Unfortunately, this was not the book for me. I loved We Were Liars and was so excited to read Again Again, but I had a hard time connecting with the characters. I would love to blame it on it being a heavier read during a heavier period of time right now, but I’m not sure. This book takes some brain power and is almost philosophical. It wasn’t my cup of tea, but if it sounds like yours definitely give it a try!

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House Children’s for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

I knew going into this that it would be different. e. lockhart captured my attention with we Were Liars and I thought it was brilliant. It was so simple yet packed such a punch. This book is torture. I think she is trying to demonstrate what runs through a teenage girl’s head as she goes about day-to-day life. Constantly second guessing herself, obsessing over things she said over and over again, falling in love with any boy who shows interest, but mostly just wanting to be seen and loved. She definitely accomplished that with the structure of the book. I remember being a teenage girl with this constant torment. I know I’m not the target audience for this so I can say this without feeling bad - it wasn’t for me.

Well this book has romance, melancholy and is bittersweet, I did not expect this, I expected a story with a lot of love, but there was a lot of diversity. To limit the pain and happiness of people who transmit love, I have no idea to comment on this book, something did not convince me, I suppose because I expected something else. The end can be said to have been good because it explains the events during the course of history. I can say I expected a little more about the story.

I am a huge fan of this author and thoroughly enjoyed We Were Liars. I was excited to read this story as it sounded intriguing especially the part between multiple parallel universes.

However this book fell a bit flat for me, I appreciate the authors writing style especially how the protagonist thinks in more poetic style of writing. (That style is a huge hit with my students recently). I really enjoyed all of the parts with her brother I felt like that was so relatable and something people could connect with.

Although I did not love this book I still would recommend this book to my students and will be buying it for my classroom. Thank you netgalley and publisher for this advanced read. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

I'll be honest, I don't like E. Lockhart's previous books, because her writing style is so lazy, like, "let's break some sentences and made this aesthetic" or "let's use metaphors in the entire book". But with Again Again was different; she wrote a heartful book with a great protagonist and an well-written difficult subplot (multiverses).

‘Again Again’ is a lovely, bittersweet YA novel. It reminded me a little of Josie Silver but for a slightly younger audience. The story revolves around 17-year old Adelaide Buchwald and the summer before her senior year. At the beginning she is getting over a breakup and struggling with her younger brother’s addiction. Alternate realities are presented throughout the book. The device of alternate realities didn’t totally work for me. There were too many variations and they didn’t always make sense. It was difficult to keep them straight. The last part of the story really gripped me. I adored the ending and the growth and healing of the main characters.

Thank you NetGalley and Delacorte Press for providing this ARC

Kreativ, aber nicht komplett überzeugend

„Again again“ ist ein Buch, das sich gleich auf mehrere Arten von vielen anderen Büchern abhebt. Zum einem wird mit der Idee gespielt, dass sich das Leben auf verschiedene Weisen entwickeln kann (im Sinne von parallelen Universen). Das ist definitiv eine faszinierende Grundlage für ein Buch, leider war ich emotional nicht genug in die Geschichte involviert, als dass mich die Ausgestaltung der Idee komplett packen konnte. Zum anderen gibt es im Text regelmäßig Passagen in freier Versform, die wie aus dem Nichts beginnen und auch wieder enden. Mein Lesefluss wurde durch diese Passagen nicht allzu sehr gestört, richtig rund war er aber auch nicht.

Die Autorin hat sich mit dem Buch so einiges getraut und ich kann mir gut vorstellen, dass man von der Geschichte entweder absolut fasziniert und begeistert ist oder mit ihr nichts anfangen kann. Meine Bewertung liegt irgendwo dazwischen. Ich bewerte es im Nachhinein als eine Bereicherung, das Buch gelesen zu haben, ich kann aber nicht sagen, dass mich die Geschichte und vor allem die Dialoge vollends überzeugt haben. Daher bekommt das Buch von mir drei Sterne.

Vor dem Kauf würde ich auf jeden Fall empfehlen, in eine Leseprobe zu schauen. Ihr solltet schon nach wenigen Seiten merken, ob ihr mit den Verseinschüben zurecht kommt oder nicht.

DNF. The concept was interesting, but the writing was too lyrical for me to get into. I also didn't like seeing the different ways the interaction may go one after another. Just wasn't the book for me!

