Eleanor was not what I expected.
When I read “Eleanor has been ripped out of time…” on the front cover of this novel, I expected there to be quite a bit of time travel; but that’s not quite what happened here. Turns out, it isn’t necessarily different times that Eleanor is traveling to; it is different realities. In fact, it is different people’s realities.
In 1985, Eleanor’s identical twin sister, Esmerelda, is torn from her life in a horrible accident. Esmerelda’s death pulls the family apart and Eleanor becomes a source of resentment to her own mother. Her parents separate and her mother begins to heavily rely on alcohol to help her get through the days she spends seeing her dead daughter’s face on Eleanor. Eleanor spends her days just trying to keep her mother alive.
The first time it happens, Eleanor is fourteen. She walks through a simple door at school, and vanishes. Again and again, against her will, she falls out of her reality and into other ones. Sometimes only an hour has gone by, sometimes days or even months have passed before she returns to her own reality. Again and again she leaves behind empty rooms and worried loved ones.
One day, Eleanor is removed from her world altogether and meets a stranger who reveals to her that the death of her sister is not the only grief that plagues her family. She realizes then that if she can harness her curious ability, she may be able to save and heal her family from generations of grief and pain.
This is a story I fully expected to be magical, yet I didn’t expect to be so raw and to dive beautifully into the depths of grief and depression. Author Jason Gurley does a great job of pulling you into worlds inside of worlds and takes you into someone’s reality who is grieving. I was so surprised by this book, and Gurley’s writing was delightful; I’ve never read a novel that really made me understand and experience grief like this book has. This is a story about the beauty of healing, and Gurley definitely made it beautiful.
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