Alex is a teacher.  His younger teenage sister lives with him.  He has a “gift” I guess you’d call it (although I’d be more inclined to call it a curse personally).  He can see who is fated to be with whom (i.e. soulmates) but also much more darkly, who are tied together by death – meaning one of the pair will cause the death of the other.  These appear as red and black threads respectively.  The scariest thing for him is that both his red and black threads are tied to his former teenage crush, Bishop.

Bishop shockingly reappears in Alex’s life after 13 years – from when they were teenagers. Alex is not happy about it because he was pretty much abandoned by Bishop back then.  Not without reason.  Alex’s life was a nightmare and he was tied up in a lot of bad stuff with his father while trying to keep his baby sister safe.  Not the life for a teenager.  After he manages to excape from that hell, he’s worked his ass off to make a better life for himself and his sister – who is now the age he was when that all went down.

When Bishop and Alex are thrown back together, there are plenty who are not happy about it.  Mostly Bishop’s family and well Alex isn’t overjoyed either.  Bishop tried to apologize but Alex isn’t too interested.  However, he’s in a bit of a jam because he sees that his sister’s best friend has a dark black thread – meaning he’s about to die.  Bishop has a gift as well.  He can walk in other people’s dreams.  Alex can’t quite see how this girl is supposed to die so he needs Bishop’s help.  Reluctantly Bishop agrees and things get crazy from there.  They manage to thwart one attempt on the girl’s life but this seems to throw a lot of other things out of whack.

During this whole time there are time jumps back to their teenage years with alternating POVs.  Alex has a lot on this plate with his horrible father and the things he expects of Alex.  They both acknowledge that they made mistakes and that they weren’t honest with each other.

Alongside this, Alex’s father shows back up. Nobody is happy to see him.  Alex tells him to get lost.  But then it appears that maybe he needs the guy’s help after all – and he wants more information.  There is this whole supposed “turnaround” too.  Alex finds out things he never expected and as he once again is trying to save people, he ends up putting the people he loves the most in danger.  Their attempts to change fate may have made things much work.

So first, I confirm that I am a huge Alice Winters fan.  I mean Leland is one of my favorite characters ever.  I love the VRC.  Hiro?  He’s awesome.  But this was really a hard one for me and perhaps this is a me thing and not the book.  I just really struggled with the pacing and the time jumps of the story.  I really had a very hard time connecting with Alex and Bishop.  It was a bit jarring jumption from their teenage relationship to their current timeline relationship.  I just didn’t feel/believe their connection.  Unlike Alice Winters’ other characters, I just didn’t find these two very charming or funny.  I didn’t believe that they were soulmates which left me not terribly engaged with their story.  I also didn’t believe a certain character’s “change of heart” which left me somewhat skeptical also.  As usual, YMMV.

Michael Ferraiuolo’s narration definitely raised the story level for me to at least keep me somewhat interested.  Actually the last hour or so of the audio had me really engaged.because I wanted to find out what was going to happen during the big showdown.  The voice choices were fabulous and the performance was definitely a huge enhancement to the story.  His whiny annoying teenagers were completely en pointe!  There were a lot of high highs and low lows in this one as well as danger and some humor.  I would definitely choose the audio if you want to give this one a go.