Eyes in the Mirror

July 15, 2011

Stoned, Dee's attractive male friend Jamie suggests the existence of an alternate universe, and later the 16-year-old finds it by stepping through a mirror. 

On the other side, she encounters Samara, her alter ego. Where Dee is a good student and rarely steps off the straight and narrow, Samara, an unhappy loner since her mother committed suicide three years before, savors cutting herself, an act that's vividly depicted a few times throughout the narrative. Told in these two girls' voices in alternate chapters, their stories interweave when they inexplicably decide to swap places for a day or two. Samara encourages Jamie's sexual advances, and Dee tells Samara's father about her cutting, leaving both teens with new issues when they return to their own worlds. While Samara must deal with therapy, Dee faces greater trials. Though these push her off her college-track, she adjusts with remarkably minor angst. The quality of writing is uneven, too often telling rather than showing and never managing to generate sufficient suspense to move the tale forward. Both Dee and Samara are described in detail, yet remain stock characters—good teen and troubled teen. Others are more superficially developed. While the concept is intriguing, the paranormal aspect is overshadowed by the less compelling reality-fiction component.

Ultimately, this average debut effort never rises above the masses in either overcrowded genre. (Paranormal/reality fiction. 12 & up)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

November 1, 2011

Gr 9-11-Samara is sad, lonely, and distant. Dee is bored with her life and searches for an alternate universe. One day, a mirror breaks, and her mother falls through it to another world where Dee goes to rescue her and sees a girl who looks very much like herself-Samara. The two girls become friends and decide to switch places for a day, and that's when life changes for both of them. Dee ends up pregnant and Samara ends up in rehab. Filled with an abundance of teen issues such as cutting, pregnancy, drug use, school alienation, and dead parents, this debut novel is difficult to recommend. There are inconsistencies and dangling plot threads, didactic speeches from adults, and an unsuccessful fantasy element that muddy the story. Pass on it unless your collection truly needs another issue-laden problem novel.-Angela J. Reynolds, Annapolis Valley Regional Library, Bridgetown, NS, Canada

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011
Grades 8-11 Samara and Dee live apparently normal teen lives in what turn out to be parallel universes. Samara, living with her widowed father, is a loner who has turned to cutting to relieve her psychological pain; Dee is more wholesome but intellectually curious and uncertain of the changes occurring in her relationship with Jamie, a boy with whom she has been friends since childhood. The two girls meet and quickly agree to switch places via a portal between their worlds that can be crossed through any mirror into which both look. Mayer's skillful storytelling keeps incredulity nicely at bay and instead directs the two girls, as well as the reader, to contemplate all the what-if fallouts: What if you could step into someone else's life? Could you fix what you see wrong in her life? Could youaccidentallyruin her life by, say, getting pregnant when you are being her? Romance readers, as well as those who like realism, will be surprised at how Mayer makes this fantasy ring with authenticity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)