Triangles

August 1, 2013

Gr 8 Up-In this teen soap opera with a science-fiction twist, 17-year-old Autumn Taylor finds herself on a cruise in the midst of the Bermuda Triangle and soon realizes that she is in one of many alternate realities: she and the hot guy she just met are a happy couple, a lovesick coworker is now her husband, and she is dying of cancer. It's hard to sympathize with Autumn, though, as she isn't a very likable character. She admits that the way she handles certain situations is wrong, yet she doesn't change her behavior. She makes it difficult for readers to believe that her two romantic interests, the stereotypical bad boy and the pushover puppy dog, would be so in love with her. The story has two events that are emotional points of depth for an otherwise shallow protagonist: Autumn's father died in a car accident several years earlier, and her mother is currently in a coma. However, those moments are overshadowed by one-dimensional, weak characters. Even though the plot concludes with an uplifting ending in which the teen seems to grow as a person, too often it tends to veer into the melodramatic. What begins as an interesting concept that uses the mythology of the Bermuda Triangle and alternate realities to teach life lessons turns into something much more cliched.-Kimberly Castle-Alberts, Hudson Library & Historical Society, OH

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