Author: A.S. King
Genre:YA Paranormal/Contemporary
Pages: Hardcover 308
Received: Library
Rating: 4/5
― A.S. King, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future
― A.S. King, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future
As a lover of the unknown future and the always constant past the concept that of a book about a girl who can see the past and future intrigued me! I loved though that the book was not just about that, it was a coming of age story, a story about a girl trying not to be just another statistic, a girl trying to overcome loss!
As a self proclaimed historian the past for me can sometimes be gilded and the future can be romanticized for being technologically advanced, peaceful, and clean! This book though shows the nasty side of the peoples pasts and how the future can turn very very wrong!
The relationship with Glory and her neighbor Ellie is what makes this book more interesting than it already is! Because of one disgusting (you have been warned) event both girls can see the future and past and what Ellie sees is usually different than what Glory sees but it just gives more information about what the girls are to expect in their distant and scary future and that was extremely enjoyable!
Glory connects with her dead mother in this book they both enjoyed photography and years later Glory has opened up her mothers old dark room and finds photos and notebooks. Glory gets closure from connecting with her mother after so many years! King shows another layer of Glory this way and it is a beautiful way of showing her comeing into her own in this book!
More superficially I loved that the chapters were super short I literally flew through this book in less than two days!
As I have said once before what the girls did to get this mysterious power was just freaking disgusting!!! It didn't make any sense why in the world would ANYONE do that!!! I do not want to give away spoilers but there are some reviews on GR that say what the girls did and you can check out one of them here if you are down for the spoiler!
The first third of the book really has nothing to do with seeing the future or past it is sort of just laying the ground work on the type of characters Glory and Ellie are some important information of their lives but it was just boring and to drawn out! The book began to get really good after the disgusting event!
I obviously had more parts I liked than disliked and in the end I thoroughly enjoyed this read! I recommend it to anyone who loves contemporary, history and dystopian it is a great mixture of all three!