ARC Review: While You Were Gone (Duplexity #2) by Amy K. Nichols @amyknichols @randomhousekids

An artist without a cause meets a rebel without a clue.

Eevee is a promising young artist and the governor’s daughter in a city where censorship is everywhere and security is everything. When a fire devastates her exhibition—years in the making—her dreams of attending an elite art institute are dashed. She’s struggling to find inspiration when she meets Danny, a boy from a different world. Literally.

Raised in a foster home, Danny has led a life full of hurt and hardship until a glitch in the universe changes everything. Suddenly Danny is living in a home he’s never seen, with parents who miraculously survived the car crash that should have killed them. It’s like he’s a new Danny. But this alternate self has secrets—ties to an underground anarchist group that have already landed him in hot water. When he starts to develop feelings for Eevee, he’s even more disturbed to learn that he might have started the fire that ruined her work.

As Danny sifts through clues from his past and Eevee attempts to piece together her future, they uncover a secret that’s bigger than both of them. . . . And together, they must correct the breach between the worlds before it’s too late.

Title: While You Were Gone (Duplexity #2)

Author: Amy K. Nichols

Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: August 4, 2015

Brooke's Review:

I want to thank Knopf books for young readers for providing me with a copy of this book to read and give an honest review. Receiving this book for free has in no way altered my opinion or review.

I really enjoyed the first book in this series. I have a thing for well planned out time travel books. This one did it right. So of course I was happy to be able to read the second book in this series to see what was happening on the other side while the first book was in progress.

This book is basically the parallel world of the first book. While it probably could be read on it's own, it was nice to have the background from the first book to see what was going along with it. I love that we get the other side of the perspective.

I liked watching this version of Evee and Danny. Their different personalities, and lifestyles. I liked watching Danny figure out exactly how he needed to act and be in order to fit in and not get "caught" being in the wrong world. The romance was there in this book, but I wasn't drawn to it as I was in the first book. I felt much more of a connection with the characters' romance in book #1.

I really like that this kind of took on a dystopian feel, while still being a time travel type of book. The world is totally different from book one. The government is very restrictive in this book and controls just about everything. It's the flip side of everything we saw after Danny was thrown from this world in the first book.

Nicholas does a nice job presenting the parallel universe and showing us what happened after the blast. She delves in the rebels and how they intend to put a stop to the restrictive government. I like that the romance was not a huge part of this book. Sure, it's there, but it's really just scratching the surface of what we saw between the parallel characters in book one.

Fans of Kasie West's Pivot Point series will fall right into Nichol's world.

Amy K. Nichols has been crafting stories for as long as she can remember. She is the author of YA science fiction novel Now That You’re Here, to be published by Knopf December 9, 2014. The follow-up, While You Were Gone, will be published in 2015. She is mentored by award-winning crime novelist James Sallis and lives on the edge of the Sonoran desert with her husband and children. Amy is a member of SCBWI and SFWA, as well as the Class of 2K14 debut authors. Visit her online at http://www.amyknichols.com.