All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrill was an amazon recommendation for me. I'm not always sucked in to reading everything amazon tells me to but this time I was happy I did. Yes, it's YA sci-fi time travel which could be a pretty lethal combination done badly, but luckily in Terrill's hands the book is a breeze to read with unexpected twists and turns around every corner. And she does her best to avoid/explain time paradoxes such that this reader could suspend her disbelief and get lost in the story. While there's a lot of sci-fi and adventure, the book also covers some of my favorite themes about growing up and discovering who we really are. Terrill uses the technique of creating multiple possible versions of the main characters to show how the choices we make can define our future selves and also how the seeds of our future selves can be found in our present selves if we scratch the surface. She also covers familiar ground about the nature of good versus evil. When do the ends justify the means and when do good intentions create evil acts that can't ever be condoned? The characters are beautifully drawn and the story revolves around a trio of three lead players, although there's a central narrator (Em) and it's her perspective through which the reader experiences the story. It's hard to go into the story in any detail without spoiling the plot which is intricately crafted despite the fast pace. In many ways, the story structure reminds me a little of False Memory by Dan Krokos in terms of the pace, the high stakes for the young characters, and the need to keep a sense of how the same character could turn out differently if subject to different events. However this book, its plot and characters are completely distinct. Terrill's voice stands out as something completely new in the YA sci-fi marketplace and I look forward with interest to what she writes next.
RSS Feed