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Repeating the Same Mistake


*Warning: This review may contain mild spoilers for the book Dissonance, by Erica O'Rourke.

Dissonance is about a girl named Delancy Sullivan, aka Del, and she has the ability to Walk. She is able to Walk into Echoes, worlds that sprung out of a world once someone makes a decision. For example, if you choose between Lucky Charms and Cheerios for breakfast. Let’s say you chose Lucky Charms. Then, a world would spring out where you choose Cheerios. I can be as minuscule as that, or as big as deciding which college to go to. And as she starts to see her crush Simon Lane in many Echoes and other weird circumstances surrounding him, she finds out something that could put her and the entire multiverse in grave danger.

For positives, the multiverse is well-written. I watch comic book TV shows like The Flash and am really into physics, so the idea of the multiverse makes sense to me. The multiverse in this book is very different from the multiverse of comic books, but it still made perfect sense. The multiverse was written in a way so you can easily understand it, but it still has a sci-fi element to it. You always know when they are in another world, and explain it similar to how I did. I liked Del as a character, but I didn’t gravitate towards as much as I did her best friend Eliot. Eliot is very nerdy and has lots of ideas, so I got him because that’s essentially me. I also liked what the story unfolded out to be, and it made relative sense. And overall the writing was good.

For negatives, Simon. Throughout the multiverse, we meet different Simons and that was fun, but his “real” character was a little bland and annoying. He was always the same character, except for one, and was the jock-who-every-girl-likes kind of character. He never had much development, except a backstory that was supposed to give depth but really didn’t. And the romance between Simon and Del was forced, stupid, cliched, and overused. (*spoilers) A lot of times, she would go and see him in another world and just go and kiss him, but would go back to the real world and would be disappointed about how she can’t be with him. Then, she would think about that she can’t be with the other Simons but still go see one. Over and over. They also introd

uced a “love triangle,” but it really added more drama than romantic fighting. To be honest, I don’t typically like romance in books, but this was a really bad case. There was also a really long, very confusing exposition near the end of the book that involved a twist, and I thought that could've been handled better.

Overall, I thought this was a pretty fun book with a cool multiverse story line, but with terrible romance interwoven. I’m going to give Dissonance a B+.

Funny story, I’ve meet the author, Ms. O’Rourke, 4 times. She even remembers me, which is pretty cool.

Thank you guys for reading and I hope you enjoyed. And until next time, may the force be with you.

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