After Eden by Helen Douglas

After Eden by Helen Douglas
(After Eden, #1)
Release Date: November 7, 2013
Publisher: Bloomsbury Childrens; 288 pages
Rating:

Eden Anfield loves puzzles, so when mysterious new boy Ryan Westland shows up at her school she's hooked. On the face of it, he's a typical American teenager. So why doesn't he recognise pizza? And how come he hasn't heard of Hitler? What puzzles Eden the most, however, is the interest he's taking in her.

As Eden starts to fall in love with Ryan, she begins to unravel his secret. Her breakthrough comes one rainy afternoon when she stumbles across a book in Ryan's bedroom - a biography of her best friend - written over fifty years in the future. Confronting Ryan, she discovers that he is there with one unbelievably important purpose ... and she might just have destroyed his only chance of success.

Received from Goodreads for an honest, impartial review.

Romance, time travel and a mystery all these things had me interested, but once I realized this book was set in the UK I couldn’t hold back from diving straight in. As a British girl who spent many summers playing in the sands around Cornwall and Devon any book that can take me back there wins my vote.

From the blurb of the book I expected a mystery with a little romance, but oh was I wrong. Yes, there is mystery and romance, but there is so much more. Helen Douglas creates a story where anything could happen set in a town that could be anyone's small town. The characters are very well rounded and fleshed out with their quirks, pit falls and personalities. No one in the book felt like a prop or place filler, nor did anyone over shadow the others in a way that might turn you off.

The story is well paced and doesn't hold everything back til the last chapter. It is a page turner that has the potential to keep you up well into the early hours of the morning, so be warned to saved this book til you have time for a long sleep in.

Douglas has created a fantastic first book in a geographical area that few YA authors explore and on a subject that isn't over exposed. All in all a fantastic story.

Grab this book for when you have nothing else planned, because you won't want to put this one down.