e-Audio, 07:09:08
Narrated by: Shayna Small
Release Date: August 8, 2023
Published by: Disney Audiobooks
Read from: July 30-31, 2023
Stand-alone
Source: Netgalley (I received a copy of this audiobook from Netgalley and the Publisher in exchange for a just and honest review. This did nothing to influence my review.)
TW: Death, Murder
For Readers Interested In: Romance, Time Travel, Magical Realism, Sparkly Covers, YAYou can only hide from your nightmares for so long.
Seventeen-year-old Hylee Williams didn’t ask to disappear. But she did disappear, and not only that, but when she vanished from our world, she materialized in a dark, twisted version of the night that changed her life forever: the night her older brother went missing.
Just as Hylee realizes this moment could be the key to unraveling the truth about her brother, she’s yanked away from the dark place back to our world. Craving a sense of normalcy, she goes to a party with her best friend–where she meets Eilam Roads. Tall, handsome, and undeniably, inexplicably familiar, Hylee can’t help the pull she feels towards him. It’s a classic teen girl-meets-boy situation, until it happens again. She disappears, right in front of him.
Together, Hylee and Eilam investigate the truth about time, space, and reality, with Hylee increasingly convinced her time travel holds the key to saving her brother. But the more they learn, the more Hylee begins to see darkness lurking in her world–and in herself.
Britney S. Lewis’s sophomore novel combines the quotable relatability, swoony romance, and emotional resonance of John Green with the surrealist horror imagery and razor-sharp wit of Jordan Peele. At once haunting and enchanting and entirely unforgettable.
*MY THOUGHTS*
Can we get someone to stop calling her books horror? Don’t get me wrong, I really loved the last one, but for it to be about zombies, they were hardly in the story. It was just a bunch of descriptions about them having “dripping skin.” I thought since people were so adamant about it not being classified as horror that this one would be different. Alas, this one was magical realism and time travel so some sci fi. Because of that horror label I was left hella disappointed.
So this one was about a girl who just randomly disappears one day. I was already side eyeing it right then, but I still kept going. Since I had the audio I didn’t mind keeping going. When she re-materializes, she in the night that changed her forever…. When her brother is taken from her. But when she finally gets to where her bother is, it’s nothing like she thought. Now another thing y’all might know about me… I don’t like when the synopsis says everything that happens in the book. And that’s exactly what happens here. I don’t really know what the point of the rest of the book is for if you’re going to tell all of it on the back. I mean yeah, there’s some more depth to the books, but this is basically the over all thing and because of it it got boring.
I also don’t like the fact that this is called horror. There’s horror elements (like the trees growing through her brother and the ghosts) but there’s nothing scary in this entire book. And yes I know I’m an adult talking about a teen book, but I’m also a teen librarian who’s going to have to answer questions about this book; the first being “So what’s scary about it?” I’m so glad I rfead this because the synopsis doesn’t talk about that at all. Why? Because it literally doesn’t show up until the ending. By the time it got to it, it was the literal ending.
I also liked the romance. Time travel romances always trip me out because I get worried there’s an age gap, but they’re both from the same time frame and they’re about the same age. There’s nothing outrageous and for that I was thankful. The love interest was the person who helped her along the way to get to know more about the time travel and to solve the mystery of what happened with her brother. But, it basically overpowers the story. Basically I would call this like a romanticized horror book. (Is that a things???)
The reason I didn’t DNF this, was because I still did like her writing style. I love her writing, but I hate that y’all keep giving her buzz words to add to her books. Like it’s puling in the wrong crowd? Because us horror readers are fed up. I think if this had been called sci fi and/or fantasy, I would have liked it more. But because it was called horror, I kept looking for it to be scary.
I also didn’t DNF this because I was a super fan of the narrator. I’ve listened to a lot of books that were narrated by her, and I fell in love. All of them have been good. Her voices were good, and none of them sounded the same. Even the guy in it was different, so that was cool. Do I like books that have a full cast? Yes. Am I more impressed when it’s all done by one person tho? Also yes. Amd this one was one of those books that I was really impressed by.
This book was interesting and could have been so good, but they are really doing her a disservice. Even her covers give horror vibes, but the horror aspect in her books are always so small. In order for me to sing it’s praises, I think she needs a bit more time to nail down some things in the genre a bit more. I really think had this been pitched as something else, I would have given this 5 stars.
Overall, I give this
