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Book Review – A Crack in the line by Michael Lawrence

I have decided to repost some of my old blog posts from the distant past when I was working as a School Librarian. Kids do the funniest things and I really enjoyed working in a school. Posts may be edited from the original blog. So this is part of a series from my old Batty Librarian Blog…

I’m always reading books, but I’ve set myself the challenge of reading most of the books in my library, eek.

Thinking this is a tad ambitious I’ve lately opted for new books that we order in. The last one was the Crack in the Line. I picked it up at first because it was set in the UK and was different from the usual sci-fi/fantasy I usually go for.

It’s obviously a children’s book and the hero/heroine are basically two possibilities of the same person. The title refers to a crack in the railway line which leads to a train derailment. The mother has a fifty-fifty chance os surviving the train crash. At the instant of impact the Universe becomes two universes. One in which the boy loses his mother and has a dreadful life and one where a girl (the same person but a girl) gets to keep her mother and has lots of luck and comes into money.

I enjoyed this book although it was bit slow in places. There is some swearing in it so I wouldn’t recommend it for anything below 12 years old. However it is not gratuitous swearing – it does push the story along – character development and all that.

The main characters are likeable and there are some funny interchanges between the boy and his aunt who arrives at the house to look after him while his father is away. Luckily she is quite dippy allowing him the opportunity to pass between universes to meet himself as a girl. it’s part of a trilogy and I have gone through two thirds of the second book. Admittedly it’s not the best book I’ve read but certainly not the worst. If you are bored on a rainy afternoon, these do while a way a couple of hours.

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