Books: All Our Yesterdays ~ Cristin Terrill

Title: All Our Yesterdays
Author: Cristin Terrill
Series: Standalone
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Publishing date: September 2013
Number of pages: 360 p.
Languages: English
Age Category: Young adult
Genre: Science Fiction, Time Travel 

About All Our Yesterdays

Yesterday - Marina was safe, privileged, wealthy. She was falling for James - the super-brainy youngest son of a very powerful family. Yesterday ended badly.

Today - Em is in a cell she may never get out of alive. There's a flicker of hope when she talks to the boy in the cell next to hers - and when she remembers who she used to be... Yesterday.

Tomorrow - Em has a mission. She must escape and travel back in time. She must kill the boy Marina loved - to save her future.

My thoughts on All Our Yesterdays

Let me start of with a bit of a content warning: THIS REVIEW IS NOT SPOILER FREE, so if you don't want any spoilers please skip to my conclusions.

Oh this book, this book really tore me apart, what an amazing read this was.

All Our Yesterdays has been on my wishlist for many years, finally I found a copy I think it was at one of the Boekenfestijn events. They always had a very large English languages section on these events, which was the reason I went to these events. I always found very nicely priced books there. If you have any online suggestions of good webshops for English Fantasy and Science fiction that ship to the Netherlands, and are cheaper than the regular bookstores/online players, please let me know. I am a little stuck with Bookdepitory and Bol.com and I have recently noticed that the book prices are going up. I was so happy to have found this book, however it remained on my shelf for years and years. So I could not remember what it was about, I decided to go in blind.

I dove right into the story, our main character is lock up, we don't know where, we don't know why and we don't know what the prisoners are to each other. I was very intrigued that we did not get much information, but the author managed to keep me on my toes the entire time. The POV starts of with Em, who is the person that is locked up, after a couple of chapters the POV switches to Marina. Marina is a brat, spoiled, rich kid that is very very naive. You might have gathered from this that Marina was far from a favorite. We also find out that Finn is in both story lines so it must be Finn in different times.

It took me a much longer while to figure out that Em and Marina are actually the same person. You would not have guessed if it wasn't explained at some point, it was so interesting to see that one person can change so much that you would not even recgonize them, this was really smart writing, and it is one of the things that I really appreciate about this book. This not only goes for our main character but the same is true for the side characters. We see a lot of development between the future selves and past selves of our characters. Allthough I must say Finn remains relatively the same in any time line.

When Em & Finn manage to escape from the Doctor, they travel back in time to kill James. We see how they track James, prepare for attack, but also the hesitation on Em's part, as James was her friend, the friend she was so desparetly in love with. We see the contraversy this gives Em, the hesitation to kill him, as past James was relatively innocent. It is not easy for the old friends to try to kill someone they loved, that they trusted. This is what makes this book so realistic, it shows the struggles of the characters, and we get a well rounded story since the POV's switch between Em and Marina.

The end was really suprising, it took a turn that I did not see coming, a very daring thing to do. The ending was great, and I think what made this book so great is that it was not your straight forward, predictable YA book you would expect, it twists and turns, and you have to figure out all the details as you go along.

Conclusions

If you like time travel, then this is for you. If you are looking for a well-written suprising, not so predictable YA story, then go right ahead an pick this up. This book threw me out of my 5 year long reading slump, it was addictive, action packed, with amazing character development in a well rounded story. I can only say please read this, it is amazing, it is an older young adult book, and maybe even a bit underrated as I never really saw a lot of people talking about it, but damn, what a ride. 5 stars for this one!

 

Time travel isn't a wonder, it's an abomination. - Cristin Terrill