For this week's
Friday Reads I'm sharing a review of yet another great gem discovered courtesy of Twitter and read courtesy of Strange Chemistry on NetGalley!
It is part of my 2014 Review Pile Reading Challenge, which I think it's the one I'm doing better at so far!
The Fifty-Seven Lives of Alex Wayfare by
M.G. Buehrlen
My rating:
4 of 5 stars
Being auto approved for Strange Chemistry titles is something I'm extremely happy about! So far all the books I've read published by them have been fantastic, and this one was no exception. The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare sounded extremely interesting and unique, and it did deliver on that promise!
I read this book in one sitting, while working a rather quiet night shift at the hospital, and this book is quite a page turner mixing the regular issues of a teenager that keeps herself on the sidelines with the much more higher stakes of the main plotline. I will be trying my best to keep this review as spoiler free as possible!
Alex is regular seventeen year old, except that she isn't. She's been having this "hallucinations" since she was a child and that has made her lead a rather reclusive kind of life. She doesn't really have friends, she's considered a freak by most of her classmates and her family seem to tiptoe around her issues too. But there's more to all those "hallucinations" than even her newest shrink is ready to accept.
She has a wonderfully loving family, not without issues, since both her parents work ceaselessly to try and find a cure for one of Alex's sisters, Audrey. They live with their grandparents who help take care of the girls while the parents work. I feel the family was done great, you could see the relationships and the deep care between all members and you could understand that it could be a pressure point for Alex.
Then, after an specially vivid and long "hallucination" that leaves Alex injured and shaken, she finds herself an ally that tells her the truth about herself, and that the "hallucinations" are anything but! Porter tries to explain to Alex how her gift works and why it is even more special on her. Alex doesn't take it too well, no surprises here, even if the explanation matches what she suspected but didn't want to voice out loud.
I never felt like there was a dull moment in this book, from all the glimpses at the past that read like we were there, to all the world building, character development and even throwing us some curve balls in the shape of unexpected revelations! There's quite a bit of misinformation, lack of trust and the not-unusual "witholding information to protect you" and there's a time when Alex doesn't even know who she can trust anymore.
There's time travel (of a sort) with interesting villains, a rather flawed but amazing heroine that does a lot of messing up and a lot of growing up, a great cast of secondary characters and an ending that leaves many questions unanswered but doesn't leave us having with a heartbreaking cliffhanger!
The romance was there, sometimes present in a more straightforward way and others in a quite more confusing one, but it never overtook the plot, even if sometimes Alex did mop around a wee bit much. But given what her situation was, I think some pinning and heartbreak was more than understandable!
Cannot wait for the next book in this series, a very solid 4 to 4.5 stars!
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