Bookanistas Review: 3:59 by Gretchen McNeil
Originally published at Kimberly Sabatini. You can comment here or there.
It’s time for some Bookanista thrills and chills and no one does it better than my fellow Apocalypsie Gretchen McNeil. She makes me crazy giving me characters I fall in love with and then putting those people I now care about in heart pounding situations. Meanie!
Josie Byrne’s life is spiraling out of control. Her parents are divorcing, her boyfriend Nick has grown distant, and her physics teacher has it in for her. When she’s betrayed by the two people she trusts most, Josie thinks things can’t get worse.
Until she starts having dreams about a girl named Jo. Every night at the same time-3:59 a.m.
Jo’s life is everything Josie wants: she’s popular, her parents are happily married, and Nick adores her. It all seems real, but they’re just dreams, right? Josie thinks so, until she wakes one night to a shadowy image of herself in the bedroom mirror - Jo.
Josie and Jo realize that they are doppelgängers living in parallel universes that overlap every twelve hours at exactly 3:59. Fascinated by Jo’s perfect world, Josie jumps at the chance to jump through the portal and switch places for a day.
But Jo’s world is far from perfect. Not only is Nick not Jo’s boyfriend, he hates her. Jo’s mom is missing, possibly insane. And at night, shadowy creatures feed on human flesh.
By the end of the day, Josie is desperate to return to her own life. But there’s a problem: Jo has sealed the portal, trapping Josie in this dangerous world. Can she figure out a way home before it’s too late?
From master of suspense Gretchen McNeil comes a riveting and deliciously eerie story about the lives we wish we had - and how they just might kill you.
Kimberly’s Review of 3:59:
This was my favorite Gretchen McNeil book to date!!! I’m more of a thriller reader than a horror aficionado and things like overlapping universes, doppelgängers and portals just make all my neurons fire. Add in intrigue, characters behaving unexpectedly and shadowy creatures and you’ve got an absolute page turner. And the ending???? I WANT MORE!!!!
You can find 3:59 here…
*Amazon
*Barnes & Noble
*IndieBound
Gretchen McNeil is an opera singer, writer and clown. Her YA horror POSSESS about a teen exorcist debuted with Balzer + Bray for HarperCollins in 2011. Her follow up TEN - YA horror/suspense about ten teens trapped on a remote island with a serial killer - was a 2013 YALSA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, a Romantic TimesTop Pick, a Booklist Top Ten Horror Fiction for Youth, and was nominated for “Best Young Adult Contemporary Novel of 2012″ by Romantic Times. Gretchen’s 2013 release is 3:59, a sci-fi doppelganger horror about two girls who are the same girl in parallel dimensions who decide to switch places.
In 2014, Gretchen debuts her first series, Don’t Get Mad(pitched as “John Hughes with a body count”) about four very different girls who form a secret society where they get revenge on bullies and mean girls at their elite prep school. The Don’t Get Mad series begins Fall 2014 with GET EVEN, followed by the sequel GET DIRTY in 2015, also with Balzer + Bray. Gretchen also contributed an essay to the Dear Teen Me anthology from Zest Books.
Gretchen is a former coloratura soprano, the voice of Mary on G4′s Code Monkeys and she sings with the LA-based circus troupe Cirque Berzerk. Gretchen blogs withThe Enchanted Inkpot and is a founding member of the vlog group the YARebels. She is repped by Ginger Clark of Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Want to find out what the rest of the rest of the Bookanistas have been reading? You don’t have to go far…
Jessica Love is out-of-this-world excited about ALIENATED by Melissa Landers
Tracey Neithercott is loving BETTER OFF FRIENDS by Elizabeth Eulberg
Katy Upperman is riveted by NIL by Lynne Matson
And of course I need to know. If you had the chance to visit a parallel universe, who would be the one person in your life (besides yourself) that you’d want to check out and see what they were like?