“NEVERWAS (Amber House Trilogy),” by Kelly Moore, Tucker Reed and Larkin Reed, Arthur A. Levine Books, Jan. 7, 2014, Hardcover, $17.99 (young adult)
When last we visited Amber House, Sarah Parsons had made a transforming choice, but it was the wrong choice, and now Sarah must choose again or let history continue to rewrite itself.
After growing up in the free country of the Pacific Northwest, Sarah Parsons has settled in at Amber House, the stately Maryland home that’s been in her family for generations. But the world surrounding the House feels deeply wrong to Sarah. It’s a place where the colonists lost the 1776 Insurrection, where the American Confederation of States still struggles with segregation, and where Sarah is haunted by echoes of a better world that she knows never existed.
Her friend Jackson shares these visions of a different world — and together, they manage both to remember the way things ought to be, and to plan a daring mission that will reset the universe once again. It will involve objects from the past, knowledge of the future, a leap into the unknown … and in the end, a sacrifice Sarah never imagined.*
When “Amber House” came out in 2012, it really stuck with me. The mother-daughters trio of Kelly Moore and Tucker and Larkin Reed created a story with magical elements that had a feeling of reality. That same feeling is carried out in “Neverwas,” the second book in the Amber House Trilogy. As with its predecessor, “Neverwas” feels cohesive — if I had not known there were three authors from the outset, I never would have guessed from the narrative.
With “Neverwas,” I was once again swept up in Sarah’s story. It was fascinating to enter a world where the United States isn’t united but rather countries that may have been. It’s a world where the Nazis didn’t lose, and segregation is alive and well in the American Confederation.
As Sarah embarks on a journey to bring back a better world, we get to know her and her family better. Again, the highlight for me is Sarah’s interaction with her younger brother who appears to be simple but has a depth of understanding far beyond what he should.
“Neverwas” ends in a cliffhanger of sorts. Sarah has changed history again, but to what, we’ll have to wait for the final book in the Amber House trilogy. It’s sort of a typical middle-book treatment, although it feels less like a setup than many of its contemporaries. I’m excited to see where this writing trio takes things. Fingers crossed Book 3 lives up to the first two.
*Synopsis provided by Arthur A. Levine Books
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