Rating: WARTY!
Parallel is a young adult novel about a girl who is trapped between two parallel worlds, each containing a slightly different version of her life. This happened when these two world somehow came into contact, resulting in an earthquake in the one version, and inexplicable dull headache in the other. I'm not sure that the author really understands what a parallel universe means, although the science is not fringe, by any means. Parallel universes are the inevitable outcome of the physics we have which gives us our best understanding of how the universe came to be - to date! It's always 'to date' in the world of science because understanding can change with new information. The problem is that if two of these universes collided, you'd be probably more likely to end up with a brand new Big Bang and a third universe created than you would be to get an earthquake and a headache, but this is fiction, so go with it, right?
I don't mind it when authors play fast and loose with science if they can give me a good story, but for an author to shrink an event of this magnitude down to a teenage girl's love triangle is taking things way too far for my taste, and doing real science a disservice. The story is written like the only important thing this massive event affected is Abby Barnes's career plans, and no one else noticed! Say what?! In the entire universe, the only sentient being who is aware of what's going on is Abby? Doesn't that make her special! And rest assured she is very special. She has the perfect life and the perfect career path and the perfect friend and the perfect family and everything is laid out perfectly to perfection. Yep, this isn't Abby Barnes, it's Mary Sue!
I enjoyed the opening chapter, but by chapter two I was already having issues with this, and by a quarter the way through I was really feeling like this was going nowhere that had not been gone before by a thousand crappy YA novels replete with high school melodrama and love triangles. I mean, seriously, this girl is aware of an Earth shattering event (almost literally!), where two parallel universes have collided, and yet rather than focus on that, she's much more interested - forget that, she's much more obsessed - with some random guy she met that she's inexplicably head-over-heels in love with after one drunken date than ever she is with this incredible event! I lost all respect for her when she became a jellyfish if he so much as breathed in her direction (this spinelessness actually happened on one occasion, I kid you not).
Her behavior is that of a fourteen year old freaking over the latest music star than ever it is the behavior of a supposedly smart and together career path student in her late teens. I get that even though this has happened, she has to get on with her life, and that her life is rather more difficult to get on with than most, but seriously? It was laughable how shallow she was. Worse than that, she was not likable, nor was her snotty friend Caitlin who was not only runway model gorgeous (so-called), but has the brains of Einstein. Not that that can't happen (Marilyn vos Savant I'm looking at you!), but question here was: is there anywhere in this cozy little universe that perfection has not pervaded?
Abby's original plan had been to go to journalism school at Northwestern after which she would then get a job at a newspaper. This was set in 2009, admittedly, but newspapers were going down the toilet even then, and this is her career plan? Yes, they moved online, but who at Abby's age, even considers newspaper, print or online, a source of news these days? I don't doubt that some do, and that Abby should, but she never even talks about newspapers, keeping up with the news, reading web news sites or anything. She doesn't even blog! It's a total disconnect, but then this was written by a lawyer, so maybe that explains something.
The only fly in Abby's luxuriously creamy ointment isn't even technically in her ointment so why it's such a bother to her is a mystery. This fly is named Ilana (and I had the hardest time, because of the typeface used in the hardback, figuring out what the heck her name was. Was it LIANA? LLANA? ILANA?! Ilana (the latter version) was the most abused character in this universe, and for no good reason except that Caitlin and Abby simply spewed vitriol at her with far more dedication than even the most rabid skunk will try to get you.
They didn't even care that their purported best friend Tyler (can we get names any more down-home than these three: Abby, Caitlin, Tyler? really?) likes her and hangs with her. They abuse her anyway and Tyler never even gets pissed off with their attitude! Not that Ilana was exactly the most pleasant person on the planet, but it occurred to me that the reason she was that way, was because of the endless hate rays being beamed at her by the truculent twins. The only difference between these girls, as far as I could tell, was that the one actually had sex, while the other two were all but virginal, so obviously they had the moral high ground and Ilana was lower than snake vomit. Ri-ight! Got it. Is that the legal view? No wonder rape victims get nervous about reporting such crimes.
I honestly don't get why you would want to introduce a fascinating and cutting-edge sci-fi element into your YA novel, if all you're going to do then is tell a trope YA love triangle/high school melodrama story with it? What a chronic waste! The weird thing about it was that these two worlds which merged were not even at the same date. One was exactly a year out from the other, for no apparent reason. In what way was it parallel again? As the story bounced inexplicably back and forth between them, the younger Abby was seeing her carefully constructed baby blanket unravel in the present, and finding her life completely different from what she had planned.
We're told that the two worlds she is shown in are supposedly merging slowly, and she's afraid of losing herself, but she's losing herself in herself, so it's a bit weird and intriguing on that score. It's a bit like having schizophrenia, I suppose. In the future she can recall what happened in the past, but only bit by bit, just like she can only "recall" the new skills she has developed when it comes down to the wire. This made no sense to me, and it quickly became tedious, because Abby's perfect life only had the most minuscule of problems: like she didn't want to coxswain the boat for the rowing team.
Frankly she was pathetic, and not worth reading about.
