Tandem: Review

Sixteen-year-old Sasha Lawson has only ever known one small, ordinary life. When she was young, she loved her grandfather's stories of parallel worlds inhabited by girls who looked like her but led totally different lives. Sasha never believed such worlds were real--until now, when she finds herself thrust into one against her will.

To prevent imminent war, Sasha must slip into the life of an alternate version of herself, a princess who has vanished on the eve of her arranged marriage. If Sasha succeeds in fooling everyone, she will be returned home; if she fails, she'll be trapped in another girl's life forever. As time runs out, Sasha finds herself torn between two worlds, two lives, and two young men vying for her love--one who knows her secret, and one who thinks she's someone she's not.





I have read multiple alternate universe books this year, since they seem to be getting more and more popular, and I've decided that this one is my second favorite(my first being 3:59). There were many problems with it, but I still, for some reason, really liked reading it.

Sasha is your ordinary 16 year old, besides the point that she doesn't have many friends and lives with her grandfather. I liked Sasha well enough. I struggled slightly with her choices, but she was smart most of the time. I definitely seen her change throughout the novel, which I usually don't notice from characters. Can I say I loved her character by the end of the novel? No. But I still enjoyed her perspective and her character.

Now, this book had three perspectives: the main one is from Sasha, the other one Sasha's alternate, Juliana, and the next from Thomas. By far, I found Sasha's perspective the most intriguing. The other ones...just eh. Nothing amazing, just kind of fell flat for me. This might be because I got to know Sasha's thoughts and feelings alot, alot more than Juliana's and Thomas's, which is why it just bugged me when these other perspectives were just thrown in there.

Secondly, the love interest. Was so. Flat. Because I could see right away who she would love, and they were both not supposed to even get along with each other. It was an unoriginal forbidden love-hate relationship. Everything about it was really plain to see and just...generic. The other thing that slightly annoyed me was that the lovey-dovey ness did not bring out any emotions for me. What's especially weird about this, is that I actually enjoyed reading it, even though I pretty much just gave off all the reasons why I should hate it.

My favorite part of this book is the twists and turns it has. You can tell that the author did a lot of research for this book and put a lot of thought into the plot. There were some slow parts for me, but I wouldn't quite say that it was boring for me. Just...slow. And there are definitely surprising parts in Tandem.
Another contribution to why I really liked this book is that once Sasha went to the alternate universe, it gave off a fairy-tale-esque feeling to it. It might just be me, but I love fairytales.

I honestly didn't try to make this review quite so ranty in parts, because I did enjoy the plot and story of it. And the voice of the book, but it definitely had it's faults. Even so, the faults didn't bug me particularly much, so I didn't have many problems with it. If you enjoy sci-fi, check it out!