Review: All Our Yesterdays - Cristin Terrill

A brilliantly brain-warping thriller and a love story that leaps back and forth in time – All Our Yesterdays is an amazing first novel, perfect for fans of The Hunger Games.

Em is locked in a bare, cold cell with no comforts. Finn is in the cell next door. The Doctor is keeping them there until they tell him what he wants to know. Trouble is, what he wants to know hasn’t happened yet.

Em and Finn have a shared past, but no future unless they can find a way out. The present is torture – being kept apart, overhearing each other’s anguish as the Doctor relentlessly seeks answers. There’s no way back from here, to what they used to be, the world they used to know. Then Em finds a note in her cell which changes everything. It’s from her future self and contains some simple but very clear instructions. Em must travel back in time to avert a tragedy that’s about to unfold. Worse, she has to pursue and kill the boy she loves to change the future . . .

Cassandra Chronicles:
All Our Yesterdays
Future titles and release dates to be confirmed

Visit Cristin Terrill's website for more information

Review:
All Our Yesterdays is a very hard book to review, not because it isn't a fantastic read but because it would be so easy to give spoilers and I would absolutely hate to ruin this book for anyone who hasn't read it yet. It can be very hard to find a time travel story that is believable and that is as well written as this one, I was completely hooked from the very beginning and even stayed up until 4am to finish reading it. The story has two narrators, Marina, who tells of events that already happened and Em, who is telling you what is currently going on. These two tales are woven together expertly and it is done in a way that leaves you desperate to find out how things will turn out in both different threads. You might think that it would get confusing having the story told like this but Marina and Em have such distinctive voices that it was easy to tell whose part you were reading at any time.

The story starts with Em who is currently imprisoned and being regularly tortured because she refuses to give up a certain piece of information that her desperately captors need. She lives in a bleak and desolate world that has practically been destroyed by someone she once considered her closest friend - the boy she was madly in love with. The only thing helping her get through her situation is Finn, the boy imprisoned in the cell next door who she is able to speak with through the wall that separates them. Em is determined to prevent the future she is currently living in by returning to the past and stopping events before they are able to unfold but she knows that what she needs to do is going to break her heart.

I don't really want to say much more about the plot than that and I'm not going to tell you anything about Marina and what is going on in her life so you're just going to have to read the book to find out. What I will say is that the story is complex, incredibly well plotted and absolutely addictive to read. Cristin Terrill has included so many twists and turns that you literally have no idea what she is going to throw at you next. The characters are incredibly three dimensional, some you will love and others who you will love to hate but there are none who you will feel indifferent to. They all have flaws as well as strengths and it was interesting to see the way events in their pasts had effected the people they turned into in the future. I'm going to confess that the ending confused the heck out of me at first (you have to remember that I finished it at 4am so I'm giving my brain a bit of a break for not being able to figure it out sooner!) and it wasn't until after I'd had a conversation with a friend and re-read the last few chapters the next day that I really got it straight in my mind. Once I had got my brain around it I realised just how brilliant it was and I was tempted to immediately start reading the story again from the very beginning just to appreciate how cleverly it was written.

I'm happy to say that the book doesn't end on a cliffhanger but I'm pleased to discover that this is part of a two book series and I'm very much looking forward to seeing where Cristin Terrill takes us next. I can't even guess at the things she has in store for Em and Finn but I'm dying to find out!

Source: Received from Bloomsbury in exchange for an honest review

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