From Goodreads: Ben and Maggie have met, fallen in love, and died together countless times. Over the course of two pivotal days—both the best and worst of their lives—they struggle again and again to resist the pull of fate and the force of time itself. With each failure, they return to the beginning of their end, a wild road trip that brings them to the scene of their own murders and into the hands of the man destined to kill them.

As time circles back on itself, events become more deeply ingrained, more inescapable for the two kids trapped inside the loop. The closer they come to breaking out, the tighter fate’s clutches seem to grip them. They devise a desperate plan to break free and survive the days ahead, but what if Ben and Maggie’s only shot at not dying is surviving apart?

_______________________________________________

Unfortunately, I really didn’t care for this novel.  The characters are a little too immature and their decisions made me constantly wonder just how much common sense they really had.  Ben and Maggie are in a time loop—in other words, they live the same day repeatedly until they are able to figure out a way through without dying.  However, the whole loop concept left me with a few questions.  For instance, how does one get in a loop?  Does everyone experience loops?  If this was Maggie’s fifth loop, having survived four others, then how did she get out of her other loops, and why not employ the same techniques?  Why do the children’s memories of the loop keep changing?  And, perhaps my biggest question and frustration was this: why didn’t the children go to any adults?

Now, while I understand that adults never would have believed them about a loop, they would look into a man chasing them down with a gun.  And, it’d be pretty hard to end up murdered in a storage room if the children were in police custody, or even at home with their parents.  I do understand the idea of fate pushing the children towards their destiny, but I found some of their solutions to be a little too underdeveloped and repetitious, as it were.

Maggie and Ben met in the same place every day, and though Ben initially doesn’t remember, Maggie does, and she drags him off on an adventure every time (instead of going to an adult—insert parent voice here).  Thus, by the second repetition of these events, I began to lose interest.  It’s a very hard thing to do, writing the same scenes repeatedly and making it seem fresh, and unfortunately, this novel falls into the rut of repetitiveness, in my opinion.   Although there were new obstacles thrown in the children’s way, they kept making the same trivial mistakes that ultimately cost them their lives and, though I’m now being repetitive myself, it really irked me that they never thought to pull in the help of an adult.  Perhaps I’m just over thinking it all, but in the end, this novel just wasn’t for me.  Two stars.

Disney Hyperion was extremely gracious in allowing me to read an ARC of this novel, via Netgalley, prior to its release on April 30, 2013.