Passenger (Passenger Series, Vol. 1) (Passenger, #1)

by Alexandra Bracken

[Angie]

Passenger has pirates and time travel. This should totally have been my jam, but unfortunately, it's just boring. Also long. Long and boring. As Etta is performing her violin debut, she suddenly hears this odd noise. Next thing she knows, she's dragged off stage, finds her music instructor murdered, and then wakes up on a ship in 1776. It turns out that Etta's mom has been hiding the fact that she's a time-traveler, and now the head of the Ironwood family is holding her hostage unless Etta finds some mysterious relic for him.

The whole "search for a mysterious and powerful item or else" has been done to death, and it's not particularly compelling in Passenger. I didn't fully understand what this thing even was, other than it has the power to change history, and of course that's bad. And it's even worse if it falls into the bad guy's hand. But, I really didn't care, since we're never given a full explanation about this thing or given a reason to care about why the bad grandfather wants it in the first place.

There's also an out of nowhere romance in Passenger. One of the pirates on the ship that Etta winds up on is also a traveler. I actually really liked Nicholas. Maybe I felt some kind of kinship with him because we're both half Black and half white. I don't know. But I liked him. What I didn't like was the random kissing. They really do just start randomly making out after jumping through time. Then after a couple of days are declaring everlasting love. Um, right?

I did really like how time traveling worked in Passenger. Basically it's genetic and there are these portals that only people with the gene can pass through to go to different times and places. These portals/passages are only linked to a specific place and year, so the day depends on the day that you go through. So if you need to be somewhere on a certain day but are late, you'll have to wait another year to get there! That's pretty cool. You can also change the past, although doing so can be bad, and time will try to correct itself if it can.

Even with an awesomely explained time traveling system, Passenger still failed for me because nothing happens! Etta and Nicholas jump through time to find this relic before the dead line, but there's no sense of urgency. They have clues on how to find it, but Etta doesn't need to solve them. She just knows. It's like she printed out directions on MapQuest and is just following what it says. How is that exciting?! It's not.

Passenger just did nothing for me. It's needlessly long for the amount of stuff that actually happens. The plot is cliche and there's nothing new here. It just goes on and on and on and on...

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.