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Time Between Us (Time Between Us #1) – Tamara Ireland Stone

Title: Time Between Us (Time Between Us #1) by Tamara Ireland Stone
Publishing Info: October 9, 2012 by Disney Hyperion
Genres: Contemporary, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Young Adult
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // GoodreadsDate Completed: November 22, 2012
Related Posts: Time After Time (Time Between Us #2)

Anna and Bennett were never supposed to meet: she lives in 1995 Chicago and he lives in 2012 San Francisco. But Bennett''s unique ability to travel through time and space brings him into Anna''s life, and with him, a new world of adventure and possibility. Fresh, exciting, and deeply romantic, Time Between Us is a stunning and spellbinding debut from an extraordinary new talent in YA fiction.

Right off the bat, I was immediately intrigued. I loved the set-up in the beginning where we see a younger Bennett approached by an older woman and immediately I was like, “That’s totally Anna” and bam! History (or the future, I guess) it changing forever!

Tamara Ireland Stone did a fantastic job of mixing sci-fi with a contemporary love story, both of which kept me hooked throughout the book. There are little twists and quirks with Bennett’s time travel abilities that slowly get revealed to Anna (and henceforth, the audience) that kept me on the edge of my seat. I loved how time and place were woven into the story so seamlessly. I feel like that’s something that’s always tricky with time travel novels because everything has to line up just right and you really need to know where the characters will be at all times and what will happen before and after it happens. I think Stone did a great job with keeping the story neat and tidy without making it too cookie cutter.

The relationship that develops between our two main characters kept me hooked throughout the book as well. Once we find out that Bennett is from the future (well, Anna’s future — the audience’s present day) and they start to get to know each other, then we’re plagued with the conundrum of what happens to the both of them — Does Bennett stay in the past with Anna? Can she go to the future with him? Will he hop back and forth to be with her? What’s the best possible way — if any — that these two characters will end up together? It was definitely a story line that kept me sucked in until the very end!

One last thing that made the book so great for me was all of the settings of the books that I totally identified with. Firstly, I pictured Anna’s school just like my high school — they had a part of the hallway called “The Donut” which reminded me of “The Tower” at my high school and the floor to ceiling windows in the lunch room was exactly how mine was too. The fact that it took place in Evanston, IL also made me feel right at home in this book. I don’t actually live in Evanston, but I do live in the suburbs of Chicago so a lot of it is really familiar to me. Then throw in the added fact that Bennett and Anna travel to Devil’s Lake State Park in Wisconsin and I pretty much lost it — in a good way. Devil’s Lake is my mom’s all time favorite place in the world and we used to camp there all the time as kids, so it’s a big part of my life. I loved seeing it in a book and I definitely didn’t expect it to pop up! All those elements combined really made me feel like I was a part of the story (and seriously made me question if Stone knew all these things about me…….) so it was a lot of fun!

Anna: I really liked Anna. She seemed down-to-earth and a character that is ideally flawed. She makes some bad decisions — especially when it comes to Bennett’s abilities and how they affect the world around them — but it’s so easy so say that if I were in her place, wouldn’t I do the same thing?
Bennett: Bennett was a great male lead in the story and I really enjoyed that he was not a narrator — I liked that Anna had to figure out his story little by little and we got a little bit more mystery to add to the sci-fi aspect instead of knowing everything all at once and then it’s just the rest of the plot that unravels. Like anyone with abilities, he’s got his rules that he won’t break, and it was great to see how those boundaries get pushed when Anna comes into the picture.

BUY IT!

Wow, I really loved the science fiction/time travel aspect combined with the contemporary romance and I LOVED these two characters together!

BOOKS LIKE TIME BETWEEN US

(click on the cover to see my review!)

