It began when I was not doing my history essay – same old story. I needed a break an I decided to google for my name. Sad I know, but don’t tell me you haven’t done it.
Jessica Allendon is a 16 year old living in London going about normal 16 year old things when a chance encounter throws her life into turmoil.
Nothing much happened that night – I found one Jessica Allendon who researched old churches, one who won the hundred-metre breaststroke at some school in Virginia, and her, the one that was to cause all the trouble: sixteen-year-old Jessica Allendon from somewhere in London.
So begins the adventure. Jessica decides to meet the other Jessica and ends up being transported to another London. A London that seems to be stuck in the past, but where it is also 2008. A London with a different history. No world wars, first or second, and a very different cold war.
Jessica must find her way in this world, adjusting to new customs and expectations, along with a world of politics, spies and terrorism that she finds herself in the middle of. I think my biggest disappointment with this book was that I found myself waiting for the time when the author would explain exactly what happened in history to make this world turn out different to our own. But that is more to do with my own expectations that a problem with the book itself. Hints and snippets are provided and I guess the reader can feel free to use their imagination to construct a series of events that may have occurred.
In spite of that niggling distraction, it was a good read. The author does a good job of putting you in Jessica’s shoes and like the stranded character, you never quite know who are really her friends and enemies. It is a story about Jessica’s struggles to come to terms with a different culture, to navigate her way through a tangled web of spies and double crossing in which she never quite knew her place, and the danger of building relationships in a world in which you cannot remain.
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