by 
I Love This Book
There’s nothing better than stumbling upon a book I can’t put down. Reading until the wee hours of the morning because I’m lost in the story is one of my guilty pleasures.
I don’t often gush about a book, but I can’t talk about All Our Yesterdays, a debut novel by Christin Terrill, without raving.
I bought this book about eight months ago but only got around to reading it last week. The book starts out with a bang and never lets up. It’s a roller coaster ride through time and emotions. The story pulls one way and then another.
The characters engaged me from the beginning, and throughout the story, I wondered how things could be resolved. To say the ending is bittersweet is an understatement. An “everyone lives happily ever after ending” would have been impossible.
The genre is young adult science fiction. I’ve seen the book labeled as a thriller, a time travel novel, an action adventure, and a dystopian novel. I’d say, yes to all those and add that it’s a complex, sometimes heart-wrenching love story. The book is tightly plotted. On the surface, the story might seem to be a political thriller/dystopia, but on a deeper level, it’s about the complex relationships of family, friends, and lovers.
Brief Summary
I don’t want to give too much away because I’d like a reader to be as surprised and as enchanted as I was reading this story.
The book begins in the not too distant future with Em and Finn, two young adults, imprisoned for unknown reasons. They have information the Doctor and the government wants, and the world has turned into the kind of nightmarish place that our contemporary, reactionary politicians warn us about.
Add to this dystopian world a time machine, which the protagonists have already used to travel back and try to undo the things that have caused the current problems. They’ve failed each time. This story is about their sixteenth trip back and their last hope of changing the future.
Em and Finn travel back four years to when they were sixteen and their world changed. The contrast between their sixteen-year-old selves and the people they have become emphasizes the enormity of the difficult decisions they make and those they can’t make.
The tender and sometimes harsh loved story that plays out is one most people can identify with: will the person you fall in love with as a teenager be the same person when he or she becomes an adult? Will you be the same? An age-old dilemma that many who marry their childhood sweethearts or who fantasize over unrequited love address.
What I Liked
I liked it from beginning to end, but here are three things I thought were especially good:
- The time shifts and time travel; the reader experiences the shifts and begins to piece together the story; a reader is never confused about who the story is about and where the character is in time; plus, each, shift adds more to the mystery; reading becomes very much like putting a puzzle together one piece at a time.
- The tight structure of the story and plot; a lesser writer could have mangled this, but not Terrill, who does an excellent job of tightly weaving the story pieces together.
- The action pace of the story; from page one, the story is off and running; there is no middle sag; the quiet moments in the story were perfectly paced to give the reader and the characters a much-needed breather.
- The story never takes the easy way out and everything is worked out in a logical, satisfying way.
A Couple of Things I Wasn’t Crazy About
These two areas grated against my sensibilities and hovered in the back of my mind as I read.
- Upper-middle-class, white, spoiled, self-centered girl; genius upper-middle-class, white, boy; plus, one, smart, white, poor boy going to a good school on a scholarship and friends with the other two. Sound familiar? The ubiquitous and stereotypical nature of characters did intrude on the story.
- The girl in love with the wrong boy, while the right boy is in love with her felt a little too strained and predictable. One of the reasons I don’t read romance novels is because of this overused, predictable triangle story. Give me something new and different. I can imagine someone saying, “But there is complexity in these relationships.” I’d agree, which might have saved the story from falling flat.
I longed for the diversity around me to show up in the books I read.
It’s A Great Book
There’s still time to run out and buy it for yourself or give it as a holiday gift for your favorite young adult.
The Usual Reminders
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