Cam and his girlfriend Viv have each other, and what more could they possibly need? Everything seems to be going well, and then Viv dies in a car accident that Cam feels responsible for. Cam is heartbroken and can't seem to move forward in his life. He visits Viv's shrine everyday, he dreams of her at night, and he replays the accident throughout the day. One evening as he is visiting the shrine, he sees a girl who looks ghostly. He doesn't know what to make of it; the girl doesn't look like anyone he knows, nor does it appear to be Viv. Cam wonders if he is going crazy, but then he realizes the girl is real, and from another dimension. Cam follows Nina into her world, and he sees what he has longed to see for two long months: Viv, alive. But as Cam interacts with Viv in "her" world, he discovers that it all looks the same, but underneath, it is really very different. For a first novel, Through to Me is not a bad book, but it felt to me that the plot didn't really move. Nothing much exciting happened until the last few chapters; it was just a lot of going back and forth between the two dimensions, and a lot of teen love story gone bad. The characters seemed a little shallow. I liked the idea of the two dimensions, which is always intriguing to me; I often wonder if there is another world that is parallel, or what would happen if one different decision was made. This book explored the teen love story, but not the interaction of the dimensions, which would have been interesting. Overall not a bad read, but a little too teen lovey-dovey for me. If you’re looking for a writer whose work typifies the phrase, “Leave space for the reader to inhabit,” Hainsworth is your girl.It’s difficult for me to allow myself the luxury of reading for long, long stretches, but once I slipped into this book, it was difficult to escape. The prose of this YA novel is so eloquently written, each detail so carefully selected as to–at times–be almost sparse, that I glided through it in just a few hours. Everything from the protagonist’s voice to the description of the setting feels authentic, giving the reader just enough detail to enjoy, picture, and relate to what occurs in a given scene–allowing them plenty of latitude to fill in pieces for themselves. It’s fitting that, in this novel which plays with the concept of moving through a portal to another reality, Hainsworth has left the perfect about of space for the reader to inhabit. She draws us into her world by making room for us.The story question, deceptively simple, raises all kinds of problems for Camden PIke: What if he were able to see his dead girlfriend, still alive in an alternate reality? The setting, despite Camden’s ability to move between realities, is closed and simple, and the book’s cast of characters–limited. By doing this, Hainsworth funnels the reader’s attention more toward the internal story–Cam’s struggle as he compares what he thought he knew about his girlfriend’s basic nature to her possessive, reckless behavior under the conditions of this alternate universe. This is while Cam, at the same time, confronts another version of his own story where a positive attitude and different choices lead to greater success. The blame for how his life turned out in his own reality rests squarely on his shoulders…with one small caveat. Cam will learn that the people who enter his life–and those he makes an effort to keep close to him–ultimately help to make him a different person.Hainsworth is one of those authors who makes it look easy but whose work, upon close examination, can be appreciated down tot he sentence level for exactly how much effort was put into it. And this is only her first novel. An immediate fan–I can’t wait to plunge into her next book.
What do You think about Weg Van Jou (2012)?
one of the most amazing books i had ever read simply beautiful
—HAZEL03
