Aria Patel likes stability, certainty, predictability. It’s why she’s so into science. It’s why she dumped her boyfriend before they went to different colleges because the odds were that something would go wrong, eventually. In a life that’s already so chaotic, why obsess over complicated relationships and shadowy unknowns when the scientific method gives you direction and a straight path to avoid all the drama.  

But there’s no avoiding anything when Aria finds herself suddenly falling through parallel universes and there’s no formula that can save her. She can’t explain why she’s been waking up in a new reality almost every day, or why Rohan, and a poem from her English class, seem to be following her through every new life.

As Aria desperately attempts to find a way home, she eventually ends up stuck in a parallel world very similar to her own. She cherishes this new version of her family, and she finds herself unable to deny the yearning she has for Rohan…but it’s not her life or her Rohan. It belongs to another Aria, another girl, and unless Aria can get back home, she’ll have taken this happiness away from someone else forever. And she may never find her own. 

Ahmed makes a departure from her stirring, personal is political works to have a journey through a multi-verse. Now time-traveling stuff hurts my brain especially as she brings in physics and quantum mechanics into it. She tries to explain it within text, but it still goes over my head. No matter, the science of the universe is a blip to the adventures of Aria Patel.

While she may not be going into the injustices of American democracy, Ahmed still has her ability to bring emotional resonance to her characters. Aria’s feelings of confusion, loss and desire are powerful and readers can empathesize with her crazy situation.

Plus I got to admire the bits of humor in seeing what ways this Earth and the original Earth differ, and the use of Chekhov’s Gun cafe in the finale. I mean, of course, with a name of Chekhov’s Gun what would you expect.

While some Aria universes are funny (like the musical one) or crazy (cars drive us, not the other way around), we can all imagine one where we take the choice we wish we had done or had the person you love never had died. That’ what makes the latest universe she falls into so appealing. Both her parents are alive, she experiences what it is like to be a sister, she never broke up with Rohan. Instead she might keep him.

But it comes at potentially losing her real (prime) self. I like how the slow addition of alter-Aria memories bleeding into her original memories heightened the stakes. Plus it gets into the existential questions of what makes a person themself.

We’re all made of choices, roads taken or not taken, and that can be terrifying. Living with regrets, and grief- it makes the future terrifying and lends nicely to Aria’s arc of learning to feel her emotions, intense and uncertain as they may be. Also in comparing the worlds of her original Earth and this new, slightly happier one, it helps her see the people in prime life in a different way. Furthering her resolve to return home and possibly improve those relationships.

It was a solid book despite the time-travel. Aria’s arc was compelling but other characters felt a bit two-dimensional (pun not intended). I understand why as one of Aria’s multiverse rules is to not get attached to anyone on this Earth but it did make Aria feel like a singular character and I missed the expansive, knee-deep care I had for other characters in her world.

4 stars.