Review: “Beyond Parallel” by Matthew Turner

AppraisingPages is an official blog through http://www.BookReviewBlogs.com and http://www.BookTweetingService.com, which means that we make ourselves available to self-published authors who want to send us their books for review. We get several e-mail requests a day from these services and deny most of them but sometimes one comes along that I can’t say no to!

Beyond Parallel by Matthew Turner was one. As soon as he said “new adult” was his genre my ears (eyes?) perked up. New adult is an new emerging genre designed to be older than YA (young adult), generally for 20s to 30s whereas YA is usually teens. Justine has already reviewed some books in this genre and it interested me so much that I wanted to check it out. Here is the synopsis from its Goodreads page:

One boy. One girl. One insignificant moment that changes their lives forever.

Bella and Clark are two young twenty-somethings, finding themselves in a chaotic and crazy world. One craves love; the other avoids it. Will they find one another, or will a single what-if moment send them down different paths?

In the same mould as Sliding Doors, Uncertainty, and Smoking/No-Smoking, Beyond Parallel flips between two parallel tales. One follows Bella and Clark as a couple, the other as if they never meet.

Friendships, careers, dreams, fantasies…their lives are no different to yours or mine.

Follow their journey over a fast paced, mazy two-years. Highflying careers, book tours, teaching teenagers, hipster warehouses, coffee shop hangouts, a despicable salesman…they’re all confronted.

It’s incredible how a small, everyday decision can affect how you look, where you live, the people you love, and who you become. We could all live a billion lives, but we’re only given one. Is it all a game of chance, or are Bella and Clark meant to be?

I gave this book 5 books on Goodreads and Amazon and let me just say that it deserves it. This is by far the best self-published/indie book I’ve ever read and deserves to be a bestseller. I could barely put it down and was itching to get back to it every time I was forced to. In order for me to like a romance, it has to be creative. Since the relationship(s) propels the story it needs to be good. No clichés, only an appropriate level and type of drama, a lot of creativity. This book has all of it and I was so appreciative, I think a good romance can be hard to find.

Something I’ve discovered having read a pretty hearty mixture of traditionally and independently published books is that when it comes to writing, you either have it or you don’t. Not to say that only traditionally published authors do or that you can’t get “it” if at first you don’t, but it’s true. Matthew Turner has “it”. He gives me everything I need as a reader in perfect balance: setting, character, forward motion, dialogue, emotion, all of it. There’s absolutely nothing I desired from this book that I didn’t get. I can tell that he’s a seriously talented writer who knows the craft and had a great editor (all things I think are requirements of any indie author.) I seriously cannot praise this book any more!

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book that I shared on our Instagram:

With this in the very beginning how can I not be instantly wooed?!

Okay, seriously? This was so sweet and romantic without being at all cliché. My favorite kind of romance.

I had some other quotes that I loved too but I considered them too much of a spoiler so I omitted them… you know how spoiler-sensitive we are around here!