Stars: 3 out of 5
The concept is really unique, and the consequences of the Looping are mind-boggling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this concept in any other book, game, or movie. The whole world is caught in time loops, be it humans, animals, or insects. etc. Basically, everything living is caught in time loops. These loops vary in length, and they don’t all start at the same time, but everyone repeats a loop from the past 2 days before the event that caused the looping. And everything that is tied to this loop – buildings, roads, objects, even nature – is also looping.
Then we have some people who are not looped. They just woke up one Saturday morning to a completely changed world, with their loved ones looped and no explanation as to what happened. And when they try to interact with their looped loved ones, the consequences are… disastrous. The loop breaks, the looped person flies into a rage and tries to kill them, then they die and vanish. A lot of non-looped people didn’t survive these first few moments of the looping. A lot died afterwards from starvation or from accidentally breaking a loop. The ones who did tried to build a new world in the non-looped cracks of the old one.
This story is fascinating and made for a very suspenseful read. Unfortunately, the book dragged a lot in the middle where seemingly nothing would happen between about 35 to 75%. Then it rushed towards the ending without much setup. Suddenly, things were happening; people who had seemed friendly and courteous were trying to kill the protagonists, and everything was going to hell in a handbasket.
I would have been more on board with this direction if the author had spent the middle of the book setting this up instead of descriptions of life in the settlement and nothing happening for years and years. Had they set up the conflict about the colliders earlier, Coco’s desertion would have felt more justified. As it stands, all those revelations come out the left field.
My biggest issue with this book, though, is the stylistic choice the author made to tell the story as a series of journal entries. I don’t particularly gel with that narrative style because it feels less personal than being in the characters’ heads in the moment. We read about the events that already happened, and the character is obviously alive to write about them, so there is no tension and fear for their well-being.
It also prevents me from bonding with the characters, so I don’t particularly care about their relationships with other characters either. Like Coco’s love for Jorge. She talks about it, but we don’t get to see the small, intimate moments that would make me care about this relationship. Same with Pam. Coco writes that she is devastated when the older woman dies because she was her best friend, but we, as readers, don’t get to see any of their interactions apart from a few sprinkled in the journal entries, so we don’t feel that impact.
The book keeps me at arm’s length, so I don’t care enough about any of the characters to be affected by their ultimate choice.
I will say that I liked the ending. Our little band of survivors finally break the world out of its loops, and it’s up to the rest of humanity to figure where to go from here.
PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.