"The Space Between" by Alexandra Sokoloff

From Goodreads: "Sixteen-year old Anna Sullivan is having terrible dreams of a massacre at her school. Anna’s father is a mentally unstable veteran, her mother vanished when Anna was five, and Anna might just chalk the dreams up to a reflection of her crazy waking life — except that Tyler Marsh, the most popular guy at the school and Anna’s secret crush, is having the exact same dream.

Despite the gulf between them in social status, Anna and Tyler connect, first in the dream and then in reality. As the dreams reveal more, with clues from the school social structure, quantum physics, probability, and Anna's own past, Anna becomes convinced that they are being shown the future so they can prevent the shooting…

If they can survive the shooter — and the dream.

Based on the short story "The Edge of Seventeen," winner of the ITW Thriller award."

When I started this book I was quite taken aback with the way it was written- I personally feel that the writing was quite choppy and awkward, almost to the point of sounding robotic (ie. "There is not a class on her schedule this semester that she likes. Next up, second period Chem which she understands not at all." pg. 10)- as such, I had a very difficult time connecting to everything that was occurring within it. 

Furthermore, I feel that the book was unnecessarily convoluted- there were countless times while reading the book that I set it down so that I could process everything that was going on (and after every time I did this I was still no closer to understanding the book) and there were countless times while reading the book that I had to pull up the dictionary feature on my Kindle so that I could understand what exactly the author was trying to say- it almost felt like the author used a thesaurus to change every couple of words in the story to make it sound more intelligent (ie. "The dark second-floor chem lab is soporific as always, Litwack spacing out behind his desk, mug of coffee well-laced with vodka. As the class practices titration Anna can see more than the assignment bubbling at the back table: Darren and a couple other football guys are huddling too industriously over a beaker." pg. 10). 

If anything the book reads more like a screenplay than an actual book, which I suppose makes sense as the author "made an interesting living writing novel adaptations and original suspense and horror scripts for numerous Hollywood studios (Sony, Fox, Disney, Miramax), for producers such as Michael Bay, David Heyman, Laura Ziskin and Neal Moritz" (http://www.alexandrasokoloff.com/alex.html). After reading the book I am left feeling similar to how I did after watching films such as "Inception" and "Shutter Island"- basically I am confused beyond belief, but know that what I just experienced is very likely a work of genius.

All in all, I think that this is one of the rare cases where, if this book were to be made into a film, the film would actually be better than the book. While I personally did not enjoy the book as much as I had hoped to, I can see fans of thrillers eating it up and asking for seconds.

Rating: 6/10

I received this book from the author to read and honestly review. I was not compensated in any way for said review.