Choices
By Deborah Lynn Jacobs
(Roaring Brook Press, Hardcover, 9781596432178, 208pp.)
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
Categories: Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Magic, Social Issues - Death & Dying
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SHIFTING BETWEEN MULTIPLE REALITIES A teenage girl consumed by guilt over her brother's death tries to find a universe in which he is still alive. Sticky notes rim the mirror in rainbow colors. REMEMBER. DON'T FORGET HIM. READ THE NOTEBOOK. Remember what? Remember who? And what's this about a notebook? There's another note, bottom center of the mirror. THE DREAMS ARE REAL. In an unconscious effort to find her dead brother, Kathleen slips between universes. Choices begins in one dimension, then fractures into four distinct voices with every deision Kathleen/Kay/Kate/Kathy makes.
Deborah Lynn Jacobs, author of Powers, which was praised by Kirkus Reviews as "bewitching," lives in Wisconsin.
Kirkus Reviews Starred Review After the death of her brother Nick, Kathleen starts slipping between similar worlds. Each world is formed when people make choices: to turn away from a friend, to dye hair a startling color, to go to a party. Kathleen exists in all of the universes, but her multitude of selves all differ. In one universe, her mother drinks; in another, Kathleen’s her best friend; in yet another, she’s lashing out at everyone around her. Yet in all universes there are two constants: Fellow world-hopper Luke is always present, and Nick’s still dead. It’s Luke who finds Kathleen and explains to her what is happening, and who is the object of her increasingly ardent desires. Yet Kathleen’s burgeoning feelings for Luke aren’t enough to cure her grief, her rage or the lives that fall apart in every universe she inhabits. Kathleen’s melancholic tale does justice both to the moving story of a girl coming to terms with the death of her brother and to the magical adventure of a universe-shifting girl trying to find her way home. (Fantasy. 12-14)
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