BOOK REVIEW: Life At The Speed Of Us By Heather Sappenfield

I received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. The scheduled publication date for this book is January 8, 2016. 

Silence is safe. Fate is not. When Sovern Briggs survives a car crash, she stops talking to seal in the memory of the final sounds from her mother’s life. As conflict with her father builds and failure in school looms, Sovern seeks relief in a dangerous boyfriend and in speed’s adrenaline edge. These needs collide, leading Sovern to a snowboarding accident that changes her future and perhaps that of our universe.

I have been procrastinating with this review, mainly because I don't have any strong feelings for this book, one way or the other.

The book was extremely slow and I felt zero connection with the main character. It had some paranormal elements that I wasn't expecting, such as time travel. It's hard to imagine that I could be bored by a book with time travel and a girl dealing with the grief of her mother, but I was. Maybe it was all the quantum physics. The author did a great job of dumbing down the stuff, so it's not like I didn't understand it. But there was just so much of it and very little in terms of character development with Sovern. Early on in the book, Sovern hints that she stopped speaking because she blamed her voice for the car crash that killed her mother. But then for some reason, an accident on a ski lift inspires her to start talking again. She never fully explained what happened the night her mom died, so I never got the whole no talking thing. And since she started speaking again pretty soon in the book, I didn't really care that there was a time when she refused to.

There was a boyfriend who was supposed to be a bad boy, but he reformed about five minutes after the book started. There was also some talk of reincarnation and soul mates, but since Gage was only in a handful of scenes throughout the whole book, I didn't sense any chemistry and I didn't care if they ended up together or not. While I understood the concept of the alternate realities and time travel stuff, I did not understand the whole plot, or lack thereof. There didn't seem to be a point to any of it. The whole book was kind of a wash. I can't even really think of anything else to say because, once again, I DID NOT CARE. I had to force myself to even finish it. 

Buy/Borrow/Skip: Skip it.