Note: This book was given to me in exchange for an honest review.
I’m one of those people who has way more books than I’m ever going to have time to read. And yet, I can’t stop buying books. There’s something magical about having a bookshelf full of (color-coded) books to read; no matter the genre, they’re full of mystery, suspense, and magic.
I wish I would have read one of the many books on my To Read shelf than Ann Brashare’s newest novel, The Here and Now.
Shoot, I wish I would have reread a different book than wasted a few days on this one.
I was really excited to get this one in the mail, because the premise sounded really interesting. It takes place in present-day New York City and follows a girl named Prenna James, who recently moved to the city. However, she didn’t move from a different city; she moved from a different time.
Roughly 1,000 people traveled from a year circa 2100 to 2010, escaping a mosquito-bourn illness that’s killing the world. Their mission: try to stop it before it happens.
The book is marketed as a YA dystopian romance: the biggest rule is that none of them are allowed to fall in love with someone outside of their pilgrimage. And what does Prenna do? Falls in love with literally the first guy she sees.
The lack of excitement in The Here and Now pretty much continues throughout the book; there isn’t any character development, and the plot takes weird turns out of nowhere. For example, when Prenna and Ethan figure out what they need to do to save the world, they decide to take a day off and spend it at the beach playing cards and underage drinking.
What?
However, my biggest complaint came near the end of The Here and Now. The problem with time travel books is making sure there aren’t any paradoxes. Brashares seemed to be careful of this until the end, when there was a giant gaping hole in the plot.
I kept waiting for the paradox to be fixed, thinking to myself “So, Ann… you’ve got one more chapter to fix this… Two more pages… Half a page left… you’re not going to fix this, are you?”
It definitely left a sour taste in my mouth. I’ll save you the spoilers in case you decide to pick this one up. But again, I wouldn’t recommend it.
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