Over the summer I received a kindle edition of ESSENCE from my friends at Booktrope. In this story, a high school senior (Jocelyn) lives a fairly run of the mill existence, until she starts having strange visions and dreams, and feels a strong connection to a boy she has only just met, yet when she is around him she feels nauseous and faints. Is it all in Jocelyn’s head? Or does she have the genetically passed skill of time travelling? Which of Jocelyn’s worlds is the real one? Or is she actually existing in parallel lives?

I’m a huge fan of time travel stories (anyone ever read the old children’s book TIME AT THE TOP?). Jocelyn’s story is intriguing, and I kept reading to see what would happen. It seems like a lot of the YA novels I’m reading these days are book one of a series. Not sure how I feel about that, but c’est la vie. I did find the pacing rather slow for the first half of this book. I wanted more action and I wanted to know just what was going on with Jocelyn. That said, it was a fun read and something I could recommend to middle schoolers as well as older YA readers.

Thank you, Booktrope, for my review copy.