Review: A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray

I saw this book on Youtube a good while ago and when I came across it at my library I decided to pick it up, as I figured it would be contemporary YA romance, and a fun and easy read. 

First of all it is part of a trilogy, second, it isn’t really contemporary romance. At least, that’s not the main part of the story. Instead it deals with inter dimensional travel, spies and ethics. 

Marguerite is our narrator and she is a young woman (I never really figured out how old she is) whose father is murdered due to his work in inter dimensional travel. It looks like one of his assistants, Paul, is guilty and his other assistant, Theo, decides to set out after Paul, who has escaped into another dimension and Marguerite decides to come with him. We follow the plot as it slowly unravels through multiple universes and we finally learn what has been going on. 

I had a number of problems with this book that I can’t really discuss without spoilers, so read below if you don’t mind those. As for the good things, I liked some parts of the book, while other parts seemed really weak to me. The story could have done much more with the ethics side of the question of traveling between dimensions, but that was barely touched on. 

I gave this book 2 stars out of 5 on Goodreads and I won’t be continuing the series. 

SPOILERS BELOW!!

After my initial miscalculation as to the genre of this book I was actually quite excited to read it. I mean, traveling to other dimensions and a comprehensive spy plot seems interesting right? I actually found this book quite dull. It had its moments but my interest in this book wavered massively throughout and I did have some major issues, including lots of weak writing and structuring of the story. 

It seems Paul is the guilty party because “it looked like he did it”. But exactly how did it look like he was to blame? We are never told that. And throughout the book I felt like there were a number of things that weren’t really explained very well. Like the author just couldn’t be bothered to type something that wasn’t connected to the immediate plot. It also seemed like the backstories of characters would be twisted to fit into the current plot with no regard for continuity. For example Josie comes home for New Year’s in order to cheer her parents up instead of hanging out with her friend. I read that as if she normally hangs out with friends on New Year’s. But then she has brought paper hats, “like she always does”, implying that she always celebrates New Year’s with her family. Granted, I might be reading it wrong, but still, it’s confusing. And as for Theo, we hear about his wild party ways and dabbling in drugs from the beginning of the story. But suddenly near the end we learn that he changed behavior about 3 months prior because of something plot-related. I found this really jarring. If he had changed his behavior drastically wouldn’t the people that was pretty much his family have brought it up somehow? Instead it seems like this particular part of Theo’s backstory is twisted to fit the current plot. I also found Marguerite super annoying. At the very beginning she goes off on a revenge fueled rampage intending to kill a man in cold blood. Then she learns that Paul is not to blame after all, and she basically falls in love with him. Then Theo pretty much says “You can’t trust him” and she is right back to hating Paul. But then Paul is there and she decides to trust him after all….I mean! Pick a side, lady! She wavered back and forth way too much for my taste and was so headstrong and downright stupid sometimes that I was just done with her. Plus the whole love triangle…..ugh!