Title: One Past Midnight
Author: Jessica Shirvington
Series: Standalone
Genre: YA Contemporary, Alternate Universes
Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Release Date: July 22nd 2014
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
Source: eARC received from publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

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Above all else, though I try not to think about it, I know which life I prefer. And every night when I Cinderella myself from one life to the next a very small, but definite, piece of me dies. The hardest part is that nothing about my situation has ever changed. There is no loophole.

Until now, that is...

For as long as she can remember, Sabine has lived two lives. Every 24 hours she Shifts to her ′other′ life - a life where she is exactly the same, but absolutely everything else is different: different family, different friends, different social expectations. In one life she has a sister, in the other she does not. In one life she′s a straight-A student with the perfect boyfriend, in the other she′s considered a reckless delinquent. Nothing about her situation has ever changed, until the day when she discovers a glitch: the arm she breaks in one life is perfectly fine in the other.

With this new knowledge, Sabine begins a series of increasingly risky experiments which bring her dangerously close to the life she′s always wanted... But just what - and who - is she really risking?


I love this author so much, so when I saw that she was writing a standalone book I knew i needed to read it. What I think I liked the most about this book was its departure from Jessica's earlier series. This book has nothing to do with angels, it actually is about parallel universes and a girl who lives in both.

The concept behind this book was amazing. I loved reading one character in two worlds. You could see how different she was acting in both worlds, it was kind of like seeing two different characters in one, and I loved it! Sabine was a great character to read because she was so easy to relate to. In each world she was in she has issues that all teenagers deal with, parents, love, pressure from friends, pressure from the future. All of these things are areas that impact any person at any point in their life, and watching Sabine go through these aspects of her life made for a great book.

As a reader I did prefer one world over the other, and to be honest I am surprised at which world I chose because of what happens to Sabine within it. In YA there is always the treat of a love triangle, and i will say that there is kind of one in this book, but to be fair, they are in different worlds and they are VERY different. We have Dez who was extremely forceful and liked the idea of love more than actually falling in love. Then we have Ethan, my new book boyfriends BTW. he was smart and sweet and dedicated to Sabine and her way of life. They could not have been more different and I loved how you could see the different in Sabine when she was with each of them.

Secondary characters are crazy important in this book because they let you remember which world Sabine is in, and honestly they were great to read. The parents especially because in one world they made me so angry that I wanted to throw the book against the wall. All of the secondary characters in this book have purpose and I loved that, they all contributed to the story and where it was headed.

The end was both heartbreaking and uplifting. I really cannot say much else about it because I will give it away but lets just say I shed some tears, and yet when I finished reading the book I found myself smiling. Jessica has a way to do that and I recommend this book to lovers of contemporary lovers because to be very honest this book has a very contemporary feel...minus the jumping worlds thing (which is very minor part of the book in my opinion). This book is more about Sabine and her relationships in both worlds, more than her jumping from world to world and I think that is why I loved the book so much.