The Moments Between Us: Natalie Banks

I received a free copy of this book via Voracious Readers Only for review.

I was very intrigued by the plot of this book. To know what the future holds and be unable to change it is such a scary thought, especially when the future holds what Claire's future held. I was motivated to keep reading because I wanted to know how she would handle it and whether or not she would be successful in her attempts to change the future. This plot reminded me of the plot in 11/22/63 by Stephen King: completely different writing styles, but similar concept: can we change the future or will that ruin things, i.e. The Butterfly Effect.

I did not like the writing or character development (or lack thereof).

Claire is such a shallow character who experiences very little growth. I thought, by the end, that she would have changed some considering the events of the story, but I failed to see any change in her. Sure, she becomes connected to her family more, but that was because of those characters' development, not hers. All of them had to approach her and force forgiveness out of her, and she required a reason from all of them for reconciliation. She was overly harsh on herself, to the point where it quickly became annoying instead of sympathy-evoking. 

I also found it very difficult to get in to the story because of the repetitive sentence structure. Banks doesn't write with an ebb and flow of various sentences. Each sentence is a rigid march through the story instead of a smooth flow. It was difficult to involve myself in this strict storytelling.

The way she uses the past, present, and future storytelling was also difficult to read through. The transitions were insufficient and didn't carry me along in the time travel. It wasn't a smooth narrative of story but a choppy past, present, then future ride. 

All in all, while I liked the basis of the story, I couldn't get past the choppy and detached writing method enough to get involved. I didn't like the characters either, so I was not invested in what happened to them.