Jessica Shirvington is the author of THE VIOLET EDEN CHAPTERS also known as THE EMBRACE SERIES, stand alone novel, BETWEEN THE LIVES and has an exciting new duology called DISRUPTION on the way in 2014.
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
I found One Past Midnight interesting and if you enjoy stories that include time jumping and parallel lives, I think you will enjoy this one. The story pulled me right in and I couldn’t put it down until I figured out what Sabine was going to do.
We find out fairly quickly that Sabine isn’t like other teenagers. She has always had two lives and every night at midnight, she shifts from one to the other. While she is Sabine in each life, the other aspects of her lives are different. She has a sister in one and two brothers in the other; she is a straight A student and popular boyfriend in one and is considered a “delinquent” in the other, and so on. The shift has always been something that scared Sabine and she knows that she has to be careful in her lives to not create any questions or issues. That means no major changes in her appearance or how she acts. When Sabine accidentally falls down the subway stairs and breaks her wrist, she scrambles to figure out how she is going to make it work in her other life.
Imagine Sabine’s surprise when she wakes up in her other life and her wrist isn’t broken. She begins to doubt whether she really has to follow the rules she has always thought she had to. Since Sabine has always wanted to live one life, this new change prompts her to begin thinking of ways to test what she thinks she knows and eventually she hopes to make a choice where she can live only one of her lives.
I liked Sabine in both her lives and Shirvington did a great job of showing how much pressure she felt. I loved the introduction of Ethan and the role he played in Sabine’s life. He made her think about her situation and not just look at it as a bad thing. I didn’t really see what happened with him coming – don’t get me wrong, I knew something was up but I had no idea what it was. The way his story ties back into Sabine’s (view spoiler), was perfect.
One thing I wish we would have gotten into in the story was why Sabine was the way she was. I found it interesting that she just accepted things as if they were normal and when she found out they weren’t, she didn’t really do anything to figure out why she was different from everyone else. Granted…I’m not sure how she would have gone about finding out why she is how she is, but I would have liked to know.
I have to admit, I preferred the Sabine in Roxbury to the one in Wellesley. Mostly because the Sabine in Wellesley was trying to be perfect all the time and she only did what she thought everyone expected of her. Her relationship with Dex was frustrating and I wanted her to figure out what she needed to do sooner. I will say, I was happy to see her relationship with her brothers change – I didn’t understand if they really just didn’t like Dex and that was the reason for their mutual dislike of each other but once she took care of that situation, they appeared to have a better relationship.
If you are looking for an interesting story that has some interesting twists and turns and keeps you turning the pages, definitely check this one out when you can.
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