Review: Through to You by Emily Hainsworth

Goodreads Summary:

Camden Pike has been grief-stricken since his girlfriend, Viv, died. Viv was the last good thing in his life: helping him rebuild his identity after a career-ending football injury, picking up the pieces when his home life shattered, and healing his pain long after the meds wore off. And now, he’d give anything for one more glimpse of her. But when Cam makes a visit to the site of Viv’s deadly car accident, he sees some kind of apparition. And it isn’t Viv.

The apparition’s name is Nina, and she’s not a ghost. She’s a girl from a parallel world, and in this world, Viv is still alive. Cam can’t believe his wildest dreams have come true. All he can focus on is getting his girlfriend back, no matter the cost. But things are different in this other world: Viv and Cam have both made very different choices, things between them have changed in unexpected ways, and Viv isn’t the same girl he remembers. Nina is keeping some dangerous secrets, too, and the window between the worlds is shrinking every day. As Cam comes to terms with who this Viv has become and the part Nina played in his parallel story, he’s forced to choose—stay with Viv or let her go—before the window closes between them once and for all.

Publication Date: October 2, 2012

Despite a couple of things that bothered me about Through to You, I really liked many of the story concepts in the novel. With a mix of romance, science fiction and mystery, I found myself drawn into this character driven book.

Camden is introduced as a grief-stricken teen that loses his girlfriend in a tragic car accident. The first half of the book is pretty slow moving as the reader is given example after example of how moody and sullen Camden has become in the months following Viv’s death. I felt the book had potential so I’m glad I stuck it out to the middle. This is where things pick up.

The parallel universe was a cool idea and I liked how the author had the characters jump between worlds. It was interesting to see the subtle differences between the worlds and how much they affected the lives of the characters. The book was very light on the science-fiction aspects so the parallel universe angle was never really fully explored.

Camden was hard to like. I found myself screaming at the page at times and wanting him to wake up. Things that were very obvious to the reader took a long time for Camden to realize. However, by the end of the novel, he redeemed himself enough that I hoped for a happy ending for him. He had so many crappy things happen to him—you couldn’t help but sympathize with him.

There were a few tear-jerking parts, but I felt like the book had a hopeful ending. This was a stand alone debut and I’m curious to see future works from the author.   

Rating: 4/5 Stars

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this novel for review!