I read about this book a few months back and pre-ordered it (something I rarely do for a new to me author) upon the premise itself, which sounded a lot like Griffin and Sabine to me. (Disclaimer: link within is my notes on the G&S plotline and what happens there.) The day I got that book, I saw this Dear Author review and was all, "This review makes it sound bad/disturbing, I'm really concerned now." But I'd just gotten it, so I forged on anyway.
The plot: Bee, a dress re-designer (for lack of a better phrase, but that is a cool job) gets a misaimed email from Nick, a struggling writer who's ticked at a client. The two of them end up having an extraordinary correspondence over email, really enjoy it, hit it off, decide to meet...and then the other one's not there when they go. They figure out soon after that that they seem to be living in parallel worlds that branched off after Chernobyl, with different cultural references, different energy practices, different rules about reproduction, etc. Bee lives in our world, Nick is in an alternate, more eco-friendly one. Nick attempts to get some help from a strange group he finds called the Berenstain Society, i.e. the only people who believe his story because they've had some experience of this parallel world thing themselves. One member, Geoffrey, actually has memories of another life he seems to have lived in the Beeverse before dying there (note this for later).
Now, reading this premise, I thought this was going to go into Griffin and Sabine territory (see link above), in an "find a way to be together" sort of way. But nope. Nick and Bee conclude early on that there's no way they can ever meet, Nick is told it's not an option anyway. Then Bee gets an idea: track down the in-universe equivalents of them in their own worlds, meet those people, and presumably date them. This works great for Bee, as her world's Nicolas is a prominent author and a super sweet, nice guy and single. Nick's a bit jealous of his more successful counterpart, though he ends up using that information to become a novelist in his own right, so good for him. This does not go so well for Nick, as her equivalent, Becca, is married and has a child and her husband is an abusive rich guy. Bee smells a rat about the whole thing since Becca's done things Bee would not want to do, and she does some investigation into the husband, Benedict, in her own world and finds out he's awful. So this doesn't exactly turn into an adultery plot so much as it turns into a "how do we rescue Becca?" plot.
There are clearly plusses and minusses to both universes and their counterparts in them, I'll put it that way. Eventually they tell a few people, who think it's unethical to be seeking out the counterparts. Is it? Maybe? I'm not sure. It doesn't quite go to straight up adultery, but you certainly kind of wonder. Is it cheating if you love someone who's an alternate version of your SO that you can never meet, if you're single? Also, is it unethical to use information you learn in other worlds, like telling Geoffrey what happened to his loved ones or trying to save the planet?
The plot eventually goes back to the idea of "can you ever go to the other world/unite with your other self?' and that's definitely handled differently than Griffin and Sabine, for sure. I concur that the ending is...ambiguous with potential, I think? I hope? It's pretty...odd. This is an odd book for sure, but interesting as heck. Definitely not any kind of conventional romance, though, and I think how it's handled isn't going to work for everyone. It's not an easy-peasy ending, for sure. I suspect this may get a lot of discussion and conflicting opinions. That's why I'm getting as openly spoiler-y in this review as I am: I feel like you may need to know more about some of the places this book goes before you decide if you're in or out.
I'll do a spoiler discussion below the spoiler cut on this one.
Overall, I'm giving it four stars for giving me a lot to think about. This will not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you can work with what the author is giving you, you may be up for that.
Spoiler space
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Nick ends up finding out that if you're in a coma before you die (specifically, which I guess explains why it's rare and didn't happen to say, his stepson who died in the other universe), it's possible that your memories of life in your own world may transfer over to the you in another world. This is what happened in Geoffrey, and we're told Kelvin made an attempt, and there's a couple who end up meeting and marrying in one world after one of them dies in another. Apparently coma + death is the only way for one to move on to the other world.
Nick and his Berenstain cronies come up with a plan: he can save Becca from her abusive husband by killing him, going into a coma and dying himself. (Imagine Bee's face reading that emailed plan.) However, he can't stomach going through with all of that. The Berenstain group eventually decides that their cross-universe communication is a bad idea and their emails are permanently severed, sadness. But coincidentally, having a one-night stand with his married landlady causes Nick to get beaten into a coma and die...thus presumably transferring his memories into Nicolas, who's technically still married to Bee but ran away after he found her email chain. At the end of the book, Nic(k?)olas and Bee are about to reunite....
So, I guess that's a hopeful/happy-ish ending, under the circumstances. Certainly sounds confusing for Nicolas though, no doubt. I'd like to hope that the two of them merge into a happy whole who loves Bee, but as a romance this is certainly very, very strange, isn't it? (And why I didn't mark it as such in the review categories.)
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