Review: Resonance – Erica O’Rourke

Posted 14 July, 2015 by Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms in Reviews / 8 Comments

*I received a free copy of Resonance from Simon & Schuster for Young Readers via Edelweiss. This has in no way influenced my voluntary review, which is honest and unbiased *

Review: Resonance – Erica O’RourkeResonance by Erica O'Rourke
Series: Dissonance #2
Published by Simon & Schuster for Young Readers on 21 July 2015
Pages: 448
Format: eARC
Source: Edelweiss
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5 Stars

As a Walker between worlds, Del is responsible for the love of her life—and the fate of millions—in this thrilling sequel to Dissonance.

Del risked everything to save Simon, and now he’s gone, off in another world with no way for Del to find him.

She’s back at the Consort—training to be a Walker like everyone in her family. But the Free Walkers have other plans for her. This rebel group is trying to convince Del that the Consort is evil, and that her parents are unwittingly helping the Consort kill millions of people. The Free Walkers make Del the ultimate promise: if Del joins their fight, she will be reunited with Simon.

In agreeing, Del might be endangering her family. But if she doesn’t, innocent people will die, and Simon will be lost to her forever. The fate of the multiverse depends on her choice...

Resonance is so complex, so beautiful, and Del has grown so much since the beginning of the series! She also evolved throughout this installment.

My Resonance review:

From the very beginning, the plot thickens in Resonance! Del has so many secrets she even has trouble keeping her lies straight. The free walkers won’t let her tell Eliot what she is up to, or what they are asking of her, so she really has nobody to confide in, nor anyone who can help her by giving advise she really needs. At the same time, she is adamant in her quest of finding out if ‘her Simon’ is really still alive, or if that is a ruse to try to get her to join the free walkers. While Del is still very much the same character she was in Dissonance, stubborn, volatile, and not always thinking things through. However, she relates to the people around her differently, especially after Monty completely pulled the rug out from under her when she had to unravel a world and leave Simon behind.

One of the things I loved the most in Resonance is that the relationship between Del and her sister Addie has changed a lot! Instead of being in competition all the time, Addie has also changed and grown, and she sees that Del is not only her younger sister, but that some of Del’s questions definitely have a lot of merit. Of course, her relationship with Laurel has something to do with those changes as well, but it was nice to see the two sisters aim for a common goal, and that they figured out that their love is strong, even after having fought more than anything else in the past.

The Consort was still machinating, and even more so now that they had Monty in an oubliette. Since he refused to talk and share any kind of information with them, Lattimer thought to bring Del in to get more information from him. This put Del in a very difficult situation in more than one way, because she needed Monty to not let on what had truly happened when Simon disappeared, but at the same time, she was so hungry for more information about the free walkers, no longer so sure about trusting other people blindly. The visits to parallel worlds continued, and that’s a big part of why I love this series so much. This kind of science fiction makes a lot of sense to me – each time person makes a decision, another world springs up, where the choice not taken is the one that matters. The echoes in these new worlds have the original’s memories, and that kind of complexity both makes my brain happy and spin at the same time.

The politics were a little more intricate in Resonance as well, and I think this is partly because Del understood more about the world around her. Trying to figure out if the free walkers were the ‘good guys’ took up a lot of her thoughts and time, and it was really good to see her finally opening up to some of her closest friends about what she felt they were all up against. Unraveling echo worlds to make the key world stronger, not caring about those echoes lives was not something she could live with anymore. Of course, she didn’t always go about things in the best possible way, she was still the impatient Del who saw a quick fix and went for it with all she had.

Written in first person, past tense from Del’s point of view, but sharing the dialogues between the characters as well, Resonance had me absorbed in the story, the politics, the multiverse and the characters from the start! Now, I’m going to go back and read the novella that was released between Dissonance and Resonance, and I am already impatient to get my hands on the next installment in this excellent young adult science fiction series.

Some of my favorite Resonance quotes:

This Simon should have been silent, but his pitch was true as ever. The only explanation was that my Simon had survived the cleaving. He’d escaped somehow, into the vastness of the multiverse. Impossible. Hope beat in my chest, the faintest of wings.

Before I’d started dating Simon, no one in my school cared who I was of what I did. I was marking time while my teachers marked me tardy, and the rest of the student boy didn’t mark me at all.

Everything in the Key World – people, objects, oceans – resonated at the same perfectly stable frequency.

#COYER Scavenger Hunt item #39: Read a book with no living thing on the cover (3 points)

Reading this book contributed to these challenges:

Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms

About Linda @ (un)Conventional Bookworms

Linda is an English as foreign language teacher and has a Master's degree in English Language and Literature. She's an avid reader, blogger, compulsive one-clicker and a genre omnivore. Ever since she learnt how to read she has been seen with a book or two in her hands everywhere she goes.

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8 responses to “Review: Resonance – Erica O’Rourke

  1. I’m definitely going to have to read this series, Lexxie. You know I read O’Rourke’s Torn trilogy and really enjoyed it. But this series seems deeper – more complex. I like how Del seems to be growing, and that her relationships are changing because of it. (?) And I’m really intrigued by the politics. I’m glad this was such a great read!

    **BIG HUGS**

    Bookworm Brandee recently posted: Teaser Tuesdays #69
  2. RO

    Yikes! I can barely keep up with one book at a time these days, let alone a series (lol), but your review sounds totally fab and on point! A 5-star review says this is a keeper! Hugs…Ro

    RO recently posted: CATHERINE ANDERSON INTERVIEW
  3. I wasn’t crazy about the first book, but I did LOVE the science part of it. That will help me continue the series. I’m honestly not Del’s biggest an, but I just love the world building. I also really love Addie, and I would love to see more of her in the novel.

    Lyn Kaye recently posted: Book Review: The Fold

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