Lilibet Bombshell's Reviews > Stealing Infinity

Every time I get ready to read a book involving time travel or time heists I send up a few wishful thoughts to the literary muses that it won’t be a total disaster. After all, not every time travel novel is written the same or with the same underpinning theories. Some time travel books are meant for the Sagan set and some, like this YA title from author Alyson Noel (forgive the lack of umlaut, please), are meant for those who are more familiar with ideas close to wormholes and how all moments in time coexist alongside one another because time is a construct and doesn’t truly exist. Time is really just distance, and distance can be traveled. In this book, they just use something of a mashup between Doctor Who, Inception, and Avengers: Endgame to do it. That’s really, really oversimplifying it, but without spoiling the crud out of some of the most fun and tricky parts of the book I’m just going to leave it at that.

See, but that’s what landed this book (which just started out as me saying, “Oooooh, pretty shiny cover and time heists! Wanna read it!”) a 5 star rating: this book was some of the most page-turning, charming, interesting, and absolutely fun reading I’ve had in quite some time. In the last month or so I’ve read a lot of heavy material (yeah, I know, more the fool me for preferring horror and thrillers, right?), and this was like taking a large inhale of fresh, fantastical air. In both May and June there hasn’t been a fantasy novel I’ve read that didn’t have some serious social and/or cultural commentary attached to it, but “Stealing Infinity” (even though it does have a measure of self-awareness about the world’s richest people just hoarding wealth and doing nothing with it, which a theme I think we’ll see expanded on in the next installment) decides to just let the fun flag fly, showing us what it’s like to go through the ropes of essentially join a secret society of chrononauts and learn to time travel. There are trials along the way (hey, it’s a hero’s journey, of course there’s going to be trials). There’s romance, there’s tentative friendships, there are betrayals, there’s mystery, and there’s a female protagonist with a mysterious past and a special power not many people know about.

At the time of this review, I really needed this book. This book was like drinking perfectly cool water on a really hot day (well, it’s actually over 101 outside today, so I’m not far off but you know what I mean). It’s like biting into a perfect cookie when you’re craving one. It’s not an original book. It’s not a complicated book. It’s not a perfect book. But I needed it. It dragged me in, it kept me, it swept me along, and I kept turning pages until it ended and I was disappointed there would be no more until Noel completes the sequel. I’ll be there to pick that up!

Thanks to NetGalley, Entangled, and Entangled Teen for granting me early access to this title in exchange for a fair and honest review.