Adelaide is staying on her private school campus over the summer holidays, with her dad so he can teach summer classes, while her mom and younger brother Toby stay in Baltimore close to his rehab centre. Her brother's addiction is her biggest secret.
As she passes time this summer, taking an extra class so she doesn't fail, walking dogs every morning, and trying to get over her recent break up, Adelaide wonders which version of herself is best to present at different events, and how things would play out differently depending on her responses.
E. Lockhart is, for me, a win-some-lose-some author. We Were Liars and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks were both 5 star reads for me. Fly on the Wall and Genuine Fraud were disappointments.
Unfortunately, Again Again fell into the lose-some category for me.
I liked Adelaide as a character. She was funny and witty and not automatically 'likeable' - she made mistakes and was needy and had all these qualities that often make female characters seem high maintenance, and uptight.
But I liked her. She had a complex backstory, and I felt her trauma and experiences were reflected in how she behaved as a person in each of her relationships.
As for the other characters... well I didn't necessarily like them but I found them realistic and true to teenage boys. Some of the ways people talked were a bit... off? But idk, maybe that was just it coming through Adelaide's perspective?
I also liked the text threads throughout. It's rare to find accurate depictions of how teenagers speak to and text each other and this was actually done well.
What I really enjoyed though was the... I don't know what you'd call them. Little snippets throughout the book of ways the conversation could have turned if Adelaide answered differently. Mostly only a paragraph long, but enough to give some insight into the parallel worlds Adelaide could exist in if she said just one word differently. They were fun and interesting parts of the book and I thought they were really powerful and a unique way of showing everything Adelaide wanted to say but either couldn't or thought better of it. We all have those moments where we're desperate to know how something would have played out had we not said something, or said something else.
This all sounds really positive, doesn't it? But, Rebecca, you only gave it 3 stars?
I didn't like the ending, and that really dragged down the star rating for me. So, if you don't want spoilers, look away now.
Only read on if you have read the end or don't care about spoilers.
At about 80% or so of the way through the book, the story just ends. And for the rest of the novel, we get a different Adelaide, a parallel Adelaide. An Adelaide on the first day that we first met her on, but things happen differently, quicker, taking us to the same end point in time, but not in outcomes.
And... I get the point of it. The idea that there are multiple versions of us and all that jazz. But the first version ended so abruptly and then the next was so quick and I liked the additions of the snippets I mentioned earlier. But I didn't see the point, I didn't see the connection, and I'm sure some people would really enjoy it and think it was so clever and different but it just didn't work for me.
As she passes time this summer, taking an extra class so she doesn't fail, walking dogs every morning, and trying to get over her recent break up, Adelaide wonders which version of herself is best to present at different events, and how things would play out differently depending on her responses.
E. Lockhart is, for me, a win-some-lose-some author. We Were Liars and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks were both 5 star reads for me. Fly on the Wall and Genuine Fraud were disappointments.
Unfortunately, Again Again fell into the lose-some category for me.
I liked Adelaide as a character. She was funny and witty and not automatically 'likeable' - she made mistakes and was needy and had all these qualities that often make female characters seem high maintenance, and uptight.
But I liked her. She had a complex backstory, and I felt her trauma and experiences were reflected in how she behaved as a person in each of her relationships.
As for the other characters... well I didn't necessarily like them but I found them realistic and true to teenage boys. Some of the ways people talked were a bit... off? But idk, maybe that was just it coming through Adelaide's perspective?
I also liked the text threads throughout. It's rare to find accurate depictions of how teenagers speak to and text each other and this was actually done well.
What I really enjoyed though was the... I don't know what you'd call them. Little snippets throughout the book of ways the conversation could have turned if Adelaide answered differently. Mostly only a paragraph long, but enough to give some insight into the parallel worlds Adelaide could exist in if she said just one word differently. They were fun and interesting parts of the book and I thought they were really powerful and a unique way of showing everything Adelaide wanted to say but either couldn't or thought better of it. We all have those moments where we're desperate to know how something would have played out had we not said something, or said something else.
This all sounds really positive, doesn't it? But, Rebecca, you only gave it 3 stars?
I didn't like the ending, and that really dragged down the star rating for me. So, if you don't want spoilers, look away now.
Only read on if you have read the end or don't care about spoilers.
At about 80% or so of the way through the book, the story just ends. And for the rest of the novel, we get a different Adelaide, a parallel Adelaide. An Adelaide on the first day that we first met her on, but things happen differently, quicker, taking us to the same end point in time, but not in outcomes.
And... I get the point of it. The idea that there are multiple versions of us and all that jazz. But the first version ended so abruptly and then the next was so quick and I liked the additions of the snippets I mentioned earlier. But I didn't see the point, I didn't see the connection, and I'm sure some people would really enjoy it and think it was so clever and different but it just didn't work for me.