Ida is a normal, unmotivated, individual who can time travel or that is what she believes. She is in a relationship with a non binary artist. She lives with her father and autistic relative and has no idea what to do with her life. All she knows is that she can jump around in time. At first, she only uses that power in emergencies. But, then it becomes addictive. Then, Ida loses control of her powers, having no control concerning when she jumps. The places where she lands get more surreal and frightening with each jump. Soon she discovers that there is more to her power than meets the eye.
In many ways this book is nothing to write home about. It is a conventionally written speculative fiction work. However, this book has a diverse range of characters and that is its major selling point. Both the autistic and non binary characters are fairly well drawn. This book would make a great option for those wishing for a diverse YA/ spec read.

I have some mixed feeling about this book.
The synopsis sounded amazing but the actual plot is kind of confusing. I really paid close attention, thinking I wasn't reading it well enough, but it was just confusing to me. I don't know if it's just me or others have had the same problem but I just couldn't follow along with the plot.
I loved the diversity of the characters. There was a lot of different aspects of diversity in this book and I thought that was pretty great. However, I couldn't connect with the characters because the writing style is so plain and even a little emotionless at times.
I really wanted to love this book because it's so diverse but in the end, it just wasn't as good as it could have been. If you're looking for a super diverse read, I'd say take a chance and pick Ida up. But this isn't the highest quality of writing I've read.

I did end up liking this book. Ida was an interesting main character and the conflict was completely understandable (who wouldn't use that power if they could with no consequences) but it did get very confusing at times. I didn't quite understand what was going on by the end but I was satisfied with it. I think it's hard to get a time travel/alternate universes plot in a way that's interesting and not confusing and I don't think Ida quite managed it.

Despite a very intriguing premise, the actualisation of the premise just didn't do it for me. I felt the narration was almost too casual (example: "Like I'm a magnet or something"), the sentences were occasionally a little choppy and sometimes seemed like they were missing words. Points added for a diverse cast though.

This book was amazing in terms of mood and characters. You can feel the creepiness and eerie atmosphere whenever Ida was in one of her "bad" universes and the doppelgangers were stalking her. I wish the secondary characters had received more attention though: Daisy was wonderful and it would have been really interesting if she had been dragged into Ida's problems and had a bigger part in the plot. The same goes for Adrastos and Damaris, they were my favorite characters but barely saw anything of them. The diversity in the book was great and all the characters were equally lovable.

Now my biggest issue with the book is how I felt that the plots were loose ends. I kept waiting for an explanation of why the alternative realities were so different, what happened so Ida's mother was alive in one, or she didn't know Daisy in a another, but that never happened. The ending felt anticlimatic because I had imagined the moment she had to return to would be when she had made some big decision that changed her live, yet it seemed to be a random moment in her life. The narrative could use less description of the action, the pacing was a bit weird at times, and more work in the places/worldbuilding,

In general it was an enjoyable read with amazing and diverse characters but I feel that after a strong beginning the plot got less interesting and I just dragged myself through the rest.

Narrative was way too choppy and difficult to follow for this to be deemed a good read. It is a brilliant idea but the way it was executed simply made it hard to enjoy.

The character of Ida really drew me in in the first part of the book, and her trying to navigate around her abilities was incredibly well written and enjoyable. The plot bounced around a lot, and it created as much confusion in me as it did with Ida and the rest of the characters.
I loved how diverse this book was! It's not often that I read a book with a bisexual main character who's Vietnamese (or anything other than white, really). I loved the character of Daisy, they're always there for Ida (except in some alternate timelines).
Damaris was possibly my favourite character though, and I loved the interactions with her and Evans.
I feel (like the author) that this would have been better presented on screen instead of on paper, but it was an enjoyable read!

The first thing you need to know about Ida is how diverse it is. The protagonist, Ida, is biracial (Vietnamese and German), and bisexual. Her partner, Daisy, is genderqueer (they/them/theirs pronouns). Her cousin, Frank, is a transboy. And then the second POV character, Damaris, is genderfluid and her love interest/boss/person, Adastros, is also genderfluid. Can we get a HELL YES for this diversity? Family queerness! Friend queerness! These things are so real, and to finally have them portrayed in a novel was great.

Ida was an interesting sci-fi story because Ida herself didn’t really have a full grasp on her abilities so as the reader I didn’t really have a full grasp, either. Damaris’s point of view gave a little more insight into what was actually going on every time that Ida travelled from one point in time/outcome to the time just before that. The end reveal about Ida’s abilities was incredibly interesting because it was a take on parallel universes that I have never read about before.

The climax in Ida was quite long, and interspersed with moments of normality, softness, and love. It could have tipped over into ‘too much’ quite easily, but I felt like it balanced the climax and the length really well. I was never bored, in fact I wanted to keep reading during this part because I wanted to find out where Ida was going to end up, and how she was going to ~fix~ everything.

