3:59

3:59 by Gretchen McNeil
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love a book that takes a germ of real science and builds a complete fiction from it. This is just such a book.

3:59 is about alternate realities. It follows Josie, whose life seems to be falling apart. She is given a chance to glimpse an alternate version of herself, Jo, in another universe. Jo's life at first look seems to be everything that Josie's is not. But when they switch places, Josie learns that the grass isn't always greener on the other side of the fence.

This book impressed me because of its premise: McNeil has taken a set of characters and developed them fully. Then she made copies of them and developed all those characters fully. For them to be both similar and yet distinct was expertly done.

As a main character, Josie was fascinating to watch. She's geeky, unconcerned with looks and fashion, completely at home in her family with a great boyfriend and loyal best friend. She goes from this situation to a complete disaster in just a few pages. Her journey into an alternate universe changes her from a complacent teenager to a wizened young adult. She learns to stop whining and figures out not just how to change things, but to be sensitive to relationships and other people's situations.

The secondary characters are highly entertaining. The boyfriends are dramatically different from each other, as are the best friends. Penelope was a lot of fun to watch, although she and Josie were questionable as geniuses in theoretical physics. It was unbelievable but so well woven into the story that I didn't mind.

The plot never dragged and the world-building was interesting and believable. The ending surprised me. I never expected the villain and the ending was wonderful. It wrapped up the story nicely while still providing room for speculation.

My only complaint is this: the internal dialogue completely interrupted the external dialogue way too often. While both were necessary, they could have been better worked to give the external conversations better flow.

The aspects of the multiverse, brane theory and string theory made this particular story really entertaining fiction. I couldn't put this one down. And I couldn't recommend it more for fans of YA sci-fi.

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