This was unlike any book I’ve read. The style was so compelling. The last part of the book made me equally happy and sad.

Noooo :( I had such high hopes for this one! We Were Liars is one of my all time favorite books. I think trying to make other books live up to it is just asking too much. This one was different in many aspects and really should never even be considered to compare to WWL. The book has parts where you can see the main character act a scene out in a few different ways to see the possible outcomes. This was just too much for me. There was no telling when it would happen or how many different outcomes you would read about, and they just didn’t make sense...it’s an interesting concept but it ruined the book for me. Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for my ecopy for my review.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review.

Adelaide Buchwald is a girl who is apparently happy, in her boarding school, with a perfect boyfriend, but the reality is really different. The book starts with her being dumped by her boyfriend, spending her time walking dogs during the summer. She's struggling with her thoughts, feelings and issues about herself, her life and her worries for her brother, who is sick and taken care by their mother, while she stays with her father, a teacher at the Alabaster Prep school, where the two of them live.
The summer is the turning point of her life, pushing Adelaide to face her problems, secrets and ideas, falling in and out of love so many times, again and again.

Again again is a book about love, connections, family, sibling, a bit melancholic and intense, with a stubborn heroine and a peculiar plot.
I liked this book, but I was a bit bothered by the writing style, because, sometimes, the story was in verse:
"Survived.
She wanted to see all his scars, see all of him, and she felt
suddenly,
intensely,
certain
that he was the safe person to show her own scars too".

A peculiar style I didn't like so much. Overall Again again is a nice book, pushing the reader to think about what he/she/they would do if there was a chance to life his/her/their life again.

"If you could live your life again and again, what would you do differently?"

In 2014, E. Lockhart delighted my students with We Were Liars--this book was always checked out in the library and my personal classroom library. Three years later, my students devoured Genuine Fraud. Even though school is out for Lockhart's new release Again Again, I can't wait to get back to school (hopefully!) and share with my students.

Adelaide Buchwald has just encountered two life changing situations. Her brother Toby is in rehab for the second time for his drug addiction, and Mikey Double L has broken up with her. Now, one of those is definitely more important than the other, but we are talking about a teenage girl here. Adelaide feels like she's lost her brother even though he seems to be doing better. While Toby lives with their mom as he recovers, Adelaide lives with her father who is a professor at Adelaide's academy.

While Adelaide adjusts to her very recent breakup, she meets Jack whom she actually met before in Boston on a rooftop during a party in which he wrote a little poem for her. Seeing Jack again in a different state seems like fate, and Adelaide falls head over heels in love. In fact, Adelaide has her own addiction problem when it comes to love and relationships, and like most people, she just wants someone to love her back.

Told in a style that only Lockhart can accomplish, a mix of poetry, prose, text messages, and script, Again Again asks the reader to re-evaluate what is important in life, what addictions we may have within our lives, and we cope with love and loss. And in true Lockhart fashion, there are twists and turns that leave you turning pages so fast you have to go back and see what you missed.

i have never read anything by this author but it def was a fun read. it gave me different perspective to young adult books. it is a book about Adelaide where we see along the main plot her story played out in a different universe about what might have happened, what could have hapened, what never did, if she had made other choices. interesting book.

I'm a huge E. Lockhart fan, and this newest one didn't disappoint. She takes what seems to be an ordinary, though beautifully written, YA romance and spins it into a literary exploration of the diverging pathways of the heart. I love that the sibling relationship between Toby and Adelaide is really at the center of this story as it unfolds--it's not something we see enough of in YA lit, and it's explored with the nuance and sensitivity it deserves.

I absolutely adored the writing style--the use of line breaks when there's heightened tension added a lovely poetic slant.

I haven't stopped thinking about this book since I finished it last week. I absolutely adored it.

Adelaide is grieving. She is grieving the loss of her year-long relationship with Mikey Double L that she thought was going so well. She is grieving the younger brother she knew before he was an addict. And she is grieving the loss of her home in Baltimore now that she must stay at Alabaster for the whole summer to pass a class and not get kicked out. What she doesn’t expect to happen during her grieving is to meet someone new while walking dogs and fall in love in multiple parallel universes.

