Being Mind-Blown in A Thousand Pieces of You

A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray

5/5 STARS

Genre: Young Adult, Sci-Fi
Author: Claudia Gray
Published: October 2014
Publisher: HarperTeen
Pages: 360 {paperback}

Initial Thoughts

Oh. My. GOD. Books just don’t get any crazier than that. That was … was just amaaaaaaaaaazing. I need Paul and Maguerite to be a thing. THEY MUST BE A THING. And poor Theo, my heart is dying of sadness for him. SO GOOD. SO PERFECT. I really need the sequel, I neeeeed it. *deep breathing* Dimensional travel needs to be in more books I tell you! Still not over Russian Paul, such a darling – GRAY YOU HAVE DESTROYED ME WITH FEELS OVERLOAD.

A Thousand Pieces of My Shattered Soul

This book was such a pleasant surprise. It’s been really popular lately, especially with the recent release of the sequel and the up-and-coming release of the third book – so I was curious to see why everyone was so a-buzz about this book. Well, passively curious. It took someone else to gift this to me in order for me to actually start reading it. Honestly, I don’t know why I don’t act on people’s recommendations sooner because I LOVED THIS. The ideas in this book are beyond cool. To begin with, I found it a little slow and was almost intimidated by the heavy scientific presence in this Sci-Fi adventure. But I was fascinated by the concept of the Firebird (a device) and the out-pouring of imagination that went into constructing the other parallel universes that we get to see. This is a dreamer’s dream come true – literally, it’s like being given the all clear to sit for hours and happily imagine fantasy worlds not unlike our own. Just ARGH. Amazing. Gray has splurged her creativity over many pages to delight us in the wonderings of what the world could be like if we just tweaked one or two things. If you want to be entertained then you NEED to read this book.

What Actually Goes Down

The book follows a girl called Marguerite and she’s the non-scientifically minded daughter of two global scientific geniuses. She has a wonderful knack for painting and always captures the personality of a person on the page – I felt I could really connect with her because I definitely consider myself more artsy than sciency. However, her father is killed in a car accident and the culprit is a student who’s been boarding with her family for quite some time. Obviously, everyone is shocked and this sparks the beginning on a huge adventure that will blow. your. mind. Also, I should mention this is very difficult to put down and you will find you convince yourself that you don’t, in fact, need to sleep.

Paul, the guy who’s convicted, was a quiet and pleasant person in the household, so why would he kill Marguerite’s father? Anyway, Marguerite’s parents are famous for creating the Firebird. It’s a device that allows a person to travel through dimensions, like a weird version of a TARDIS with fewer sound effects. Whoever uses this device is thus able to travel to any parallel universe in which an alternate version of themselves also exists. I won’t go into the mechanics of it, however, to as not to confuse you as I’m sure I would. So just take me at this: IT. IS. AWESOME.

If you’re a fan of Doctor Who, then you should definitely get onto this book RIGHT NOW. Paul has used the Firebird to run away – but there were also some prototypes which Theo (another student) had kept and he and Marguerite decide to jump through universes together to pursue Paul, and kill him.

Adventure: Level 11/10

I just cannot get over how amazing this book was. There was so much thought put into each world and a truly wicked plot twist towards the end. I loved how Gray threw so much at her characters and then left us with the nail-biting task to watch how they got out of it. I found so much of this book to be really clever and I was just so impressed with how the story was tied together – in the beginning I was unsure whether I would enjoy this book as much as everyone else seems to have because, for whatever reason, I was really struggling to get into the story. But once things get going, they get going. The settings are phenomenal and we are not spared one bit from having our emotions battered and being persuaded to jump OTP ships like an indecisive pirate. I’m hanging out for the next book to delve into even more wickedly awesome settings where I can cackle with glee at how much I’m enjoying things.

Marguerite

I mostly enjoyed Marguerite’s character. There was one wonderfully awkward scene that occurred after an interesting decision that she made whilst in Russia, involving Paul, I had a good laugh there. Occasionally, I thought that she should perhaps slow down and question a few things – because she rarely does this, which is probably her greatest character flaw. Like seriously, someone could have been like QUICK JUMP OF THIS CLIFF IT’S THE ONLY WAY, *Marguerite flings herself of a cliff*. Just sayin’. She blindly trusts everyone in her grief for her dad and charges headfirst into really serious situations. It’s all very confusing right now as to the who-I-ship side of things and I feel like book two is going to change a lot of things. Especially if that little extract at the end of this book is anything to go by. I think I will just have to go with the flow and cross my fingers.

Theo

Theo was a really interesting character. I was never sure if I actually liked I’m or not. Towards the start of the book, I thought he was being quite foolish with how eager he was to go on such a perilous journey – but he seemed to really care about Marguerite so I was willing to turn a blind eye to that. However, towards the end I think I mostly decided on a “no” for him – but not an irredeemable no. GRAY WHY MUST YOU PLAY WITH MY FEELINGS. Theo has his faults, but I’m keen to see how his character develops in book two.

At this point in my review on Goodreads there is a hidden spoiler-y discussion. Click on this link to be redirected to Goodreads so you can see what I have to say about you know what waggles eyebrows

Summary

Unfortunately there’s not much more I can say about this book without ranting on forever. I’m very excited to read the sequel and I highly recommend this one. I’m now officially a fan of Gray’s work and I’m very eager to read more of what she’s done. I’m also very curious to know how this series will pan out because my brain is going into overdrive trying to work it all out. Trust me on this one.