Ruby Wright isn't too happy with her life at the moment. Her father and stepfamily aren't what she wants and now she has to move miles and miles away from her hometown and her best friend for them. When she finds a tree that can take her to different realities, the temptation to live in one of them might be too great for her to pass up...
REALITIVITY is a new kind of read for me. I have read several time travel-like books with hints of alternate realities and parallel dimensions here and there, but I've never read any that were purely alternate realities with no actual "time" travel involved. I love time travel stories, but this look on the different dimensions is unique and more focused without it. For those who get easily confused during time travel books, I don't think REALITIVITY would be so bad.
Even with the tree that can take people to different realities, the core of this story was very realistically grounded. Ruby is dealing with some decently heavy family issues, and because of that, I could relate to her as a character nicely. Though the author, Cristin Bishara, put a little romance in and some mystery, I love that none of that is the main focus. I always admire a book that can have such fictional elements like alternate dimensions, but almost use that to contrast how real the characters could be.
However, I feel that after Ruby gets more caught up in the realities, she becomes a more untrustworthy narrator. While there is nothing wrong with that in general and having a character be untrustworthy as the storytelling can be very beneficial, I have yet to find more than one or two books that I like it in. Even if a narrator isn't always trustworthy, I feel less of a connection to them when they cross the line to more untrustworthy than less. I do understand the purpose of it in this book and how her emotions are spinning at the time, it just isn't something I'm a fan of.
Overall, If you enjoy a little science fiction with heaps of real life philosophical/psychological questions, I would send this book your way. It didn't keep me up at night, but it certainly made me question what I would do if given the chance to live a different, but oh so similar life.
If Ruby Wright could have her way, her dad would never have
met and married her stepmother Willow, her best friend
George would be more than a friend, and her mom would still
be alive. Ruby knows wishes can't come true; some things
just can't be undone. Then she discovers a tree in the
middle of an Ohio cornfield with a wormhole to nine
alternative realities. Suddenly, Ruby can access completely
different realities, each containing variations of her lifeβ
if things had gone differently at key moments. The
windshield wiper missing her motherβs throatβ¦her big brother
surviving his ill-fated birthβ¦her father never having met
Willow. Her ideal worldβone with everything and everyone she
wants mostβcould be within reach. But is there such a thing
as a perfect world? What is Ruby willing to give up to find
out?
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