This book is definitely not for everyone but I loved it. The jumps to different parallel universes were unique but I could see how they could change the reading experience for some. It was a little confusing at first, but you get used to it, and then it’s like you are reading about three different Adelaides with three different personalities, yet each storyline provides more information about Adelaide in the main timeline. I felt the parallel universes exactly capture what young love feels like. There are so many times you wish you had said or done something differently and Again, Again explores that. I will say that I recommend reading this in as close to one sitting as possible though or sometimes it can be confusing to remember which events happened in which timeline.

E. Lockhart is a really interesting writer, and I like that she tries something different with each book. At first, Again Again seems similar to Lockhart's Ruby Oliver series, which is about the romantic tribulations of a teen girl at an exclusive private school. But it quickly turns into something different.

Adelaide Buchwald is spending the summer after her junior year in the small town where she goes to boarding school, living with her father (a teacher at the school) and taking care of five dogs as her summer job. Her boyfriend has just dumped her, and she's on academic probation and has to finish a big project over the summer so she doesn't fail out. Her family life is strained because of her younger brother's addiction to opioids. When she meets a cute guy, it seems like the perfect summer romance to take her mind off her problems. Or maybe not.

Again Again explores the idea that there are parallel worlds, where the same event might have different consequences. We see Adelaide meet a guy, have a summer romance, blow the romance, and meet someone else. She shuts her brother Toby out, or she comes to terms with him and they repair their fractured relationship. In another life, Toby doesn't become an addict.

The thing I liked best about this book is that it really captures the transitory nature of teen romance. Adelaide has an ex she's pining for and at least two possible new love interests, but it's basically a given that the relationships aren't forever. So many romances in YA are all consuming, and Again Again's treatment of romance felt more much more realistic.

This is such a beautiful story. It is also quite different from anything E. Lockhart has put out in the past. It’s a story about multiverses and how our choices can vastly impact our paths. It sort of gives off a feeling of melancholy. It makes you take a deeper look into what is and what could’ve been. Some happy outcomes and some not so happy ones. This a book that makes you think and is also a little hard to explain. So I’ll just say, I would recommend this to anyone but I’m not sure if it’s for everyone.

I just wrote a very long review for this book and then proceeded to accidentally delete it, so I’m a little frustrated and am now just going to write a brief summary of what I’d previously written.

The multiple different timelines was an interesting concept. I liked that we didn’t have to follow specific timelines all the way through the story. Instead, we just saw a glimpse of the possibilities that are out there.

Lockhart sets up this book like it’s going to be an Adelaide/Jack love story, but it’s really not. It’s about Adelaide coming to terms with her brother’s addiction. I thought their story was really heartbreaking, but ultimately hopeful. Something I especially like is that this is coming from the perspective of an older sibling having to watch their younger sibling go through it. I think a lot of books are about a younger sibling watching an older sibling become an addict. Adelaide is protective of her brother and doesn’t really know what to do with those feelings if he’s doing this to himself in some ways.

Adelaide as a character was okay. I thought she was a little weird and not entirely realistic, but I did think she was sympathetic. Other characters didn’t feel fully fleshed out and I wish we’d gotten more time with her parents or from their perspective.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. I thought it was a fresh and original take on alternate timelines. I didn’t think there was a ton of closure at the end, but I felt okay with that.

Overall Rating: 4
Language: Mild
Violence: Mild
Smoking/Drinking: Moderate
Sexual Content: Mild

Note: I received this book free from NetGally in exchange for an honest review.

Again, Again follows Adelaide, a high school girl who is working as a dog walker for the summer. She is going through a break up while also discovering dating again and at the same time her brother is struggling as a recovering addict.

Throughout the story, there are different realities and "what if" situations that happen as if she was living in a multi-verse where there are several ways that things could play out. You see that something as small as saying a different sentence could change the path you're on and give you another outcome in life.

This book was hard to get into at first, because you have to get used to the writing style and how the story is set up. After the first few chapters, I was invested in the relationship between Adelaide and her brother. It was heartbreaking at times, and made me smile at times too. I wish that the book had focused solely on the sibling storyline and left out Adelaide's love life, because I really enjoyed reading about Adelaide and her brother's relationship but didn't care about her love life.

While this book wasn't my favorite, it was an original idea that I haven't seen done in YA. I'll definitely check out another book by E. Lockhart in the future!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the e-arc!

Every time this book started to grab my attention, it would veer off into an alternate reality. It was confusing and prohibited me from becoming engrossed with the story leaving me feeling unsatisfied.