Great book! ( )

If you like the coming of age type story where the characters grow and feel like friends or acquaintances, not the fantasy type but the real ones. Not the friends that you wish had or would seek out but the ones you have in real life, the ones with flaws and daily decisions that do not come easy. Then this is the book for you.

I do not see myself re-reading this book or even keeping it in my collection. It is too soon to tell if I will want to revisit this story, even though i'm sure you would pick up more of the nuances the second time around.

With all that said, you may think I didn't like this book, but in all actuality, this is the type of story that will stay with me, and make me think and ponder the things left unsaid. The type that when life reminds you of the events, you become reflective and almost melancholy in remembrance. At least it is for me. This story made me feel things like wonder, hope, hurt, and even cry for the characters. It's not the type of book I seek out, but i'm glad I finished it.

( )

**This review and more can be found at Love at First Write!**

I was given a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I’d been in a bit of a reading slump the last year or so because of academics taking up most of my free time and me wanting to hang out with friends and watch movies with the little left over time that I had. This book is definitely a cure for reading slumps! I’ve been reading it over the past couple days and every time I set it down I was itching to pick it back up again. I had my doubts at first as to how this book was going to have well developed characters, a plot, and three POV’s while still being as short as it is. All I can say is that it must be magic.

The novel starts of with Adri’s POV. She’s from 2065 and is going to MARS. Holy cow! I thought that future Jodi painted for me cool, frightening, and realistic. There’s some political/social commentary about the generations before her ruining the planet and the waterline rising aka the destruction of the coast. That is something I can get behind in my YA. Heck Yes to the woke AF authors who are using their writing platform to subliminally send messages. We also have Katherine in the Dust Bowl as a POV and Lenore in England during The Great War. Adri is piecing together their past lives while also working out her own. How their story lines mingle and interconnect was so creative, it honestly felt like a historical fiction novel rather than 100% made up plot. The journal and letters just felt so realistic even though we were only reading one side of a conversation. This book was everything I needed and more.

This book was so wholesome and refreshing. Seriously- it was like a breath of fresh air. When I received this book from Ebony over at HarperTeen I thought I recognized the author name. Turns out I was given a previous work of hers (Peaches) by an elementary school teacher of mine. She gets sent free books to potentially add to her classroom and gave me a pile when I last volunteered with her for the Kids Literary Quiz. Anyway, I hadn’t gotten around to that pile of books yet and knew nothing about Jodi Lynn Anderson’s writing style going in to this novel. I was pleasantly surprised! This book struck an emotional chord with me. I can’t say I’ve experienced anything like what these various women are going through, but while reading so many lines just rang true for me. I can’t remember the last time a book had made me feel this way.

Some beautiful gems from the last end of the book when I finally started writing this down (out of context, SPOILER FREE, quotes):

“So many lights you’d think we were living in a constellation”

“I think the rest of the world is not as cold and lonely a place as you think. At least I have to hope.”

“She thought of all the things she’d forgotten to be scared of.”


That last one really rang true for me. How many times have I signed up for things and panicked at the last possible second? All of the possible ways that something can go wrong suddenly fly into your head, even when you thought you were sure about something. My first time on an airplane, driving my car, heck even meeting teachers and classmates for the first time! So the message I got from the book was that you’re as strong as you need to be, and you’ll be brave enough to get through what you’re facing. If none of this makes you want to go read this book, I don’t know what else to say to convince you to be honest. I think over my 20 years on earth I can count on one hand how many books have made me cry. This wasn’t one of them, but it was pretty dang close. I almost cried over a tortoise. A TORTOISE. This is a must-read. ( )

This left me wanting more yet what it delivered still managed to be such an engaging reading experience that I couldn’t rate it less than five stars.

My lone complaint is that I feel like this could have and should have been expanded into a trilogy as each timeline, each character, each friendship, romance, and familial connection is worthy of exploring at greater length.

It’s such an odd thing to feel as though a book had unfulfilled potential while simultaneously finding immense satisfaction in all three stories it told. The future where dementia is as heartbreaking as ever and family is found. 1919 with its take on beauty and the beast and finding your way out of grief. And my favorite, the dustbowl era tale with its sweet romance, tough choices, brave devoted sisters, and the best friend you could ever hope to find.

Maybe this book isn’t everything it might have been as a trilogy but its an impressive standalone, heartfelt and bittersweet, evoking eras historical and speculative, and tying up just enough threads so that the reader won’t feel cheated of resolutions yet will still wonder about these characters long after the book is closed. ( )

God I really wanted this book to be something it wasn't.

You know when you're reading something and you understand everything that's happening, but you just don't get it?

That was me with this one.

Listen, each of the stories were really nice, and I liked them all individually, but for some reason, putting them together didn't make sense to me. I don't get the importance of the letters, or the diary, and why it mattered so much to the characters. Maybe it's because, personally, I don't care for family history of those who died long ago. Maybe I missed some important plot point. I don't know. All I know is that the stories, while tied together logically, didn't make sense to me metaphorically. I still don't get what they were trying to tell me.

Maybe they weren't trying to tell me anything! Maybe I'm reading too into this and not letting myself enjoy the story! I don't know!

But I did get one thing. Beyond being a story of family, this is a story of environmentalism. There are so many subtleties that remind us, throughout the book, that the world is being destroyed and we humans are responsible for it. In that sense, we are responsible for everything that happens to us. Maybe that's the real message, the one I was missing. We have the ability to make and change our own histories.

Despite not particularly getting the story, I did feel emotional at the end. Like I said, I liked each story, and I liked all the characters, but I feel like it was missing for something and because of that, I can't say I liked the book as a whole all too much. ( )