Review: Double Fault - Janine Caldwell

Double Fault
Janine Caldwell
Series: Vortex Series, #2
Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Science Fiction
Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars
Word Rating: Whiny but bearable
On Goodreads

If you missed my last review, it was for the first book in this series, Rematch, and you should check it out before you read this one if you want to see how the two books compare.

So Double Fault was definitely better than Rematch but I still had a few problems with it, some of which carried over from the last book. The biggest issue for me was the writing itself.

I found it hard to find any significant differentiation between Trent's narration and Cassie's. I think if an author is going to have more than one narrator, there should be a noticeable difference in the way they tell their stories. I also thought at first it wasn't completely necessary to have more than one narrator, although I understood why it worked later in the book, so that isn't a qualm against Janine Caldwell, just an observation. However, like I said, the narration all sounded the same to me. Some chapters I would even get confused as to who was supposed to be speaking and assume it was one of them when in actuality it was the other. This threw me off sometimes and broke up my flow of reading.

Another problem I had with the writing was that there was a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. Most of the plot points and descriptions were given in explicit terms of either Cassie or Trent saying "This is happening. Now this is happening. Now this person is doing this." I didn't feel engrossed in the world of the book, I felt like I was just a spectator in a separate reality. It took a lot away from what otherwise could have had so much more potential.

Speaking of separate realities, that was one thing I did really like about this book. Janine Caldwell's story was very interesting and it kept me pretty entertained learning about how Cassie's life would have been different and how messing with time is more dangerous than meets the eye. I wish I could say more without spoiling it, but the plot is definitely what kept me reading, especially when I got annoyed with the characters, who seemed to be flat and boring at times. I really wish she had focused more on Lorelai, who is definitely my favorite character.

Overall, the book fell short in a lot of places, but I can see that Janine Caldwell has a lot of potential as an author and I look forward to seeing how she improves in the future.

- Noor

What one event from your past would you change and why?
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