I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Space Between Here & Now by Sarah Suk Published by Quill Tree Books on 10/31/23
Genres: Contemporary, Fantasy & Magic, Science Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 317
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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Seventeen-year-old Aimee Roh has Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, a rare condition that causes her to time travel to a moment in her life when she smells something linked to that memory. Her dad is convinced she'll simply grow out of it if she tries hard enough, but Aimee's fear of vanishing at random has kept her from living a normal life.
When Aimee disappears for nine hours into a memory of her estranged mom--a moment Aimee has never remembered before--she becomes distraught. Not only was this her longest disappearance yet, but the memory doesn't match up with the story of how her mom left--at least, not the version she's always heard from her dad.
Desperate for answers, Aimee travels to Korea, where she unravels the mystery of her memories, the truth about her mother, and the reason she keeps returning to certain moments in her life. Along the way, she realizes she'll need to reconcile her past in order to save her present.
Short and Sweet Review
Aimee Ro has Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, which is a rare condition and for Aimee its triggered by smells. Whenever Aimee smells something that is connected to a memory from the past she’ll be taken back to that memory physically. Her dad thinks this is something she’ll grow out of but Aimee has a fear that just disappearing at random is keeping her from living a semi normal life. When Aimee ends up going into a memory for 9 hours (the longest she’s ever been gone) she realizes that her dad hasn’t been completely honest about why her mom left. Aimee decides to go to Korea to see if she can get some answers and uncover the mystery surrounding her mom leaving.
Aimee has STWS which is pretty interesting and very rare. Aimee is triggered by certain smells and she’ll go back into a memory she will literally disappear from the present which is a bit jarring and go back in time into the past to relive the memory. Aimee hasn’t been able to seek help because her dad thinks she’ll just stop when she wants to and if she really wants to. I did love seeing the advice Aimee was getting from places like reddit or just internet searches. When Aimee goes into a past memory of her mom she realizes that her dads story about why her mom left doesn’t match up to what she just saw. Aimee goes to Korea to find out what happened to her mom and she hopes that her STWS will come in handy to help her find her. I loved Aimee as a character. She’s struggling with something that not a lot of people understand and we see her reliving her past and trying to piece things together. I did like seeing her understand that sometimes the past shouldn’t dictate the future. The relationship with her father starts off strained, they don’t talk much and he’s stuck in his ways but I feel like its a cultural thing. Seeing Aimee and her father mend their relationship was very heartwarming. In Korea Aimee stays with her aunt but she does most of her sight seeing with an old family friend Junho and I did feel some sparks but I liked how they were ultimately just friends. Nikita was also a friend of Aimee’s and she’s very supportive and was even the one to suggest to Aimee that she should go to Korea.
The Space Between Here & Now, is a heartwarming novel about exploring memories and dealing with all of the emotions that come with them but also overcoming them and looking forward to the future and what’s to come. The characters were easy to relate to and so was the subject matter, I would definitely recommend this book!