I shipped the ships. I thought Ida and Daisy were incredibly cute together, and I loved how Ida supported Daisy without being pushy about it. I’m not even sure that Damaris and Adastros fully count as a ship but damn did I ship it. I would 100% read an entire book about these two.

There were a few things that I wanted from Ida, however. Keep in mind, though, that I wanted these things because I cared about the characters and the story.

1) More of Ida and Daisy.

These two were CUTE, and I wanted more of them. Not necessarily on page romantic stuff because there were quite a few adorable scenes with the two of them together, but more of their history and how they became a couple.

2) More about Daisy’s home life.

Daisy’s home life seemed to be pretty shit on all fronts, but the reasons why they didn’t want to be at home a lot was never explained. I know that it was clear that they didn’t want to talk about it, but I feel like a deeper connection would have been made with them had their home life and background been expanded upon.

3) More of Frank.

Honestly probably my favourite character in the book, and I would have loved to see more of him throughout. Just a little bit more on why he was living with Ida, and what he was like. Considering that he didn’t play a huge role there was quite a lot about him, but because those scenes endeared him to me I wanted more page time with Frank!

4) More of Damaris and Adrastos.

I know I mentioned that I wanted more of these two as a ship, but I also wanted more about them in general. They have lived for so long so they would have done so many things, and met so many people, and I would have loved even a few little glimpses into their pasts and their lives.

~

Overall, Ida was a very enjoyable YA sci-fi that turned the popular element of parallel universes into something completely new. The storyline was intriguing, the characters were great, and honestly you should support this awesome and diverse Aussie YA book.

© 2017, Chiara @ Books for a Delicate Eternity. All rights reserved.

This book is seriously amazing. There was not a single thing that made me say "I don't like it now because of this". It was a bit confusing at times and it had a lot of info dropping but I gave it a free pass since it was the first book. We need as much information as possible in the first book in order to absorve the details of the world.
Something that I enjoyed a lot was the transitions between scenes when Ida skipped. Either the willing skipping or the forced skipping it was phenomenal.
The diversity in this book is great. It was definitely the main reason why I decided to read it. Ida is a fat bisexual PoC; Daisy is genderqueer (and I think PoC as well) and uses they/them; Damaris is genderfluid and uses she/her; Adrastos is genderfluid and uses he/him. Also I love how these identities aren't the character arcs of any of them.
This is definitely a book I'd recommend to anyone!
(I'll say more on my review once I post it on my blog)

OMG reading through this was an endurance trial that kept my heart in my throat for most of the time while I stayed immersed in the claustrophobia and urgency that the writing managed to hold for the whole story.

Ida is a woman who thinks she can time travel. She lives with her father and cousin, Frank. She also has a relationship with non-binary character, Daisy.

Well, sometimes she does. It's confusing, because in some timelines, Daisy doesn't know her at all. And, in others, her mum is still alive.

Apart from the fact that it turned out to be slightly different to time travelling that Ida was doing throughout, I felt it was an amazingly original addition to the magical realism genre.

The entire story is told between Ida's first person narrative and that of Damaras who is tasked with finding the 'original Ida' and stopping her from slipping back and forward in her timeline due to the problems it is causing. Apart from a very slightly slow period in the narrative just towards the end of the novel, I just loved it.

EXPECTATIONS: This book popped up on Goodreads feed for me some time ago and it's blurb got me interested. However I kinda forgot it eventually and one day when I saw it on Netgalley as Read Now I realized it was the book I really wanted to get my hands on eventually so here we are.

THE WORLD: Okay so first thing first. Some of you well probably most of you are more broadly read then me so this would not have been a big thing but I personally have not read many books with LGBT characters so this was a big surprise to me. And no the surprise was not LGBT to me, it was the fact that there are no straight characters in this book. None at all. Also I shamefully have to admit I have never read a book that had genderqueer character in it so when the main character started using they for one person I got a little bit confused at first. I know I feel very embarrassed by this but I think in order to underline what this book gave me I just have to admit to this shameful inexperience of mine. So that having said now the world itself is very interesting. We have this main girl who sorta can time travel. Except that she isn't time traveling and instead she is traveling dimensions so in reality she kicked out whoever is in that dimension and takes over basically. Also we have these people who sorta are officers of this dimensional traveling so if you do this too much you will be visited by them.

CHARACTERS: So main character is named Ida of course, she is a school drop out and is in the stage of figuring out what she wants to do with her life. And in a mean time she is picking up extra cash in a coffee shop. I must say I didn't mean Ida much, there were some good and bad things about her but all in all she was pretty nice characters. Tho, I have to admit I wasn't exactly crazy about her either. We had also a few more characters, like a cousin living with Ida who I still have to figure out. He wasn't a character really on it's own but he/she was intriguing. Believe me or not I am still not sure which pronounce I should use. And then there was Daisy who was again just a side character, a love interest of Ida. So the they in this book was used for Daisy. I am still really carefully now that I am writing about Daisy but I have to just say that this kind of character taught me really much. I sorta dislike big hyped diverse books because I have experience with them just being good for diversity only but this book was a perfect example that book can be interesting as well as diverse. I have learned a lot from this book and its characters.

