Passenger by Alexandra Bracken

Rating: 4/5 stars

☆★★★★

Passenger is about a girl named Etta, a soon-to-be professional violinist, who learns that she can travel time. Her mother hid an item throughout time, and another time-travelling family has captured and is using Etta’s mother as a reason to find the item for them. She only has cryptic clues and messages from her mother. She’s thrust into this new time-travelling world she didn’t know even existed, and has to survive and find the item before her mother dies. Characters. Etta is a really strong female character. To be thrust into a different timezone and learning that your mother is held captive while you try to find something through very vague clues is a big deal, and Etta panics only for a little bit. She gets (almost) straight to asking questions and finding the best way to save her mother and get them back home to the life she once knew. If I were in that situation, I’d probably just lie on the floor crying for like a month.

I loved Sophia! She was snarky and petty and everything I love in a character, but I didn’t get to see much of her. She also really just wants to be equal to her male family members, but that’s not the case, and it breaks my heart. It really broke my heart when she learned that she was born just ten years before women get the right to vote, and she was just so heartbroken that she wasn’t able to experience that. The blatant sexism and racism in the beginning really bugged me, but I know that’s actually how it was back then. It’s still jarring to read, though.

This book went way too quickly for me. I know they’re on a time restriction, but I still think things could’ve been dragged out. There’s so much to experience in each time dimension chapter, but they just fly through it and don’t really stop to enjoy the little differences. The only thing they really worry about is clothing so they fit in. It was cool to read about the different fashions of each time period, but that’s really all I’ve witnessed. Another time issue: there’s no racing the clock (I mean there is, but hear me out here). There’s no countdown in the book that keeps you on your toes and makes you think, “Oh crap, they’re moving too slow!” I had no anxiety that they’ll get the astrolabe in time. Going into this book, I expected—I wanted­—some anxiety and race against the clock.

I definitely feel like there was insta-love in this book, especially more from Etta’s side, but still there! At the beginning, there was a lot of Nicholas absent-mindedly touching Etta’s chin and stuff, and I just want to know how he doesn’t realize he’s doing something like that. It just wasn’t believable, and, frankly, it was a little weird. The scene with Etta and Nicholas underground in the bomb shelter area was a little more believable, but it still seemed weird to me. I feel like they got together too quickly, and that Etta really shouldn’t be focused on kissing men when her whole life has been flipped upside down, her mother’s in danger, her grandmother-figure dead and still hurting about that, etc.

There was one part that’s been bugging me throughout this whole book. In the beginning, Etta plays a series of 3 chords/notes that opened up the portal (or something like that???). I’m surprised that Etta hasn’t opened up portals before, because there’s honestly no way she hadn’t played those three notes before in her whole violin career. Is it something to do with the time and place too? Did I read that whole explanation wrong?

The ending of the book was action-packed! I normally struggle to read long parts of books straight through (I’m too ADHD to keep my attention on a book for too long), but the last 30-40 pages had me on the edge of my seat. The betrayals! The surprises!

So overall, I really liked this book, but it’s only 4 stars because of little things throughout that bugged me. The story went too quickly for me (and it wasn’t just me reading the book quickly—it was the book itself speeding up what could have been a long, fun, magical adventure). The insta-love annoyed me. They were way too attached for people who had just met. The characters themselves had interesting backstories and lively personalities, but I feel like Etta wasn’t her own character. She seems like every other YA female protagonist I’ve read. She is very strong though, and sticks to her morals, so she’s A-okay in my book! The ending was interesting and definitely left me wanting more, but I also feel like I’d be fine never knowing what happens after this book? My library has the next book though, so I’ll probably end up reading it at some point!