I found this one to be a short but important story, with a time travel twist.


I enjoyed how the author indicates to the reader to think about the inequalities that were faced with, such as with slavery. It was a little confusing to join the dots at times, but it was an interesting read for what it was worth. 


Rating: 3.5/5

I'm a big fan of time travel stories, and this short book is a fun one that blends horror, scifi, YA and urban fantasy. A quick, well-written read.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of Absence in exchange for an honest review.

I honestly don't really know what to think about this one. I'm not saying stories of racism can't be told in shorter form or that every aspect of a book's plot has to be told in the description, but it definitely felt really weird picking up a short book that only mentions its si-fi aspect as:

"She’ll be doing her Algebra homework, or on her way to work at the restaurant, when suddenly she’s in some other time and place, in some other body, and she’s supposed to do something. Help somebody. Fix some problem. But how?"

going "surprise! That someone was Harriet Tubman and now we're in the POV of this modern white girl travelling to the past to feel bad about slavery and racism. I'm sure it was written with good intentions, but it was so jarring and felt like such a weird way to market this kind of story that I think definitely needed more nuance that the less than 200 pages didn't allow.

Really enjoyed this book from Melanie Tem. I've read her before, years ago, and just as good as I remembered. A kind of mismatch of genres, with elements of science fiction and horror. Will need to re-read some of her earlier work. #Absence #NetGalley

The concept of this book sounded super interesting and I feel that it had a lot of potentials, however, it fell completely short in my opinion. I really didn't like it and I had to DNF at 31%, it was a struggle to get that far, I tried to keep going but it just wasn't working for me and my time is better spent on something else.

The main character Casey is a modern teenager but also a time traveller although the hows and why's of that isn't made clear and is very incoherent (hopefully this was explained later on but I didn't get that far) so it just didn't connect with me at all. Her modern self is wholly uninteresting and whiny and the way she speaks about her autistic little brother grated on me so much. His representation was very much a caricature of an autistic child and I didn't appreciate it, I also didn't like how Casey referred to him. Don't include an autistic character if you're not going to at least try and make it non-stereotypical.

I don't even know where to start about her time travelling exploits. She doesn't seem to realise she's time travelling? She's just in the life of someone else and leading that life. The one incident I did read before I gave up was hard to read, it made me so mad. Essentially she goes back to a slave plantation just before the civil war and is the daughter of the plantation owner. The language used to describe the slaves and 'Casey's views on them are horrendous and I know in a historical context, horrible things were said and thought, it wouldn't be realistic if everything was sunshine and rainbows but the language that was used was unnecessary and made my skin crawl and the whole plot reeked of a 'white saviour' complex. 'Casey' whole-heartedly believes her father's slaves are lesser than her and then suddenly with no forethought or build-up she's rescuing a child because of her privilege and apparently she's wonderful. I wanted to scream.

She's then back in her modern time and throwing more shade onto her little brother. Hopefully, this book improved but I couldn't bring myself to find out.

I received this book from the publishers via Netgalley for a review. A great short novel about time travel. Read this in one sitting.