Josh Ferguson

Uggh. I can't. I just can't.

I gave up on this book on pg. 206, and have no desire to finish it. Seriously, how can you fuck up something with so much awesome potential?! How can you take a sure-fire sci-fi thrill ride and turn it into a romance that's as bland as Victoria Beckham's pout?!?!

You don't care for any of these two-dimensional characters and you definitively do not care for the painfully forced romance that blossoms between them. No matter how hard she tries through her (albeit fairly engaging) prose, Claudia Gray gives us no emotional depth to make anything in this story resonant or significant. And for a book pivoting around avenging a murder, nothing seems to get done! All they do is stare at each other's lips and fantasise. In fact, during one scene where the two main characters kiss, I was expecting at least one line of dialogue mid-snog along the lines of “But wait, what about your father?” “Who cares? SEX!!!”

Honest to God, I can't reccommend this to book to anyone. Sci-Fi fans, this is NOT for you. For this is NOT a Sci-Fi novel. It's a romance. And romance fans, look elsewhere also. Nothing new or enticing is on show here, and pretty much everything you hate about the romance genre is milked for all its worth.

The only things the book has going for it are a rather engrossing and compelling first chapter, and a nice cover. Speaking of which, this is a prime example of the ancient mantra ‘Don't Judge A Book By It's Cover'. A Thousand Pieces Of You has a specatcular cover, but the story itself doesn't live up to any form of expectation.

ALTERNATIVE BOOKS:
Sci-Fi fans: Check out Pivot Point by Kasie West for a much more satisfying use of parallel universes
Romance fans: Check out anything by Rainbow Rowell or Gayle Forman for a deeper, more emotionally impactful love story

A true storm in a tea-cup. Sprawling in scope and bursting with heart, the tiny world the titular family inhabits feels so much larger than just bricks and cobblestones. A perfect read to distract from the shitheap of 2020, and a marvellous read for the years to come. What a debut!