Friday, October 23, 2015

ARC Review: An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes

As I mentioned in my previous blog, Emma of Miss Print sometimes adopts out ARCs that she has received. The second ARC that I adopted from her is An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes by Randy Ribay.


 
When I first received the ARC, I was really shocked because it was a hardcover copy instead of softcover like I am used to. The cover is gorgeous too. I like that it is simple with a couple of details (white clouds, gold stars, and writing. The texture is interesting; it feels more like parchment instead of the usual smooth cover.

One part of the book that I especially liked was the amount of diversity in the book. There are characters that are straight, gay, white, black, Asian, adopted, raised by two parents, raised by divorced parents, raised by grandparents, and that's just the main characters. The side characters are just as diverse. I like that the characters aren't stereotypical either. They're diverse in a way that is unique and organic to them.

Beyond the diversity, I didn't really like the story. The tagline on the cover reads "In real life, you need real friends." As far as I could tell, none of the characters were really all that close until the very end of the book. Actually, they were all real assholes to each other. I didn't like that we followed the events of a couple of days from the point of view of four characters, making us rehash the same events several times over. It felt too tedious and dragging. The plot of the story was pretty generic YA fare for the most part too and it ended abruptly. I give this book 2 out of 5 stars. The book was okay, but there was a lot of room for improvement.

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