Review: 3.5 stars First pick up the free prequel, Tales From A Tiny Thai Table
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 6, 2013
I would highly suggest that anyone interested in reading this book also pick up the free prequel, Tales From A Tiny Thai Table.  The introduction to the characters will serve you well in the reading of the novel.  Unfortunately, I was not told of the prequel, and was unaware of it until I started to gather information for this post.This was an interesting read, all based on those "what if" questions that we all have: what if I went left instead of right, what if we had never met, what if I chose x instead of y.  They are simple questions, ultimately futile in the real world, although providing a ripe font of potential for a novel.This is the story of Bella and Clark and the two universes that they could inhabit: met and unmet. While I was not a fan of the film Sliding Doors, parallel universe stories can be greatly entertaining when managed well, and the questions and situations posed are logical and feel possible.While I think both lives were fairly well-developed if rather basic, I would have wished for more information of their lives at the end to finish the story completely. All four of the main characters were basically fleshed out, but I could not find a great deal of polish that creates a breathing character that a reader can picture.  I think part of this was cleverly done on the author's part - keeping the character numbers down and their lives and situations simple for ease of storytelling, but I still wanted more. While I did find Turner's writing very smooth, with dialog that felt natural and the characters had a solid sense of identity, the brusque splits between together and separate often led to the story feeling disjointed, with a couple of chapters needing to pass before they gathered together again.It was a clever story that mostly worked for me, and would possibly have worked better had I known of and read the prequel beforehand.I received an eBook from the author for purpose of honest review. I was not compensated for this review: all conclusions were my own responsibility.