There are two fundamental flaws in this book. The first is one of those issues that may or may not just be formatting and not the authors fault (maybe). The second is the authors fault.

1) There are multiple points of views. Somewhat standard, nothing outrageous about that. There is more than one scene, sometimes, in each chapter. Again, nothing hugely strange about that. Except – there sometimes is no ‘barrier’ between changes of scene/point of view other than what you would find between two paragraphs. Now, sometimes there are in fact ** or other symbols. Most of the time, nothing. So, a reader reads along, moves from one paragraph to another and . . . is jarred, distracted, pulled out of the story – because there’s nothing there to indicate a scene or point of view change.

Also, even if there were proper indicators in place – more chapter breaks are probably needed. This is one of those ‘maybe it’s just the formatting’ type of deals that normally I’d wave my hands and say that I’ll give an author a pass on.

2) I mentioned multiple points of views. And how that is not unusual or outrageous to find in a book. Except . . . it is here. The book opens with the main character, Carrie, talking about how she just had a really weird year –moving to a new town/school; parents divorcing, etc. Then she says something like “oh damn, I’m not doing this right”, and now the book picks up from the beginning of the year.

Not my favorite writing style, but I can live with it. Except, as you may or may not recall, there are multiple point of views in this book. A book wherein the main character is recalling what happened to her the prior year. Including scenes she would have had no knowledge of. That’s a fundamental flaw and the author is not able to get a “pass” for this one.

Now there are ways around that. Have, once or twice – not too often to be annoying, something like ‘I saw a video’ or ‘I’m not sure what happened, but I imagine it went something like this’ or have it be Sara who is the main character. She has a power that allows her to 'see' long distance. The first shift in point of view involves Concorde, one of the adult superheroes in the book, flying over to ARC, a tech company, and berating them for allowing a robot to escape and run around. For the third time.

Sara has the ability to see, watch, feel, read the mind of someone, distance not being a factor (as far as she can tell), once she has ‘read them’. Prior to the Concorde scene, she had ‘read’ him at some point. So she could ‘see’ the scene.

And the scenes with the intelligent artificial intelligence? Again, she had ‘read’ him and therefore could ‘see’ his scenes. And this time her ‘reading’ him was in the book so no extra work would have to have been done to show her ‘reading’ him.

Granted, I had no problem following Carrie’s point of view as the main character, and was less interested in following Sara, so switching main characters isn’t really what I would have wanted to have happen. I suppose some of that ‘power’ could have been shifted over to Carrie – enough so that she had enough to ‘see’ those scenes.

But no. There were no annoying little ‘I reconstructed the evidence at hand to come up with a possible scenario -- *scene from different point of view/perspective unfolds*’ and no indication of the ability/power to ‘see’ things in a way that would allow the point of view to shift.

So, one of four things would need to ‘fix’ the fundamental flaw under discussion. (1) Cut the opening in which we learn that Carrie is the main character, and that she will be recalling, for us – via video recording, what happened during the events of last year. (2) Cut the scenes that Carrie would not have been able to have witnessed or reconstructed or otherwise known about somehow. (3) change the main character to Sara, or switch some of the power to ‘see’ from Sara to Carrie. Or (4) add little tidbits, not many, indicating how Carrie knew about the events unfolding in the paragraph/scene that she should not otherwise know about (i.e., the scenes from other than her own perspective in which she played no part).

Oh and near the end there’s a scene that includes Carrie, mentally, saying “this is not my teary farewell speech. I plan to live for a good long time.” Um, thanks, but, um . . . the book opened with the idea that this was Carrie speaking into a video recorder telling the camera what happened to her the prior year so . . . . thanks for the reassurance that you didn’t die a year ago? (reminds me of scenes I’ve seen, mostly in comedies

‘A: so there I was, five minutes before the bomb was going to explode, frantically trying to disarm it, or somehow prevent it from exploding and . . well . . . it was too late for me to try to flee, so I tried and tried, the seconds counting down . . .
B: So . . . what happened? Did . . . did it explode?
A: yes, I, obviously, died and you are talking to a ghost (mutters: moron))

Sometimes the book read as if bits and pieces of it got written without knowledge of the rest of the book. Like how the book started off with ‘this is what happened a year ago’; then the book forgetting that it’s supposed to be from one point of view and including others; then trying to build tension, a layer of ‘ooh no! She’s sacrificing herself!’ but . . um . . . again, this happened a year ago . . to the person telling the story.

And then – ‘then mysteriously a different explosion occurred, no one knows what happened there, as the people aren’t talking’ . . . um, dude, really? You, the author, suddenly remember that this is supposed to be from Carrie’s point of view? And she wasn’t there? But . . . her team was there, couldn’t she ask them? Shesh. There’s no reason she wouldn’t know what happened.

In terms of story – there actually is a rather interesting story here. It might have been better as a comic instead of a prose novel, maybe. Conceivably. On the other hand, I’m not sure I really want to see 15 year olds running around in comic form. Though I have in the past.

In terms of characters – they were relatively well-rounded, and seemed roughly on par with where they should be, in terms of mentality. In that, they didn’t seem to be adults wandering in 15 year old bodies, but, instead, appeared to be people with the mental and emotional maturity of 15 year olds.

Oh, and bah. I’ve said several times that I need to stop reading books involving such young characters, and there I was talking about people in their 20s. And here I’m reading about 15 year olds. Wasn’t really a problem, really, except for several scenes wherein the age of the father got brought up several times (and likely age of mother, though not expressed). There’s a scene wherein father and daughter watch the Macy’s Day Parade and father makes some comment like “back in my day” and they banter. One of those things parents and children say to each other. One of those things old people say “why, in my day . . ..” Said by the father. Who is currently, at the time of the book, something like six or seven years younger than me.

I already know I’m reading something involving a different generation than my own, do I really need to realize that I’m even older than the parents? Heh. Mmphs. ( )