A review by emleemay
A World Without You by Beth Revis

2.0

Time won’t let me change it. I am, at best, an observer. I cannot rewrite history.

I just... can't rate this any higher. I want to. The premise is fascinating and I loved Revis' [b:Across the Universe|8235178|Across the Universe (Across the Universe, #1)|Beth Revis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1401852218s/8235178.jpg|13082532]. But, even though this book picks up in the second half, the idea is much stronger than the book itself.

Firstly, contrary to what some people seem to be assuming, this is not a sci-fi novel. And it's not a spoiler to say that either. I had thought it might be one of those novels where the narrator believes in something paranormal and everyone else thinks they're crazy, and we as the reader don't know which is true for most of the book. Actually, no. The novel is exactly what it appears to be from the blurb and it is clear instantly that this is a story about mental illness.

There were times, especially in the beginning, where I was disappointed that we knew the truth. The story didn't pull me in and I felt like I had all the answers but was waiting for Bo to catch up. Gradually, however, the book found its strength in portraying the fear and confusion one would expect from a severe mental illness - in fact, I believe this is the most severe psychosis I've ever read about in YA.

In [b:A World Without You|27272505|A World Without You|Beth Revis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1467209837s/27272505.jpg|47291212], Bo believes that he has the ability to travel through time. He also believes that he is at a school for teens with special powers, that his classmates also have their own powers, and that his beloved Sofía is trapped in 1692 - a time only he can rescue her from.

There were a number of problems for me.

1) Forgettable secondary characters. Literally none of the other characters are memorable. They appear as the most basic outlines of people, falling into bland boxes: the benevolent doctor, the distant workaholic father, the caring mother, the mean asshole (Ryan), the sassy one (Gwen), the weird one (Harold) and the sweet love interest (Sofía). None of them are developed beyond this.

Bo's relationship with each also remained undeveloped. Perhaps this was deliberate, given that his perspective rarely surfaced from his troubled mind, but the effect is that they are one-dimensional and easy to forget.

2) Phoebe's perspective. Bo's sister gets her own chapters and the problem is that she's uninteresting. Phoebe mostly whines about how she doesn't get any attention because she's the normal daughter with good grades and a college future. I know this is supposed to show the reality, in contrast with Bo's skewed perspective, but she is boring. Does anyone actually care whether she's the best or second-best cello player in her school orchestra?

3) Storytelling via flashbacks. In his attempt to save Sofía, Bo repeatedly tries to go to the past. However, he finds himself accidentally "travelling" to other memories instead. These parts felt really forced because it was obvious that the author was trying to paint in a backstory. It was like... "Oops, I'm in the wrong past! But oh! Here's a story about the early therapy sessions!"

4) Repetition about the damn strings! Bo views time as being like strings winding away into the past - in order to travel somewhere, he grabs the strings. And, honestly, it grew so tiring reading about the descriptions of strings, especially when he was searching for Sofía. Passages like this:

The red string of Sofía’s past evens out along the weave, smoothing down flat again. Any chance I had of pulling the end of Sofía’s string from the vortex disappears before my eyes.

Over and over.

5) The last chapter. As I said, the book does gain some strength as it progresses, mostly because it really is quite frightening to imagine Bo's confusion. The penultimate chapter is excellent and, though it would have been evil to leave it hanging there, it would have made an impact. Instead, we got one more chapter of Phoebe's perspective, taking the edge off and leaving it dull and flat.

A book with a lot of potential, but it didn't live up to it.

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