review; a thousand pieces of you

A Thousand Pieces Of You
by Claudia Gray

Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their radical scientific achievements. Their most astonishing invention: the Firebird, which allows users to jump into parallel universes, some vastly altered from our own. But when Marguerite’s father is murdered, the killer—her parent’s handsome and enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.

Marguerite can’t let the man who destroyed her family go free, and she races after Paul through different universes, where their lives entangle in increasingly familiar ways. With each encounter she begins to question Paul’s guilt – and her own heart. Soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is more sinister than she ever could have imagined.

A Thousand Pieces Of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure.

Review:

I am in awe at the way the author has woven this story together. Every Marguerite, every Paul, every version of every character has been an individual – yes, they have similarities that tie them together – at their core they are the same person – but they are still individuals. There are still threads of them that are different from version to version.

A fact that the novel compounds on. But at the heart of all the tech and ethics and morality, which the story is rife with in the best of ways, is a story about family and trust and love. That is what drew me in. The idea of betrayal and loss and the drive to get to the truth.

It is great that the author did not choose to drag the ‘did he do the thing, did he not do the thing’ in regards to Paul. I mean, it is in the synopsis that things are not the way Marguerite thinks, so that we know Paul’s basic truth before we are halfway through the story is important. But something has to still drive the story – and that is the reason Paul chooses to travel through dimensions, the reason Henry is killed, the true traitor in their midsts.

The twists and turns, some expected, some not, make the story.

I loved every second of it, and I cannot wait for the second novel to come out, because while it was great that there was no real cliffhanger, there are still loads of answers and conclusions to be arrived at.