One Past Midnight by Jessica Shirvington - ADVISABLE

Shirvington, Jessica  One Past Midnight, 343 pgs.  Bloomsbury, 2014.  $17.99  Content: Language: R (74 swears; 1 “F”); Mature Content: PG-13; Violence: PG-13.   

Sabine has had two lives ever since she can remember.  She wakes up one day with a little sister, living a Goth lifestyle with financially struggling parents.  Then the next day she wakes up and relives the same day on the calendar, but this time in a well-to-do family with two older brothers and at the top of the social chain at school.  Sabine wants just one life, she is exhausted, so when she breaks her arm and it doesn’t transfer over to her new life she comes up with a plan to die in one of her lives so she can just have her rich popular life.  Her plan is stalled when she finds a boy that she likes in her poor life and she starts to wonder which of her lives is the better life.   

I could not put this book down.  I loved it from the beginning and the author does a great job making the switch between lives clear.  It’s a creative and fascinating idea and I loved it.  The mature content is PG-13 because in her popular life there is a build up to her losing her virginity on graduation night, and she also off-page sleeps with someone in her poor life.   Violence is physical abuse from a boyfriend.  MS-OPTIONAL.  HS-ADVISABLE.  Reviewer, C. Peterson.