[Review] Mirror in the Sky by Aditi Khorana

15:00 Cilla 2 Comments


I came into Mirror in the Sky imagining it to be a sci-fi novel about an alternate universe where the lives of Earth's teenagers and their Sliding Doors, alien doppelganger somehow intersect. That's not what happened. This is more of a contemporary novel about the power of 'what if's rather than a sci-fi, and I wish I'd known that before I started. While the premise is intriguing and I enjoyed the depiction of high-school friendships, I kept waiting for something else to happen.


I do like the concept that the sheer knowledge that there is another version of us out there is enough to encourage people to change. It's like, the answers to our 'what if's are out there already, we may as well find out for ourselves. It makes sense that it's especially impactful for the teenage characters, who are still figuring themselves out, and for the ones who wish that one thing in their lives hadn't happened.

There are also things I like about the portrayal of the high school social scene. Most of the characters portray themselves one way in public, but are something else in private. The kids who seem to have it all together often don't. The ignorance that Tara encounters as a minority in her school made me cringe because it's never nice to read, but I thought it was an important part to show in the story.

The problem is, I never connected to the characters. I'm interested in the things that happened and I get their choices, but I'm not emotionally invested in any of it. I wonder if I would have felt differently had I known what I was getting into, but I don't think it would have mattered in terms of characterisation.

In any case, Mirror in the Sky has an interesting take on the alternate universes idea. Unfortunately, I never cared about the characters and I was expecting more of a sci-fi story. In the end, I never engaged with the story and left the book feeling dissatisfied.



Reading this book contributes to the following challenges:
❥ Goodreads Challenge
❥ The Backlist Books Reader Challenge
❥ #ReadDiverse2017
❥ #AsianLitBingo
Title: Mirror in the Sky ❙ Author: Aditi Khorana ❙ Publisher: Razorbill ❙ Source: Borrowed ❙ Release Date: 21 June 2016

"For Tara Krishnan, navigating Brierly, the academically rigorous prep school she attends on scholarship, feels overwhelming and impossible. Her junior year begins in the wake of a startling discovery: A message from an alternate Earth, light years away, is intercepted by NASA. This means that on another planet, there is another version of Tara, a Tara who could be living better, burning brighter, because of tiny differences in her choices. 

As the world lights up with the knowledge of Terra Nova, the mirror planet, Tara’s life on Earth begins to change. At first, small shifts happen, like attention from Nick Osterman, the most popular guy at Brierly, and her mother playing hooky from work to watch the news all day. But eventually those small shifts swell, the discovery of Terra Nova like a black hole, bending all the light around it. 

As a new era of scientific history dawns and Tara's life at Brierly continues its orbit, only one thing is clear: Nothing on Earth--and for Tara--will ever be the same again."

2 comments:

  1. Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction19 August 2017 at 08:46

    I hate it when I go into a book expecting one thing and then the book delivers something completely different. It can ruin an otherwise good book because you keep waiting for what you think is going to happen---and it doesn't. Very frustrating!

    Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Cilla13 October 2017 at 12:47

      Right?? Sometimes I wish book blurbs or marketing strategies are clearer for this reason.

      Delete

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