SECONDS TO SPARE

Evelyn Werth is trapped in a nightmare. Literally (except for the fact, you know, that she's pretty sure she's awake). For some reason, she's the only person aboard this Aloha Airways flight who knows they're about to crash. Probably because she's seen it all before.

Stuck in a 28-minute time-loop that last just long enough for her to brace herself for the inevitable nosedive the plane takes right before the loop resets, Evelyn doesn't know what to do. At this point, she's tried it all. She's stopped the baby behind her from crying. She's stolen candy from every available purse and backpack. She's gotten to know the names of everyone on board in her own personal manifest. And nothing stops the nosedive or the loop repeating.

Until she wakes Orion James, the cute boy from a few rows up who has slept every loop thus far. Waking Orion changes things, because he seems to be experiencing the loop, too...

THOUGHTS

This book does exactly what it sets out to do. And that's a good thing. A 28-minute time-loop on an endlessly crashing plane? Yeah, that's a good concept, and it's a good concept that Rachel Reiss pulls off. It doesn't linger too long. It doesn't drop in tension. And each successive loop ups the psychological ante, so I have no complaints.

PROS

Time After Time	You know what's hard to do in a time-loop? Keep the story fresh. But that's what Rachel Reiss does, because during every little loop, Evelyn's doing something different. It's not a happy-go-lucky sort of time-loop she's living in, after all. She recognizes that her own terrible death is coming at the end of it, and she wants out. Like, desperately. So she's trying hard each time to see if she can do something, anything to make a difference. As her own desperation ebbs and flows, each loop feels different, and I really liked that. And I really liked getting to know the cast of characters around her just as she did, digging through bags and asking out-of-bounds questions you'd never pose a stranger if you thought they'd still remember you 28 minutes from now.

True Terror	This book isn't a horror book, per se. It definitely falls more on the "thriller" side of the equation. But that doesn't mean it doesn't embrace its horrifying elements. There's something just so viscerally terrifying about the plane crash that kicks off (and subsequently ends) the time-loop of this book. And I won't be giving spoilers, but as we dig deeper into what's going on behind the scenes in this loop, there are other moments of abject horror that just capture that feeling of paralysis something like this would induce.

Lingering Effects	You know what I like the most from this book? The ending. Because this is a pretty traumatic plotline, just in its very conceit, and we don't forget that in the neatly-packaged wrap-up we get. These characters are changed by the time-loop they go through, and I appreciate that.

CONS

Sure, going through this time-loop over and over again would drive anyone insane. And the number of times poor Evelyn lives it is... quite high. But the loop itself isn't very long. It's not like a lot of time-loop stories, where it's a whole day on repeat. So crunching the numbers actually makes the time Evelyn spends in this loop seem quite... manageable? Not that this wouldn't be traumatic, but how quickly she goes off the rails does feel, well, rather quick to me. Especially because we don't start at loop 1. I wish we had more time with a, well, perfectly sane Evelyn so we could really see the way she takes her own psychological nosedive. But I guess take what you can get.	Off the Rails

I don't want to spoil too much, so this will be a little difficult to articulate. But at some point, something changes in this loop that puts a real time crunch on the characters. And I liked this change. I did. It really ups the stakes and gives some great character motivations. But it also felt like, within the balance of the plot, it moved too quickly from this point onward. And I get that this was somewhat intentional. Like, the timeline is accelerating. But it felt just a touch too quick, like there wasn't enough room to figure things out, as a reader, in an enjoyable manner with everything moving so quickly.	Gone Too Quick

I get it. We need a bad guy, and these guys are Bad Guys. But, I don't know, the ultimate villains here are just... really caricature for the tone of the book. It felt that way in Out of Air for me as well. I think we could have had something really compelling here, but having such a Big Bad at the end diminished that for me. Like we maybe didn't see another way for this to go. Like it was a cop out, an easy escape. An easy reason for all of this to be happening.	Big Bad

Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
7/10

Fans of Lauren Oliver's Before I Fall will like this new twisted time-loop story. Those who thought that Jessica L. Cozzi's We've Hit Turbulence spent too little time on the plane should definitely pick up this stuck-in-a-travel-nightmare new thriller.