Poudelivre

I’ve learned the fun way that there’s no wrong way of finding books. There are so many out there and sometimes I think, How will I be able to find the best of the best among all these books? But then you hear something from someone or you see something or you read something somewhere. This particular novel is one I found through a post on Twitter which had a link to Instagram which ultimately had a picture of the book and a caption that made me look around to see what it was about. And I’m glad I did!

Many people know what they want to do with their life quite early and Abby Barnes is no exception. She might even know it a little too well. She has worked hard and have created The Plan, which will see her get into Northwestern College where she will study journalism, graduate and get a job on a big magazine and have her life completely in order by the time she hits twenty-two. But not everything goes according to Abby’s perfect plan.

It all starts the day of that odd earthquake. Abby is in L.A, working as an actress on a movie set. It’s the night before her eighteenth birthday and the star of the movie lures her out from her hotel room to celebrate her birthday with the rest of the cast at a hip new restaurant. The past year has been nothing like Abby thought, or wanted it, to be. One of the classes she wanted to take the year before got cancelled and she had to choose between astronomy and drama. Out of two evil things, she chose the less evil. Drama. But that brought with it the school play, which Abby surprisingly got the lead in, which then lead to a scout not only seeing her, but also offering her a chance to try out for a part in a movie, which she got. That’s why she now is in L.A celebrating her birthday with a bunch of actors instead of being at the Northwestern, working on The Plan. Exhausted after the night, Abby gets into bed, ready for a new, early day on set, only to wake up in a room she’s never been before. At a place she’s never set foot on. With people she never even heard of. And that’s when the weird stuff really start.

It turns out that what happened that night was a collision between two parallel universes where the people switched worlds. Abby moved from her life in L.A, working as an actress, to her parallel’s life at Yale, living as a student. But the really odd thing is that no one seems to remember how life was before. They don’t know that they’re not living their life and that the memories in their head aren’t their memories but their parallel’s. Abby is alone, remembering how it was before, what she wanted and how it turned out, and living in something that is completely different. At first she hates it, because it’s neither the life she wanted nor the one she ended up with when she had to take a class in acting instead of music history. But gradually Abby finds her footing in her new surroundings, only to realize that everything can change overnight and there’s nothing she can do to hold on to the things and people she finds herself loving, and wants to keep in her life.

Parallel is a story about one girl and her life, her ideas, her plans. But it is also a story about the exact same girl who lives her life completely different, and what happens when these two girls, these two version of the same life, need to coexist. The novel is told from both viewpoints and thus jumps from present time (at Yale) to past (a year before, when Abby was still in high-school). We meet the exact same people in both worlds; Caitlin, Abby’s best friend and science genius, Tyler, Abby’s oldest and most trusted friend, her mom, dad and grandparents. Dr. Mann. Michael and Josh, both love interests to the two parallel Abby’s. Everyone appear and they’re the same yet different, much like Abby herself. One would think that technically, the same person in parallel universes were the same, but they aren’t, which makes this a very unique book. Never have I read about two people who are practically the same but yet the opposite of each other.

I can see that it must have been a little tricky for Lauren Miller to weave this all together. There are many pieces that have to fit with each other, in both universes, and that’s not the easiest thing to take on. But I would say that Miller have succeeded. It is simultaneously the same story and two completely different. The same people who do different things. I love the idea and I love the outcome. It was thought through and well written with both plot twists and happily ever after’s.

This is, ultimately, a love story, so it’s probably a bit odd that one of the few things that bothered me was the fact that there were too many guys. Three in total, in all these different versions of Abby’s life. I just feel that it would’ve been nice if Abby had been alone sometimes, not focused on boys but on her studying or career instead. Just something to show that not everything, all the time, is about boys and being in love. For a young adult novel, though it may be a romance, I still think there should be something else to show younger girls that boys are, surprisingly, not everything. Abby was very driven and focused on what she wanted to do with her life in the beginning, but I think Miller lost track of that somewhere around the third guy entering the story. All of a sudden it was more about Who should I pick? and less about What to do to be that person I always wanted to be? The love doesn’t have to disappear, but what I’m saying is, don’t lose track of what Abby wants and who she is just because she finds herself favored by some really hot guy.

All in all though, it’s a good book and I really enjoyed reading it. For someone who likes astronomy and are quite interested in the idea of parallel universes, this was amazing. I’ve only ever read one book like this and it was Claudia Gray’s A thousand pieces of you. This was definitely not far from that one. A deep, interesting read were you had to think, which made you laugh and in the end left you a little disappointed that there weren’t one more page or an epilog to really give the novel an end. But at the same time, I can see why Miller chose to end it the way she did. Read it, and you’ll see what I mean. And I promise, if you’re drawn to the ideas of multiverse then you won’t regret it.