Thursday, July 31, 2014

Random Reads Review - 15 Minutes by Jill Cooper

Title:  15 Minutes
Series: Rewind Series #1
Author: Jill Cooper
Release Date: June 2013
Pages: 234
Goodreads Rating: 4.08/5 Stars
My Rating: 4/5 Stars
My Content Rating: YA (Nothing more than kissing)

Summary from Goodreads: I have 15 minutes to save my mother’s life….

15 minutes is all the Rewind Agency gives you in the past, but for Lara Crane it’s enough time to race through the city, find her mother, and stop her from being killed in a mugging that happened over ten years ago.

But that’s not how it happened. The story she’s been told all her life is a lie and when Lara takes a bullet meant for her mother, her future changes forever.

The love of her life acts like a stranger. Her simple life is replaced with a giant house, glamorous clothes and a new boyfriend. 

Except someone knows her secret. And he will try to stop her at every turn as she races against the clock to unravel a dangerous conspiracy.

15 Minutes is an edgy high octane YA thriller that can be described as Back to the Future meets Inception where the people Lara trusts change in an instant. She is in a timeline she doesn't understand, and is about to make one fatal mistake as she faces an enemy so familiar, he’s family.


I had read a lot of great reviews of this book when it was released, so I was really happy when it came up as my Random Read for this month. Just as I'd hoped, 15 Minutes proved to be a time travel adventure with tons of twists and turns!

What I loved:
  • Converging pasts.  One thing that made this book different from other time travel books that I've read was the idea that Lara's memories from both versions of the past were converging. When she first changed her past, she only remembered her original life, but then she slowly started to gain memories from this new version of herself. This caused her quite a bit of emotional confusion, especially where her relationships were concerned. She had conflicting feelings about people - some based on her original life, and some based on her changed past - and she wasn't sure which set of emotions to trust. She wanted her original life back in many ways, but then the relationships in her new life were compelling too once she started gaining her memories of them - it left her confused and torn, and made for a much more interesting story!
  • The action.  This book was action-packed right from the get-go. It takes off running and the pace never really slows down - Lara is in a constant race to fix the past and then to fix her "improved" version of the past. It doesn't take long for Lara to discover that everything is not as it should be in her new life - not just the fact that her life is different, but that this new version of her life is much more dangerous. She has to unravel the truth in order to keep herself and her family safe.
  • The twists and turns. There are some really interesting twists and turns throughout the book that keep you guessing. This is the type of book where you truly never know who Lara should trust or what's going to happen next!
The negatives:
  • The cliffhanger.  The book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger - something that I pretty much saw coming based on what had already happened in the book. I felt like the ending to this one was drawn out just a little bit and wished that I could have just gotten back to the meat of the story (but I can't say much more than that).  Still, I'm definitely wondering what will happen next!
  • The romance. I didn't find myself being completely sold on either of the two boys that Lara is torn between, though I do think the guy she ended up with (maybe?) is the right guy. Probably. We'll see when we get to the next book.
    If you enjoy YA and time travel tales, I'd definitely check 15 Minutes out!  I give this book 4/5 stars.


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