Review One Past Midnight

One Past Midnight by Jessica Shirvington Goodreads | Amazon

Published by Bloomsbury USA July 22, 2014

Source: Library

Bookologists Analysis: Fall and keep on falling into this book. Swim between the lives to find the greatest depth. This book was definitely a good one. But that was with the writing and plot all mixed. I was swept off my feet for a while, but not a long while. During the book it is intense but after coming from the roller coaster it is not as intense.

Above all else, though I try not to think about it, I know which life I prefer. And every night when I Cinderella myself from one life to the next a very small, but definite, piece of me dies. The hardest part is that nothing about my situation has ever changed. There is no loophole.

Until now, that is... 

For as long as she can remember, Sabine has lived two lives. Every 24 hours she Shifts to her ′other′ life - a life where she is exactly the same, but absolutely everything else is different: different family, different friends, different social expectations. In one life she has a sister, in the other she does not. In one life she′s a straight-A student with the perfect boyfriend, in the other she′s considered a reckless delinquent. Nothing about her situation has ever changed, until the day when she discovers a glitch: the arm she breaks in one life is perfectly fine in the other.With this new knowledge, Sabine begins a series of increasingly risky experiments which bring her dangerously close to the life she′s always wanted... But just what - and who - is she really risking? 

On the book cover it says “The perfect life, or the perfect love. You choose.” That sentence pretty much sums up the entire overall structure of the book fairly well. Sabine has been “shifting” between two different lives for her whole and just wants out. She’s scared of the shift because it shifts her conscience and body between dimensions/planes. Her life revolves around the fact she has to keep her secret covered and masked or else she is going to be pinned as a mental case. In her “perfect” life she has plans to go to Harvard, has money, and has a boyfriend, Dex (who she is not totally in love with, after all she counts the seconds she kisses him). In her “other” life she lives in a middle income family who run a drug store, has one friend named Capri, and an adorable little sister.  Despite all her fortune in the “perfect” life it is in the “other” life that Ethan changes the whole game.

Ethan, oh my lovely adorable sweet Ethan, is Sabine’s nurse after she starts experimenting with the physical side of the shift. Describing Ethan is near impossible because he is such a curious character. He melds and molds to become different people. In all of it though Ethan never loses faith in what Sabine can do.  Sabine goes through such a journey though, physical, mentally, and emotionally. All she wants is a place where she can be “normal” and not have to shift is what she craves in the beginning. Somewhere along the way she finds that despite being a part of two worlds; the two worlds are also a part of her.

The writing was usual Jessica Shirvington style- sassy, short, and quick to the point.  I personally wished that I could have savored the story a little more. The romance was a bit too much for me, but in the end it was vital to the plot. Overall the story arc was perfect for what Jessica Shrivington was trying to get across.

The last couple chapters were bittersweet in a way that made you smile in the gloom of it all. Somehow, Jessica Shirvingotn managed to gives us suspense, mystery, fear all woven together once again. The ultimate feel of the book was hope, but still I wanted to yearn for an alternate route out.