O'Doherty, Carolyn. Rewind Boyds Mills Press, 2018. 256 pages. $17.95. 9781629798141.
Description from Indiebound: In this unique, fast-paced twist on the time-travel genre and the first book in a trilogy, sixteen-year-old Alex is a Spinner--one of a rare few who can rewind time to review past events. Alex's society uses Spinners to help solve crimes, but their powers come with a price: no Spinner ever lives past the age of twenty. This title is perfect for fans of author Jennifer Lynn Barnes (The Naturals; Killer Instinct) and Vivian Vande Velde (23 Minutes).
If I was a "spinner" ,ie I could stop time but still do things while everyone was frozen, I would probably use some of the time to just read books and have bottomless cups of coffee. I would want to bring some people along with me otherwise it would get boring after a couple of months...:)
Read on and find out the evolution of the book Rewind, how one idea led to another and eventually the beginning of a new series!
I first daydreamed about freezing time when I was a kid. I thought about how, if I could stop time, I’d pause in the middle of a test and check for the right answer. Or stop the world until a particularly flaming blush faded from my cheeks. If I saw someone falling off a tall building, I could stop time, get a ladder, pluck them from the air, and set them safely back down on the earth. I dreamed up simple fantasies, focused on trickery and good deeds. They were the kinds of things a nice kid would do with a fun, magical skill.
When I grew up and decided to write a story about freezing time, my take on how the whole thing might play out got more complicated. I started to think about less nice ways to use time freezing skills. Spying, for example. Spinners (this is what I’ve named the people in my book who can manipulate time) would make ideal spies. They can freeze time, walk into any building, and dig through people’s files, read their diaries, or search their homes. No one can stop them. No one can prove they were there. Spinners can do worse things without getting detected, too. Like take things. Or kill someone.
In an early draft of what became REWIND, my main character worked for the mob and committed a lot crimes. That could have been a good book, but it wasn’t the one I decided I wanted to write. What interests me isn’t thinking up clever ways to break the law, what interests me is people. I wanted to write about how an individual might cope with the knowledge they had the power to do these incredible things and I also wanted to explore how society would react to people who possessed this awesome skill. If Spiderman was real, would you trust him? What if he turned out instead to be Doc Ock? What if you knew what he could do, but had no idea how he would turn out, because he was still a child?
The main character in REWIND, Alexandra Manning, struggles to come to terms with the abilities she is given. As her powers expand through the course of the novel, she is faced with a number of moral decisions about the right and wrong ways to use her skills. When is it OK to break the law? Do the ends justify the means? What is justice? The rest of the world has choices to make, too. How should a society treat people who have powers that in some ways make them invincible? How much should an individual be expected to sacrifice to support the common good?
My ideas about freezing time have come a long way since their seeds as imaginary school pranks. Those changes are part of the beauty of writing a book – I get to play with ideas, watch them grow and change, and shape them into a story. For all the moral complexity I’ve ended up with, REWIND is still, at its heart, a thriller. In a lot of ways Alex is the nice girl I was who just wants to do fun things with a magical skill. The world, however, is rarely that simple, which is what makes life, and books, so very interesting. And after all, where is the fun in reading a novel about a girl with incredible power who only uses it to cheat on tests?
REWIND blog tour
Sunday, April 15
Guest post, giveaway
Monday, April 16
Guest post, giveaway
Tuesday, April 17
Books by Pamela Thompson blog
Review, Q&A, giveaway
Wednesday, April 18
Excerpt, giveaway
Thursday, April 19
Guest post, giveaway
