If you want to read the spoiler, highlight between the two ♈ symbols. For those using the Word Press Reader: the text between the two symbols won’t be hidden – so if you don’t want the story to be spoiled, look away when you get to the ♈ symbols or visit my actual site to avoid them.
I’d like to preface this review by saying that Mystery/Thriller isn’t one of my favorite genres. Interestingly enough, this book isn’t really associated with that genre on Goodreads (or in my tags), it’s mainly categorized as fiction. BUT the synopsis of this story definitely gave me Thriller vibes. Four people from different walks of life start seeing visions. Some are benign, while others are terrifying. A natural disaster happens and we learn that the visions aren’t really what they seem. I swear, every synopsis to every thriller that I’ve actually read sounds just like that. And that’s how they draw me in. If you can make it sounds suspenseful enough, where I can’t guess from the synopsis what the big secret is – I’m totally in. Even if I know I’m not going to love it, like I do with other genres. And that’s how this book got me. I wanted to know about the visions.
Most of my thoughts fall under the category of a Spoiler, but what I can say without giving anything away is that as the synopsis states, there are four different people (Ginny, Mark, Cass and Samara) who all live in the same little town, Clearing, Oregon. They all, at some point or another in the book, experience a vision. While I’m not sure exactly how this book could have ended in a way that I would have felt more satisfied with the conclusion, what I can say, is that the actual conclusion of this novel was underwhelming. I was expecting something BIG. And all I got was…
🚨🚨🚨 SPOILER ALERT 🚨🚨🚨
♈ A multiverse…? And like, that’s cool and all, but the interaction of one reality with an alternate reality just kind of ended there. We essentially learn that the visions were alternate realities that each of the main characters were witnessing. And the story line actually progressed with two of the realities taking place at the same time, to the point where it was hard to tell which reality was the main point of the book. But the conclusion is essentially just that a multiverse exists. Woohoo. I thought for sure all the visions that the characters were experiencing were going to lead to at least some exploration of what happens when two different realities are too close to each other or the people intercept in some way (which does kind of happen in this book). But really the climax was – natural disasters can cause the separation of two different realities to lessen therefore allowing people to see in to a different reality. BUT WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THAT AND WHAT DOES THAT MEAN!?!?! I felt shortchanged. ♈
This book was kind of trippy, which was kind of the point, but also at some points, downright confusing. This is essentially a big old book of “What Ifs?” And that is not my cup of tea. When I’m reading a standalone, I need a solid conclusion with all of the story lines wrapped up neatly. What I ended up with was just an open-ended tangle of conjecture. Which left me feeling – meh.
🗣Talk to Me🗣
Do you believe that multiple universes exist? What do you imagine would happen if two alternate beings discovered each other? If you had a vision that a natural disaster was going to happen, would you prepare yourself for it to happen, or would you ignore what you saw?
The Aries Atlas 