ROMANCE: Ida and Daisy are together. That is clear from page one. But what I think was cute was that the romance in this book had nothing to do with gender. This is very rare.

GOOD: Again this book did a perfect job combining diversity and plot. It might be because I adore dimensional traveling but I really loved how much I learned in this book.

BAD: Way way too short. This was the only minus for me.

OVERALL: I really enjoyed the plot as well as diversity, it even made me discuss gender issues with people and realize I am not as aware as I would like to thing. I had an eye for gender studies for some time now as a thing I would like to learn about but most of the time it is about women rights which of course I enjoy too but I kinda now believe that either I am just not aware of other gender studies or there are not many there. One way or another, this book was great for that. My only problem as mentioned above was it's length and because of that I have it only 3.5/5 stars.

Starts with a Groundhog day like experience (this happens a lot in the book) & your brain hurts trying to figure it out and you are intrigued. Ida thinks she can time travel but what she is actually doing is switching between universes. She does this a lot & it causes problems for the other verses & herself & this is where things get confusing for Ida, and interesting for us.

I think this book had difficulty deciding what it wants to be, throws to much at us at the same time & what happens usually when you try too many things at once? You do not do any of them the justice they deserve. The premise was good & I wish the author would of spent more time on that. Maybe the story should of been longer, or maybe we had too much of Ida basically whining or mooning over Daisy (sorry but it's true).

The book brings up interesting theories & topics, like parallel universes, where decisions can lead us, how every choice may lead to another timeline, what does time really mean? Also it talks about the agony of loss, how we should appreciate what we have, & to avoid trying to change every little thing, because you end up missing out on what is right in front of you.

My overall estimation is that this book needed more work. It could of been something really really special.

Science fiction about time travel

Ida Wagner discovers very young that time can be manipulated and that this is very handy to alter the little things in life – a different meal in a restaurant, to bring an umbrella or not, but there are always things that stay the same, no matter how hard she tries.

Skipping through time allows her to go back to any decision she has made and choose the other path, however, both paths still exist, in different universes. This is leading to problems - Ida is moving sideways instead of forwards and the further she gets, the harder it will be for anyone to find her. If she gets too far, she will be forever wandering, lost in her own lives that are not really her own at all. The paths between the universes are getting worn, slippery and the barriers between the universes are getting weaker. Damaris is dispatched to find the first Ida – like finding a needle in a hundred haystacks. If the barriers between the universes get too weak her other selves will be able to pull her out of this universe.

I found the book a little too obscure, filled with characters that I found difficult to relate to, definitely for someone who knows the meaning of zines.


Saphira

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review

I received the book from publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I truly excited in receiving this book as what I know is a diverse book, with the synopsis been written, makes more thrilled to read the books.

The main character is Ida, a girl who can time travel. She do realize that she has an ability to time travel, to avoid things she hate, she could choose to time travel, so does, in choosing the right lemon. But as time goes by, I think, Ida has gone time travel way too much from start till the end that it quite annoys me, and I feel it a bit hanging on Damaris's characters, its like, she only make few effort on to help Ida and then, that's it. I find that its a bit disappointing on that part but somehow, the book is interesting that I want and need to know what is the ending.

Overall, the plot, character is nice.

For me, this novel is a little too wordy, it fits so much into a page that I end up feeling overwhelmed at the descriptive phrases at the end of a page. Great plot though

What if you have the ability to go back in time and alter your choices? Move back 5 minutes to stop yourself from saying something stupid. Go back a few hours so you could pick your umbrella from home when you were setting out? That's the ability Ida possesses. Though at first it is cool, and extremely convenient, Ida starts to depend on her ability too much, and realises that all these time, she hasn't been time travelling but rather has been shifting into alternative universes, and has shifted too much to the point where the differences between these universes has become blurry.

I was pleasantly surprised by Ida. I have to admit that I wasn't expecting much, but I was really awed by the concept and how it was executed. I've always been fascinated with books and plots that deal with time, alternative universes and timeline, and Evans has taken an interesting spin on the concept. There was a constant thrill in the story, as we navigate through the threads of time and universes with Ida, to the point even our sense of it becomes blurry.

And Ida was extremely diverse! Our main character Ida is half Vietnamese, and bisexual. Her love interest - and I loved the fact that it was an established relationship - was genderqueer, and used they/them pronouns. Other than the F/F relationship here, we also have another main character - Damaris - who doesn't have much screen time as Ida, but has a prominent POV - who is genderfluid, along with another genderfluid love interest - I loved how Evans has mentioned that he wears suits and nail polish - plus I am also pretty sure Ida's cousin Frank is queer, though I am afraid I don't know how to classify him. The diversity in the book was amazing, it didn't take center stage, but there were enough instances where the characters' ethnicity or sexual orientation and gender identity played a role in their experiences.

Overall, I think Ida is an underrated hidden gem of 2017, which you should all try out!