Author: Rachel Carter
Rating: 4/5 stars- a simple beautiful train wreck
Synopsis (as found on Goodreads):
Rachel Carter launches a mind-blowing time-travel trilogy with her YA novel So Close to You.
Lydia Bentley doesn’t believe the rumors about the Montauk Project, that there’s some sort of government conspiracy involving people vanishing and tortured children. But her grandfather is sure that the Project is behind his father’s disappearance more than sixty years earlier.
While helping her grandfather search Camp Hero, a seemingly abandoned military base on Long Island, for information about the disappearance, Lydia is transported back to 1944—just a few days before her great-grandfather’s disappearance.
Lydia begins to unravel the dark secrets of the Montauk Project and her own family history, despite warnings from Wes, a mysterious boy she is powerfully attracted to but not sure she should trust.
Review:
SORRY FOR THE LONG HIATUS GUYS. End of term came and you know what that means.
TESTS. *cue the scary background music
And so the craze began.
But I'm back and I'm happy to say I'm alive after all those tests and that I actually managed to read a book here and there. (THANK YOU ENGLISH CLASS FOR 20 MINUTES OF READING EVERY CLASS.)
And I think So Close to You might just win surprise of the year. I was not expecting how much I would ACTUALLY enjoy this novel.
Time traveling has been making a comeback lately in YA, and this has kicked off a new sci-fi trend, often combined with dystopian.
I'm not a sci-fi person. I enjoy the occasional one, but they are strong hit or misses for me. Not much grey area. Time travel especially I'm picky with, because I have not had terrific experiences with them. (Timepiece, Tempest etc.)
But I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this novel! I was throughly engaged in the story and I was not bored or yawning or moaning at any point. I wanted to read it from beginning to end.
However.
I may have enjoyed the novel, but that doesn't mean I think the novel is good. I personally don't think the novel was extremely well written and there are several areas that bother me about this novel. But I think how much you enjoy something is completely different how good I think it is. My ratings are always a combination of those two things, but sometimes when it's signifcantly different, I make a point to point it out.
So in this case, I believe a Pros and Cons list is needed.
Pros
The plot was engaging because it was simple and had good tension build up- I wanted to know more about this conspiracy, this mysterious project and there were no complicated rules to the time travel except for the most basic bare bones structure. Nothing confusing or super complex. The plot followed a good beginning to end, and it flowed nicely. It gave the premise depth and a realistic sci-fi feel.
Oh and THE SOMEWHAT CLIFFHANGER.
Cons
I failed to see how a teenager in 2012 FAILS to understand the butterfly effect. OBVIOUSLY YOU DO NOT GO GALLOPING INTO THE PAST AND EXPECT NOTHING TO HAPPEN. Have you not watched a single time travel movie? DO NOT MESS WITH THE PAST. I didn't mind anything about Lydia, but that was the thing that bothered me the most about her character.
The romance...
a) kind of insta-lovey, but I really like the mysterious factor to it and I cared enough about by the end, although I wished it developed a different way unlike how it kind of all clicked in the end for me.
b) The almost love triangle complicated by time... was there really a point to that?
I like how the romance turned out at the end, but the entire way there I was kind of cringing.
OH AND THE CLIFFHANGER.
Conclusion
A novel that is kind of a mess in a couple parts, but WHAT A FUN MESS. It's simple, suspenseful, and even though sometimes you SO want to hit Lydia with a dictionary, the novels screams for your attention. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that the next one improves.
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