Book Review | The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare | M.G. Buehrlen

Title: The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare
Author: M.G. Buehrlen (web | twitter)
Series: Alex Wayfare #1
Genre: Contemporary YA, Science Fiction YA, time travel
Amazon | Goodreads | B&N
Publisher: Strange Chemistry
Release date: March 4, 2014
Source: ARC from the publisher via NetGalley (Thanks, Strange Chemistry!)

For as long as 17-year-old Alex Wayfare can remember, she has had visions of the past. Visions that make her feel like she’s really on a ship bound for America, living in Jamestown during the Starving Time, or riding the original Ferris wheel at the World’s Fair.

But these brushes with history pull her from her daily life without warning, sometimes leaving her with strange lasting effects and wounds she can’t explain. Trying to excuse away the aftereffects has booked her more time in the principal’s office than in any of her classes and a permanent place at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Alex is desperate to find out what her visions mean and get rid of them.

It isn’t until she meets Porter, a stranger who knows more than should be possible about her, that she learns the truth: Her visions aren’t really visions. Alex is a Descender – capable of traveling back in time by accessing Limbo, the space between Life and Afterlife. Alex is one soul with fifty-six past lives, fifty-six histories.

Fifty-six lifetimes to explore: the prospect is irresistible to Alex, especially when the same mysterious boy with soulful blue eyes keeps showing up in each of them. But the more she descends, the more it becomes apparent that someone doesn’t want Alex to travel again. Ever.

And will stop at nothing to make this life her last.

THE 57 LIVES OF ALEX WAYFARE is an incredibly fun beginning to a series, friends. As much as I adore books that feature time travel, I don’t always gravitate towards them when it comes down to picking what to read next. I wish that wasn’t the case, but there you go. That being the case, I’m super glad that I grabbed THE 57 LIVES OF ALEX WAYFARE by M.G. Buehrlen because it has all of the things that make time travel stories so engaging: an interesting mythology that isn’t confusing or weird, flawed but relatable characters, drama, emotional conflicts, and HELLO, visits to historical time periods. I’m 100% in with this series.

Obviously, THE 57 LIVES OF ALEX WAYFARE is about…Alex Wayfare, a young girl who is not just able to travel in time, but who has lived 57 lives in all different time periods, and who can revisit those time periods with ease once she gets some coaching from the enigmatic Porter. See, present-day Alex had no idea that she is what’s called a Descender, a person who can descend into their past lives. Ever since she was a little girl, she’s had these strange kinds of flashes of memory. They gradually become longer and less like memories and more real—in one, Alex is scratched by a cat and returns to base life with a bleeding chin. When Porter explains Alex’s abilities and her uniqueness, he also opens her up to the reality that she and her family are in danger from a super bad guy. Complicating matters greatly is a young guy Alex meets in one of her past lives. She calls him Blue, and they have a pretty sweet connection. When she starts seeing him in her other lives, though, shizz gets weird and pretty awesome.

One of my favorite things about THE 57 LIVES OF ALEX WAYFARE is Alex. She’s close to her family, particularly her younger sister, who has cancer. She’s got lots of personality, and in her long-standing desire to avoid the flashes she doesn’t understand, she’s got some pretty legit quirks. But I loved her. She LOVES being a Miss Fix It, taking things apart and putting them together again. GUYS. SHE’S A NERD AND I LOVE IT. Plus she’s witty and daring and makes typical teen decisions sometimes, which is to say that she sometimes does things without understanding the consequences or ignores them altogether. Big fan.

The one thing that always trips me up when I read time travel books is the science. Or, in the case of THE 57 LIVES OF ALEX WAYFARE, the sort-of science. It’s so difficult to write the explanations for time travel in a way that is both believable and not brain scrambling. Because the explanation in M.G Buehrlen’s book is different—the past lives exist in Limbo, and Alex and other Descenders don’t necessarily time travel so much as they can access their past lives, so it’s more like reincarnation—it’s much easier to grasp. There were still some aspects that made me a little quizzical, but by and large I thought the whole mythology of Descenders and Base Life and soulmarks was well done and easy to digest while perfectly straddling that line between possible and fantastical.

As much as I enjoyed the drama with Alex’s missions—Porter sends her into her past lives in an effort to thwart the dastardly doings of the bad guy who wants to stop Alex from being able to Descend at all—I was really taken with the relationships, particularly the one between Alex and Blue. They first meet in Alex’s life in 1927 Chicago and I was just smitten with him from the very beginning. He’s so sweet and charming and they have these super cute conversations. Their first “date” is also sooooo swoony and fantastic. When Blue starts showing up in Alex’s other missions, it’s intriguing and kind of suspicious, and I thought that M.G. Buehrlen did a great job making Blue so genuinely GOOD while also playing with the safety that we felt with him and making it seem like MAYBE he isn’t what we think he is. BONUS? Blue from 1927 is a Polish kid who cooks Polish food for Alex and I was drooling. Love Polish food.

I know I mentioned these missions, so I just wanted to shout them out for giving THE 57 LIVES OF ALEX WAYFARE that little feeling of historical fiction, even though I would love it if we could go back to my favorite historical time period, Colonial America. These missions form the core of the action for Alex and play a pretty huge role in her relationship with Porter, who is clearly keeping secrets and is sometimes shady. They were dramatic and fun, even if Alex seemed to pull off a few of the missions WAY easier than I thought would be possible.

These missions bring with them the main climax of THE 57 LIVES OF ALEX WAYFARE, and I don’t want to spoil anything, but it’s fast-paced and intriguing and we meet the bad guy, and he is indeed VERY BAD. There are things introduced near the end of the book that I can’t wait to learn more about in book 2. There are so many things to learn still about Alex and Blue and what their past lives will mean for the future. There’s also a guy in Alex’s Base Life (what she calls the life she’s living right now) named Jensen and he’s super adorable. I have thoughts about him, too. LOVE HAVING THOUGHTS.

I enjoyed the crap out of THE 57 LIVES OF ALEX WAYFARE. It was quick and interesting and full of action AND feelings, which is the perfect combo of things. I was completely engrossed in the world and with the characters and I maybe cried once or twice. I am legit so looking forward to book 2.

Check out some other reviews of The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare!

Heather @ The Flyleaf Review: “Suffice to say the hype that this book has been receiving is legit.”