3:59

by Gretchen McNeil

[Amber]

I am a little bit disappointed by 3:59. Everyone should know by now that I love stories about parallel universes. Since they starting springing up in YA last year, I have been hunting them down and trying to get to as many as possible. It's a great trend, as is the time travel one, and I am so pleased that the science fiction genre is blowing up. But... 3:59 wasn't all that great.

I thought that the plot itself was pretty thrilling. I was captivated by it once Josie discovered the parallel universe and decided to visit Jo's world. I really liked seeing Josie experience Jo's life, and it was a lot of fun to see how things were different. I wasn't, however, a huge fan of the whole Nox thing. It felt too paranormal for me since 3:59 is supposed to be a science fiction novel.

I liked the characters, I guess, although I found them all to be fairly average. Josie was okay. I enjoyed reading about her, but she's not going to stick with me forever or anything. I kind of questionned the fact that she was basically a genius, and yet she took so long to put two and two together. Seriously, some of the twists in this book were basically shouted at her through a megaphone, and yet she still didn't get it.

And, of course, there's the instalove. I have mixed feelings about the romance because yes, it is instalove, but somehow I kind of shipped it. Josie and Nick's romance kind of makes sense, since Josie was with Nick in her own universe and had history with him, but these two had only known each other for a handful of days before declaring their love for each other. It got on my nerves, because I was having such a great time shipping them before that declaration happened. Nevertheless, Nick was kind of hot.

I really liked the ending. It liked how it wrapped things up nicely, but left it just open-ended enough to give the reader hope on how things would turn out for the characters. It was all very exciting, and it reminded me of Lost. For reasons that I cannot say.

3:59 is a good read, it really was, I just had some issues with it and I couldn't move past them. I liked it well enough, but it's not going to stick with me or anything. I loved the science-y stuff and the parallel universes, but the rest fell a little flat.