Every time a person crosses a boundary, there’s a chance that they might split into two ‘instances’, with one moving on to live their life in a new place and the other being left behind. Soyoung, a young woman living in South Korea, barely knows her instance Rose in America. They split when she was 10, and remain apart until Soyoung calls Rose to inform her that their grandfather died and Rose decides to come to Korea for the funeral. Together, they have to be careful, because one careless touch could cause them to coalesce into one woman again, but as time goes on Soyoung starts to wonder if that would really be such a bad thing.
This was a beautiful, fascinating way to convey the immigrant experience. I know it sounds kind of convoluted in my blurb, but I went into this without reading the blurb and I promise you catch on pretty quick to the world-building. I liked the interstitial bits about the history and science of this world and how instances appear in their versions of history and mythology. I did have the issue that I have with a lot of premise-forward fiction though which is that the characters get a little overshadowed by the premise. Theoretically this is a character-focused story but in practice I had trouble getting a grip on who Soyoung/Rose and Yujin/YJ were as people outside of the plot and couldn’t fully engage with them. Soyoung’s reckoning with how different she and Rose from one another were compared to Yujin and YJ was definitely interesting but there wasn’t a ton of follow up on that and the ending got kind of conceptual for my taste.
In summary, a book that strongly relies on its premise, but it is a really good premise and I would still recommend it!
Thank you to Isabel J. Kim and Tor Books for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!
Happy reading!
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