My Rating- 4 STARS
Synopsis- Sixteen year old Julia Phillips buries herself in guilt after killing her best friend Monica in a car accident. Julia awoke in the hospital with a broken leg, a new talent for drawing and false memories of the accident, in which she dies and Monica lives. The doctors attribute this to her head injury, but no one can explain how a bracelet engraved with her name ended up at the scene of the accident. A bracelet no one has ever seen before.
Classmate Evan Whittaker paid Julia no attention before the accident, let alone after. Now suddenly he's volunteering to tutor her and offering to drive her home. She can't ignore that his new obsession started after his two-day disappearance last week and that he wears a pendant she's been drawing for months. When the police show up one night looking for Evan, he begs Julia to run with him, convincing her that Monica is still alive. Julia agrees to go, never guessing where he's really from.
My Review- This was a fantastic book that had me flipping the pages eagerly to see what was going to happen next.
Julia woke from her car accident with very little memory of what actually happened, except that her friend, Monica, died in the crash and she believes she is to blame for it. She has nightmares where she is the one who died and Monica lived, though doctors say its because of her head trauma. For months after the accident Julia retreats inside herself, hardly talking, hardly eating or bothering with
life at all. Her schoolwork suffers, as does her family. One day when she visits Monica's grave, crying and desperate, warm arms hold her and she blacks out, not knowing who comforted her. From that day things begin to change, she becomes more aware of her surroundings and attempts a return to normality, but she believes she is damaged beyond repair.
Evan, the school's Mr. Popular, has started to notice her and offers to tutor her in the subjects she is failing at. Julia can not help but wonder why this boy, a boy who has not said more than two words to her before, has started to talk to her now and why he seems to really like her. All Julia knows is that she is falling for him, drawing his name in elaborate doodles and drawing a Celtic Love Knot that matches a necklace he wears. Evan is a little cryptic and acts strange, nothing like the popular boy he is perceived to be by the entire student body. He insists the car accident was not Julia's fault and that she needs to stop feeling guilty. He gets upset when he sees a bracelet on her wrist, one Julia can not remember owning, but was found at the scene of the crash.
Then things start to heat up. The police are searching for Evan and Julia has no clue why. She hears
rumors that there are two Evan's out there, who look exactly alike. Julia is confused, and to be honest so was I!! Much of the time I was like 'What the heck is happening!' but that is the beauty of this kind of plotline, it keeps you reading and biting your nails, hoping to figure it out.
When Evan turns up terrified and desperate, asking her to run away with him, Julia barely hesitates. Her home life is falling apart, as is her school life, and this boy has been the only one to incite any emotion inside her and she is falling for him deeply. Of course, she never realized WHERE he was taking her. She didn't quite expect to be lost to a world she knew and thrown in to another one where
she finds herself at the centre of a complicated love triangle, futuristic technologies and an almost destroyed America.
To go in to any more detail would seriously ruin this great book. It had me debating whether I would choose Evan or Reece and honestly just wanted to have both them. Evan is trusting, brave, honourable and sweet and Reece is sarcastic, funny and rough around the edges...plus a genius in disguise. Julia is a heartfelt character and one I warmed to within the first couple of chapters. She is guilt-ridden, brave and broken, but she tries really hard to be the Julia she was before the accident.
I am looking forward to book 2 in this series. Reece has a deeper backstory that is only hinted at, his mother's quick 'disappearance' is suspicious and Reece believes the powerful people of his home town are behind it. Julia is stuck in a place that she doesn't belong in, in the middle of two men who love her and Evan has literally crossed a universe to find her. Something tells me things are only just beginning for these three and I am excited to see how it turns out!