Review: Ida by Alison Evans

Ida

  • Alison Evans
  • Echo
  • 6th December, 2016
  • Gay & Lesbian, Sci-fi, Young Adult

How do people decide on a path, and find the drive to pursue what they want?

Ida struggles more than other young people to work this out. She can shift between parallel universes, allowing her to follow alternative paths.

One day Ida sees a shadowy, see-through doppelganger of herself on the train. She starts to wonder if she’s actually in control of her ability, and whether there are effects far beyond what she’s considered.

How can she know, anyway, whether one universe is ultimately better than another? And what if the continual shifting causes her to lose what is most important to her, just as she’s discovering what that is, and she can never find her way back?

Ida is an intelligent, diverse and entertaining novel that explores love, loss and longing, and speaks to the condition of an array of overwhelming, and often illusory, choices.

ida

Ok, so I am not even going to lie about why I wanted to read this book so badly. As a person who lived all her life without seeing her own name on any keychains, rulers or anything like that this book became a must to read.

So the book goes about girl called Ida, who has always been able to skip back through the time to a choice / event that did not go well. She never thought about it too much, it just been a thing she was able to do.

Ida is half Vietnamese, half European and identifies self as bisexual. Ida is in relationship with Daisy, the genderqueer character who uses they/them pronouns. Their relationship was very fascinating and fresh. I really enjoyed both of them, in fact I was a bit sad that I couldn’t learn more about Daisy’s life, especially home story as it was hinted numerous times.

As a reader who seldom reads fantasy, I found some places in the book a bit confusing, however Evans did amazing job to explain time travel and consequences that came with it.

Overall I hope that Evans will write sequel to Ida as I am very curious what happened next!

On the side note, this book reminded me of my very loved game called ‘Life is strange’. Both game me fuzzy feeling and just made me feel good about myself.

ida

I received a review copy for honest opinion.