Crewel (Crewel World #1) – Gennifer Albin

Title: Crewel (Crewel World #1) by Gennifer Albin
Publishing Info: October 16, 2012 by Macmillan
Genres: Dystopian, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Young Adult
Find it on the web: Buy from Amazon // GoodreadsDate Completed: September 13, 2012
Related Posts: Unraveled (Crewel World #3)

Incapable. Awkward. Artless.
    That’s what the other girls whisper behind her back. But sixteen-year-old Adelice Lewys has a secret: She wants to fail.
    Gifted with the ability to weave time with matter, she’s exactly what the Guild is looking for, and in the world of Arras, being chosen to work the looms is everything a girl could want. It means privilege, eternal beauty, and being something other than a secretary. It also means the power to manipulate the very fabric of reality. But if controlling what people eat, where they live, and how many children they have is the price of having it all, Adelice isn’t interested.
    Not that her feelings matter, because she slipped and used her hidden talent for a moment. Now she has one hour to eat her mom’s overcooked pot roast. One hour to listen to her sister’s academy gossip and laugh at her dad’s jokes. One hour to pretend everything’s okay. And one hour to escape.
    Because tonight, they’ll come for her.

Okay, first things first — I love the colors on this cover! The face on it kind of weirds me out, but without that cover design and the awesome flowing rainbow of colors, I don’t think I would have been able to picture the loom, the weaving, or the strands of time as well as I did.

Now for the review — How excited was I to read this? The answer is MEGA excited. I love dystopians, I absolutely love anything where the characters manipulate time or alternate universes, etc, AND it’s YA. Yeah, I was pumped.
In all honesty, the beginning moved a little slowly for me. Maybe it was my overexcitement – I’m not sure. But okay, we know Adelice is going to get taken from her family (it’s in the summary, after all) and it seemed like the whole set-up to the readers, describing the setting, Adelice’s family — it really just took too long for everything to get established and our real story to start taking off. I was 130 pages into the book before I really felt like we were going places.

Once we did start moving a little faster, I really got sucked into the plot. Adelice was finally taking shape in my mind and becoming a real character, she ran into conflicts with other characters and finally got over being overwhelmed by her surroundings and started to take charge. I was really most interested in anything that involved manipulating the time aspect more than the world of Arras. We know that the Spinsters can “rip” people from the fabric of life (effectively removing them from the world), they can control rations, create buildings, and in contrast, destroy these things as well. For more complicated things like nature, the Creweler is able to create lakes and landscapes and assist with people by using the raw materials as well as working more with the time aspect. THAT’S what I was really looking for! Once we finally got to the whole time part, I was sucked in. Actually building a world didn’t really interested me terribly.

I didn’t particularly care for the romance half of the book, but I didn’t really have that much against it. It was kind of take-it-or-leave-it in my opinion. But I’m glad it wasn’t technically a love triangle (although there are two “interests”, Adelice really only has true feelings for one — see this awesome post on love triangles from The Housework Can Wait and you’ll see what I mean).

Overall, I really enjoyed it! I’m kind of disappointed that I was a little bit bored until a third of the way through the book so it kind of brought down my overall opinion. If it had taken off running, it would have easily gotten five stars!

Adelice: Adelice is our MC and at first, I didn’t get much from her in the very beginning. It felt like there was a lot of set-up and not a lot of me getting to know her as a character and so she fell a little flat. Then all of a sudden, she was a total and complete sassy-pants to the authority figures and in a 180, her personality takes shape. I was a little confused in the sudden change, but at least we got somewhere and stuck with it! After that, I wouldn’t say we’d be BFFs, but I got to understand her a little bit more.
Jost: Hmm how do I feel about him? I liked the back-and-forth between him and Adelice, but in the very beginning, I was confused between him and Erik. Their sarcastic interactions with Adelice along with their physical descriptions were SO similar that I was getting them confused just a bit – although that is the point at one point in time – but still.
Cormac: I kind of liked him as the Guild official throughout the story. He seemed very consistent as the appointed villian, but in a way, I almost liked him. It was like he was supposed to be the bad guy but was almost nice in a certain way, and I think it made it that much better. It had me questioning if he really was supposed to be “bad” or if there was something good that would be revealed later.
Maela: Loved her as the lower-level villain (not as high up in the rankings).

READ IT!

I really enjoyed CREWEL! I was hoping to fall in love just a BIT more but overall, it was a great way to kick-off the series and I am DEFINITELY interested to see where this trilogy goes!

BOOKS LIKE CREWEL

These are some of the comparisions I made while reading this book (there were a lot):

The Beginning:

The Middle:

The End: