book it is a multi-layered novel that is told from a different perspective. A thoughtful book about longing, forgiveness, and family while trying to find love.

Sometimes I liked this format, other times it felt inconsistent and a bit...spongy. Most of the people were pretty unlikable, but I always say that when there are dogs to compare them with.