Book Review: A Thousand Pieces of You

 Title: A Thousand Pieces of You (Firebird #1)
Author: Claudia Gray
Publisher: Harper Teen
Publication Date: November 4, 2014
Genres: Young Adult // Sci Fi // Romance // Fantasy
Format: Physical Copy 
Source: Library


Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their radical scientific achievements. Their most astonishing invention: the Firebird, which allows users to jump into parallel universes, some vastly altered from our own. But when Marguerite’s father is murdered, the killer—her parent’s handsome and enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.
Marguerite can’t let the man who destroyed her family go free, and she races after Paul through different universes, where their lives entangle in increasingly familiar ways. With each encounter she begins to question Paul’s guilt—and her own heart. Soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is more sinister than she ever could have imagined.
A Thousand Pieces of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure (goodreads).



It's always disappointing when you have such high hopes for a book, and it doesn't deliver - at all. 


Plot: A Thousand Pieces of You promises betrayal and parallel universes, and it definitely delivered on the parallel universes bit but the overall conflict was done sloppily. Characters were quick to believe without physical evidence and some story lines were not balanced; Claudia Gray writes pages and pages of  Russia with love and detail, and then other universes get a few pages of description and nowhere near the love that she put into Russia. 

Characters: The first few pages of A Thousand Pieces of You start right after the murder of Marguerite's father and her hunt after her father's supposed killer-Paul. I found it difficult to get a found foundation of each character's personality type because most of the descriptions are told through flashbacks, but then those descriptions might not serve true in another dimension. I wanted to know more about the characters but once Claudia gave you a piece of interesting information (for example, Theo), we would get swept back into present day and another matter would be more pressing than character development. 

The love triangle (square? what the hell was going on with that) thing was weird and I didn't approve. That's all I'll say about that aspect of the book. 

World Building: "Amber, it seems like all you're doing is complaining, why did you rate it three stars then?" And you're right, I am pretty much ripping this book apart, the only thing that saved it was the detail and thought that Claudia Gray put into her dimensions. Every world was unique and had little interesting aspects like technological advancements and small historical tweaks. 

Short N Sweet: A Thousand Pieces of You was an unbalanced story with a questionable love interest. Although I wasn't the biggest fan, the development of the other universes is what kept me turning pages. 



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