Tuesday 3 September 2013

Arc Review : When the World Was Flat (and we were in love) By Ingrid Jonach

  
Summary :

Looking back, I wonder if I had an inkling that my life was about to go from ordinary to extraordinary.

When sixteen-year-old Lillie Hart meets the gorgeous and mysterious Tom Windsor-Smith for the first time, it’s like fireworks — for her, anyway. Tom looks as if he would be more interested in watching paint dry; as if he is bored by her and by her small Nebraskan town in general.

But as Lillie begins to break down the walls of his seemingly impenetrable exterior, she starts to suspect that he holds the answers to her reoccurring nightmares and to the impossible memories which keep bubbling to the surface of her mind — memories of the two of them, together and in love.

When she at last learns the truth about their connection, Lillie discovers that Tom has been hiding an earth-shattering secret; a secret that is bigger — and much more terrifying and beautiful — than the both of them. She also discovers that once you finally understand that the world is round, there is no way to make it flat again. 

An epic and deeply original sci-fi romance, taking inspiration from Albert Einstein’s theories and the world-bending wonder of true love itself.

Review :

“You asked if we knew each other,” he said. “What if I told you we had met?”
“When?”
“In another life,” he said. “Another world.”
 


As the story starts, it could be any contemporary story set in a high school. The small town is a buzz with the news of a new boy and on first sight, Lillie is drawn to him. But he also seems strangely familiar, Lillie instinctively knows things about him she couldn’t possibly know. Do they really have some kind of weird connection, or is a simple teenage crush making her read way too much into Tom’s every word or gesture? I was a little disappointed though that I couldn’t feel the chemistry between Lillie & Tom. I wished we’d been able to see just a little more of what was going on in Tom’s head other than the closed, shut down almost rudeness without so much as a ‘conflicted pained look’ to explain why he was keeping her at a distance.

I felt that the revelation of a supernatural aspect to the plot came fairly late in the book, allowing the high-school drama to take front and center stage for the first half of the book. That’s a relatively large portion of the story which is solely dedicated to Lillie’s everyday life, as well as that of her family, friends, frenemies, and even the town. 

While reading the book I thought to myself, wow, this is a lot of background. This is kind of immature, boring, blah...but then there always these moments that kept me going. And looking back, after knowing the ending and the purpose I kinda like this book.

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