Dystopian, time travel, NetGalley, secrets, romance

Freya Kallas: 16 years old, father is dead, moved to Canada, feels like she’s in a fog.
Garren Lowe: 18 years old who doesn’t remember Freya even though she insists he should.

I’m not sure if this book is wanted to be a time travel, dystopian, or flashback book. I keep waiting for Freya to figure out she’s in a really alternate reality program rather than really back in the 80’s. There is a lot of information dump as one reviewer said. The ending is not a cliff hanger but there is more to come. (Sequel: Tomorrow according to her website.) The ending did seem kind of – wow what?

This is Ms. Martin’s first book I’ve read, but I have two of her contemporary books in my library. I’m not planning on buying this one – quite a few of my dystopian readers have graduated, and I would only buy it for them if I needed even more of this type of book.
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This book was amazing for many reasons. The story kept building and building until an interesting twist at the end. I loved how the book went from a futuristic world to a very memorable past. Being able to read a book and actually know about the things in it, because it is a true place or time in history that people know of first hand or know enough about because its so recent, is exciting. Definitely a page turner. ( )

NOTE: I received this title from Netgalley.

Ummmmm... sadly, reading this book was a torture. And I truly hate saying this, but it's the truth. I don't even know why I stuck to the end, perhaps because there were moments of "Oh, I hope this turns out good after all". But it didn't. It was a complete waste of time.

So here how it goes:

The first chapter got me hooked. I loved the mystery of it and how it developed. I liked Freya's character, and her fighting spirit. But then, everything changed. It was confusing, to say the least. It was slow and boring and for the first 30-40% of the book nothing really happened. A bunch of inconsequential characters were introduced, and honestly I don't think they had any place in the story. Perhaps the author wanted to make a point (though I can't tell what it might be), but it just didn't work.

Then, Freya stumbled upon Garren, and I thought "Finally! Something's gonna happen!" But. No. More boring chapters follow, and I don't even remember what happened in them.

It wasn't until we neared the 50% mark that things kind of got moving. But we never get any glimpse in this absolutely confusing world until Freya goes to the hypnotherapist. Then guess what happens? More. Boring. Chapters. Why, in the name of a white cuddly bunny, did the author dedicate so many (like 20) pages to just droll on and on and on in a newspaper monotone voice about the world where Freya and Garren are really from? I mean, all those hundreds of facts are suddenly poured down on the reader, and it's just incredibly irritating and not to mention, confusing! I was lost in the first page, and had to just skip around till I found the place where they were talking about characters. Honestly, it didn't take me more than 2 lines to catch up to the stuff I'd skipped over. So, umm.. yeah..

And, keeping to my honesty policy, I'm also going to share that I didn't like the characters. Not one of them. They were distant to me. The way they spoke bothered me. Their behavior displeased me. And even their supposed outer beauty nauseated me.

Which all leads to just one conclusion: I would not be reading the sequel. It's unfortunate, I know, especially since putting together a book is a lot of hard work. But at least, when you're going to work on it so much, make it interesting. That's all I'm saying. ( )

Yesterday by CK Kelly Martin is a YA science fiction that's part dystopia and part time travel. Freya wakes up in 1985 after escaping from something awful in the "not to distant future" (with apologies to MST3K). Except, 1985 Freya has no memory of what she has escaped from, believing instead that she and her mother and sister have recently moved to Canada after her father's accidental death.

What begins, thus, as a high action, in media res, dystopian science fiction, settles into being a rather drab YA angst fest set in 1985 — I suppose for the adult women who are feeling nostalgic and like to read YA fiction. Sure, I fit that bill and yes, I can assert that the details are convincing for it being 1985 but I'm not sure how all this attention to detail is going to play with the intended readership. I'm not saying that today's teens can't or won't get something from reading books published in previous decades but this book reads like nostalgia — and not a period piece. And it's nostalgia for a decade that was over for years before today's teen readers were even born.

Eventually, though, Freya begins to get her memory back. She sees a boy she thinks she recognizes — Garren. After stalking him until he's forced to give in to her craziness, they realize that something is, in fact, amiss with the stories they've both been told. This realization finally heralds the return of the long missing action.

But wait, there's more! Two thirds of the way through the book, when things should be moving towards either a resolution or the set up for a cliffhanger, Yesterday goes into info-dump mode. Rather than being filtered through Freya's point of view (as the rest of the plot before and since), the narration moves into third person omniscient and we are given pages and pages and pages and pages and pages (yawn) of the history between 1985 and the future year that Freya and Garren are from. After that were told why people are sent back in time and Freya and Garren have to decide wether or not they want to play along with their newly assigned roles.

Up until this point, I really expected 1985 to be some sort of Matrix-style simulation. There are parts where Freya and Garren are too easily found and their piece of Canada seems much too small and much to simplistic to be the real thing. Time travel, though, for me, doesn't fit.

For better versions of the same story I recommend:

"Phineas and Ferb's Quantum Boogaloo" from season 2 of Phineas and Ferb
Back to the Future II
Meanwhile by Jason Shiga (a CYBILs winner) ( )

A refreshing change from most YA and dystopian fiction where the protagonist seemed more grounded in her world, which is an odd thing to say about a book where the characters increasing sense of unreality leads her to discover the truth about who she is, and less angsty about friends, crushes, etc. I think her obsessive pursuit for the truth is what gives me this feeling. ( )