Okay here's the thing...I thought the premise was awesome. Kinda Sliders and Fringe with a bit of Lost season 6 and less morbid The Butterfly Effect thrown in. I was digging that it was the little things in some universes and huge things in others that made the universe not ideal.

The execution and Ruby however frustrated me.



What frustrated me most of all was the fact that Bishara jumped from glittery idea to glittery idea. For instance at one point we find out what's up with the Rubys of each Universe that Original Flavor Ruby visits. Other then a character having a massive meltdown over it all that's said is that Ruby disappeared. Why? Original Flavor Ruby isn't even all that worried--there's a glib comment that hopefully she returns--but its deemed unimportant.

Then there's the small differences vs. the large differences. At first Ruby contemplates why in her universe her dad is an ad copy writer and in another he's a published chef. Mostly everything else is the same (right down to Kandy's destructive trail of violence), but that one fact. While I freely admit I didn't understand most of what Ruby was talking about when it came to the science of the Universe Hopping, what I did understand was that as she became more desperate she cared less about the consequences.

This is driven home in the climax, when she's confronted about how extraordinarily selfish she's being by trying to not only find her 'ideal' reality, but by not caring how it effected those around her. Or the Ruby who was meant to be in that Universe. Not that Ruby seemed upset or remorseful. Sullen maybe.

She's also only 15, but you wouldn't guess it from half the stuff she pulls. I thought she was at least 17 almost 18 and was shell shocked when someone announced her age.

This next unhappiness is a bit of a spoiler so I'm putting it behind spoiler tags So she finds in one Universe that she has an older brother, Patrick. Apparently they're close as thieves. Okay. Apparently he's very protective. Okay. What I didn't get is how hysterical he became. He's the older one, about 17 or so?, yet the scene in the hospital had me banging my head on a desk. You'd think Ruby had developed a second head that was speaking Latin the way he was acting. SO ANNOYING.

I think this would have benefited from being more than one book or a longer book in general. At just under 300 pages it felt like Bishara didn't have enough time to tell the story as fully as it deserved. The premise and a lot of the questions brought up were very intriguing, but in the end I was just too meh to really care. ( )

If Ruby Wright could have her way, her dad would never have met and married her stepmother Willow, her best friend George would be more than a friend, and her mom would still be alive. Ruby knows wishes can't come true; some things just can't be undone. Then she discovers a tree in the middle of an Ohio cornfield with a wormhole to nine alternative realities. Suddenly, Ruby can access completely different realities, each containing variations of her life-if things had gone differently at key moments. The windshield wiper missing her mother's throat…her big brother surviving his ill-fated birth…her father never having met Willow. Her ideal world-one with everything and everyone she wants most-could be within reach. But is there such a thing as a perfect world? What is Ruby willing to give up to find out?

I received a free copy of Relativity in exchange for an honest review.

Relativity is the story of Ruby Wright, who, like most teenagers, hates her life. Unlike most teenagers, however, she's just been dragged from California to Ohio to live with her dad's new wife and her diabolical daughter, Kandy. Fearing for her life after a particularly bad fight with Kandy, Ruby takes refuge in a nearby tree, rumored to be dangerous, maybe even killer. This tree transports her to various parallel universes, in which one small detail, one different decision, changes everything. In some universes, her mom is still alive and she has an overprotective brother. In other universes, her friend/sort-of boyfriend from California, George, goes to her school in Ohio. In others still, the land hasn't even been developed, or has been entirely destroyed. Throughout all these universes, Ruby searches for the perfect situation, the one with a mother who loves her, a George who isn't on the other side of the country, and where everything is exactly the way she wants it to be.

Overall, the book was very entertaining. I thought the first half, where she was more excited about exploring the parallel universes, was better than the second half, where she sped up and just wanted to get her injured mother back to Universe Four.

Although physics, especially string theory, has never been my thing, I appreciated that the main character was a smart teenage girl who didn't hide or make excuses for her interest in science. I can't tell you whether the science is correct or whether the use of string theory in the book makes sense, but the use of the tree as a portal/wormhole was something I hadn't previously seen in any books I've read, and it was refreshing to not find a rehashing of something I'd already read.

I had few issues with the book, but the thing that really confused me was Ruby's leg injury. She's supposed to be this brilliantly smart young woman, but she hangs out in a dirty, musty tree with a huge open wound on her leg. It starts swelling, it gets pussy, it has enough drainage to soak through her pants, but she keeps pushing through these universes even when she ends up in the ER and is told that she needs to take it easy. This intelligent girl almost loses her leg because she won't listen to anybody! That was the only thing that really bothered me throughout the book, which I guess says something.

Relativity is a quick and enjoyable read -- and I was reading an advance uncorrected proof. I imagine the final version will be even better. ( )

This review originally appeared on Book.Blog.Bake.

I found the premise of Relativity SO interesting! While I’ve read a handful of books that deal with parallel worlds or alternative realities, it’s usually just two choices. That’s why when I read the description for Relativity I knew I had to request it. Because instead of just two realities, this book plays with a multiverse of ten possible worlds, and we get to see just a little bit of all of them. The way they mirror each other and break down was incredible, really. I LOVED the plot devices used in Relativity.

I really liked Ruby, the book’s main character. I felt for her. Her mother died when she was four, and her father has just remarried and has made her relocate to an entirely different state. She’s dealing with having to adjust to a lot of stuff all at once, including a stepsister who quite dislikes her. It was easy to believe that someone as smart and unhappy as Ruby would go looking for the perfect world, and have the scientific mind to be able to explain all the different realities in a convincing way.

So if I liked the characters and the plot, you might be wondering why the stoplight for Relativity is yellow instead of red. Well, while I loved the set-up of the plot, the way the plot played out got a bit tiring after awhile. I think it would have been hard to do so otherwise–I mean, Ruby’s searching for the perfect universe where she’s happy, her mother’s alive, etc., and there’s ten universes, so of course she’s going to go through them all. After this happens a few time, it sort of lost the novelty and I was having trouble staying interested. I did really loved the third and fourth realities Ruby explored, and none of the others were quite as captivating as that, though some were quite sad.

On the plus side, I really loved most of the side characters in Relativity. It’s a short book, so none of them really get that much screen time, but they were fascinating. I loved Ruby’s love interest in a few of the universes, and also her siblings in some of the alternative universes as well. I really enjoyed how Relativity really dove into string theory and used real scientific ideas to build the world. The science explorations were by far my favorite part.

Final Impression: I enjoyed Relativity. The highlights for me were the science and the characters, but I thought the plot was a bit slow at times just because of the episodic nature of Ruby’s quest. I wish there had been a bit faster pacing in those parts, though I was quite satisfied with the end result. It was an original science fiction and I liked it on the whole.

Disclosure: I received an advanced copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for an honest review via NetGalley. ( )

A fairly good story about a young girl's search for a perfect family and life. The story describes how the search for perfection can possibly lead to complete disaster. ( )