Acevedo dazzles with her debut YA, sci-fi novel. Imaginative, insightful and exciting, Consider draws the reader deeper and deeper through a one-way portal to another dimension—her clear and engaging style presents an open invitation to binge reading.
Today’s seventeen going on eighteen-year-old high schoolers suffer the usual teen maladies of terminal senioritis, hormonal imperatives, and family turmoil. Add to this traumatic brew anxiety disorder, a father’s PTSD, and an apparent alien visitation and you have the psyche of the protagonist, Alexandra Lucas.
Hundreds of vertices or interdimensional portals open around the world, each with a humanoid hologram that warns of an epoch-ending collision between Earth and an as yet undetected comet. The hologram offers a six month grace period where earthlings may escape imminent doom to a blissful parallel universe.
Conspiracy theorists, deniers, and interdenominational fundamentalists attack the notion of extraterrestrial migration while potential suicides, down-and-outers, and adventures line up at the vertices, ready to travel. Alex’s focus shifts from decisions about where she’ll apply to college and how far she should go with Dominick, her boyfriend to should she stay on Earth and how far she should go with Dominick.
Consider sails with Alex through the storms of her ramped-up anxiety disorder and her attempts to lead a normal life despite the impact of the hologram’s message on her family, friends, and the general population. The subtext of Consider explores the nature of anxiety disorder, the value of medications, counseling, nutrition and exercise—valuable information for readers of all ages. Might Alexandra’s life filled with panic attacks equip her for a time when the entire planet goes berserk?
The author’s imagination explores society’s diverse reactions to the vertices. Consider its implications for prison overcrowding, credit card collection agencies and hate groups bent on ridding the world of their victims. Acevedo describes a society that must reassess its values. How useful are money, school, and employment when there’s no tomorrow? She caps her novel with an astounding climax—worthy of The Twilight Zone— that blazes the trail into the sequel. Read Consider for clues about the setting of volume 2—Earth or beyond the vertex.
The novel has a secular tone and shows some religions in an unfavorable light.
DonMulcare
A retired biologist with current interests in vegetable gardening, volunteering at a local nursing home, reading, and writing. Other activities include the study of the practical aspects of applied Gerontology, splitting logs, digging for quahogs and writing blogs. https://dmulcare.wordpress.com/
Many thanks to editor Cindy Trinque!