Review: Passenger

Passenger by Alexandra Bracken
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this book, however I had a few issues with it. The main ones being the lack of historical detail and the confusing rules of time travel. Unlike stories like Outlander or The Time Traveler's wife, Passenger's time travelers can create different timelines and rewrite history. Now, of course this is a very interesting idea, however I don't think that Alexandra Bracken fully thought this idea through. It is never thoroughly explained how exactly time is changed, whether or not some events are fixed in place, or why traveler's don't just disappear from the world when a change in the timeline may have prevented their birth. I don't know if I'm explaining this well, but hopefully you understand my confusion. I also felt that the lack of historical detail made the story seem less believable. Already the time travel world was shaky, but not having a complete grasp on each era really diminished the reality of some scenes.
However, I did find myself hooked on this book. I was very pleased to find that the main character, Etta, was a musician, as I am a huge music nerd. Reading about how she listened to the world and found songs in every sound really resonated with me. Etta was a very refreshing YA character to read about. She is smart, determined, musical, and imperfect. Often, YA protagonists will be 'chosen ones' and have almost no flaws and make few mistakes throughout the story. Etta is different. Yes, she is chosen for a specific task, but she is no time travel prodigy. She is impulsive, and that impulsiveness often leads to interesting situations. She is not afraid of being too forward with Nicholas, her partner in time travel and romance, and I found that rather refreshing. Instead of being the coy, flirtatious girl, Etta is the one instigating a lot of the romance. Nicholas is worried about her reputation and virtue, but Etta doesn't care about his old school of thought. To be fair, Nicholas is a bastard born son of the Grand Master of time traveler's and one of his slaves, and was brought up by a Captain and his wife during the late eighteenth century, so it is no wonder that his beliefs are what I deem outdated.
Anyway, I found the characters of this book much more interesting than the majority of the plot itself. I will continue to read this series because I want to see where/when Etta and Nicholas end up, and I genuinely enjoined reading this book. It was slow and only really picked up near the end, but now I'm itching to read the next installment, so overall this was a pretty solid read.

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