Sarah's life is different from the last time she was in Amber House...or the last past she was in it. One choice she made in a different past has completely changed her life to a new present. She sees more echoes of the past around her, but she can't understand what went wrong and how to fix it. Sarah will have to put the pieces of the puzzle together if she ever hopes to go back to her old life.
NEVERWAS got off to a confusing start for me. It has been a while since I read the first book, Amber House, so I was a little fuzzy on some of the details. It took me a while into the book before I realized it is set in an alternate universe because of the change Sarah made in Amber House that she no longer remembers. However, once you understand that (and preferably read it soon after you read the first), the story flies by. The intrigue and mystery are even higher in this book than the last, and the authors, Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed, and Larkin Reed do an excellent job of keeping the bigger picture hidden until the very end. The pure suspense in this novel during Sarah's echoes of the past build wonderfully and show how confusing and crucial time is.
Sarah and Jackson's may-or-may-not-be relationship is put to new tests in NEVERWAS. Their dynamic together is both heart wrenching and sweet at the same time. I find myself falling for their story more in this book than I did the first. Their limits are tested together and apart, and they both grow in ways I didn't see coming, but make perfect sense for their characters.
Overall, I still really like this series. I think I could enjoy the book more reading a second time with better understanding of the different present world, but even that confusion at the beginning didn't stop me from vigorously flipping the pages and moving my eyes as fast as possible to find out the answer to the mystery behind the echoes and visions. I highly look forward to seeing more from these authors and hopefully more of these characters.
At the end of AMBER HOUSE, Sarah made a choice that
transformed everything--and now she must choose it all
again.
"I was sixteen the second time I had my first kiss...."
After growing up in the free country of the Pacific
Northwest, Sarah Parsons has settled in at Amber House, the
stately Maryland home that's been in her family for
generations. But the world surrounding the House feels
deeply wrong to Sarah. It's a place where the colonists lost
the 1776 Insurrection, where the American Confederation of
States still struggles with segregation, and where Sarah is
haunted by echoes of a better world that she knows never
existed.
Her friend Jackson shares these visions of a different
world--and together, they manage both to remember the way
things ought to be, and to plan a daring mission that will
reset the universe once again. It will involve objects from
the past, knowledge of the future, a leap into the unknown
... and in the end, a sacrifice Sarah never imagined.
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