A Thousand Pieces of You by Claudia Gray Review: ADDICTING AND BLEMISHING

A Thousand Pieces of You (Firebird #1), by Claudia Gray
Publication: November 4, 2014, by HarperTeen
Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Science-Fiction, Romance, Dystopian
Pages: 368
Format: Hardcover
Source: Gifted
Rating: 

Every Day meets Cloud Atlas in this heart-racing, space- and time-bending, epic new trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray.
Marguerite Caine’s physicist parents are known for their radical scientific achievements. Their most astonishing invention: the Firebird, which allows users to jump into parallel universes, some vastly altered from our own. But when Marguerite’s father is murdered, the killer—her parent’s handsome and enigmatic assistant Paul—escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him.
Marguerite can’t let the man who destroyed her family go free, and she races after Paul through different universes, where their lives entangle in increasingly familiar ways. With each encounter she begins to question Paul’s guilt—and her own heart. Soon she discovers the truth behind her father’s death is more sinister than she ever could have imagined.
A Thousand Pieces of You explores a reality where we witness the countless other lives we might lead in an amazingly intricate multiverse, and ask whether, amid infinite possibilities, one love can endure. 

My Thoughts:

This book was just as majestic and eye-stunning as the cover. And can I just say, man isn't that a compliment?! If you don't see the beauty in this portrait that we're all starring at right now, then something is simply wrong with you. *apologizes and laughs* The watercolours and all of it has to do with our kick-ass protagonist, Marguerite Caine. This book was EVERYTHING for me, and I feel myself slowly falling into a book hangover since I just can't get over that. 

Flashback, #ThrowbackThursday, whatever you weirdos call a blast to the past (hey, that's another one!), let's take one back to the crazy year of 2014, when this beauty was published, and thrown to the hands of millions of greedy readers, just like myself. Except, every reader who picks this book up will feel like it was made, and written for them, without any coincidences or irony. This is the real thing, and IT'S ALL FOR YOU! But I'm telling you, I'm planning on stealing everyone's copy and hoarding them all for myself in a special museum that lies underground next to my house. And you don't know where that location is, so you better beware. *raises eyebrows* KIDDING. I'M KIDDING. All I need is my own copy to make life complete.

Again with this flashback thing, I received this book as a Christmas gift last year, and I was sure that it'd interest me, as dystopias and sci-fis are my favourite kinds of books. But of course, there's always the odd ones out that disappoint me and leave me with tears because I just couldn't handle their disgusting aspects. I expected this to be horrible. I was ready to brace it, I picked up the book with a sad-face on and ended up with a face that no one can even imagine or try to picture because it's all in our imaginations, when the one day will happen where PAUL WILL BE LAYING IN OUR ARMS. That will happen soon, I hope. *writes a letter to Claudia*

"Before, I'd only been afraid of not getting home. Now I'm afraid of not getting out of this dimension in time to escape the danger that I now know is very, very real."

My brain is congested with the events and heart-warming, pounding and thrilling plot that our hearts actually opened a huge gateway to, to actually love and devour. Marguerite Caine lives with her older sister and two scientist parents who surely are on their way to win a Nobel Prize—all because of the Firebird. This is a device that lets people go to another dimension, where there are an infinite amount of them for every single possibility. Her father is then murdered, and their assistant, Paul, is said to be the one who killed him. Marguerite is on a mission alongside her parents' new assistant, Theo, where they are on the hunt to kill Paul for everything that he's done.

Well, you can guess where this book goes from here. HAH, JUST KIDDING—of course you can't! At first, I was a little weakling as well and thought that I was Miss-Know-It-All and figured that I knew every single bit of magic that Gray was adding into this book. Before reading, I'm letting you know that this was the most unpredictable book I've read in a while. And did I happily declare that it is the best one, too? I can't go on telling you all of the majestical things that happened or else I'd basically sit here for the rest of my life, but you've got to trust me on taking the chance on this one.

Where the heck has science-fiction concepts gone? Really, this is a positive aspect if you ask me. Books in the past really didn't focus much on the futuristic elements of our world. and when they did, they focused on ideas that any human can think of eventually happening. Parallel-universes? Now that's got to involve so much physics and thinking and logic to put into place. Very much like Erica O'Rourke's Dissonance, this book focused on a girl who knows how to jump and explore these infinite possibilities and help others out, including herself. Gray wrote about this concept just like if she was Marguerite, and if she was actually the one who went on these adventures. It seems (and it is the real thing) that she has so much experience with this concept, and she knows how to explain it right.

What doesn't get me is the thoughts of the fellow reviewers that we spot on Goodreads or on other blogs. No, no, it's your opinion, you can think whatever you'd like, but I just don't get the fact that people have a problem with the clarity. No dystopia author has ever explained the concept of their book so clearly but in an intriguing matter like Claudia. Her explanations and plots cannot compare to any other author, I must say. And the settings? LONDON, RUSSIA, A STRANDED ISLAND, THIS IS THE BEST, I kept telling myself over and over again. This novel made me feel like I won the Nobel Prize, and my statue was this book.

"I meant it when I said I didn't believe in love at first sight. It takes time to really, truly fall for someone. Yet I believe in a moment. A moment when you glimpse the truth within someone, and they glimpse the truth within you. In that moment, you don't belong to yourself any longer, not completely. Part of you belongs to him; part of him belongs to you. After that, you can't take it back, no matter how much you want to, no matter how hard you try."

That quote above was my favourite quote from the whole book, though all of the writing was so meaningful. The author has a passion, a grateful feeling when she writes, and it all shines throughout her words. She's not only writing from a point-of-view of some random character who woke her up in the middle of the night and barged into her head: she was Marguerite. And that's magical. The writing was so addicting, but light and fluffy at the same time that I just wanted to take it slow, enjoy, and suck it all in because I won't get to read more for ages. Is it that much to ask? *smiles proudly* From the first chapter, rarely comes the moment where I just know that I love the book already, but the 5 star rating stayed with me throughout.

I guess that it all brought me into thinking very philosophically. That rarely happens, also, by the way. I'm no philosopher, but then the thoughts of technology and its evolution and all of that came to mind and as I lay in my bed last night, I couldn't stop thinking about ANOTHER ME SOMEWHERE. Maybe there's one universe where I'm not a blogger, or there's one where I have billions of views each day. I guess that's the best thing about books, that they help you imagine possibilities, except this possibility seems real. I can't deny that I might believe in some of this, somehow.

Do I really have to go through the plot? Because from my blabbing, I bet that you can already tell where the story took me and the characters. I cried, I laughed, I gushed, and I couldn't stop reading. There were no distractions around me, and I found that it was so easy to get into the story and fall in love with it. I read a page, and I'm already out of Planet Earth and am in Marguerite's head, watching her kick butt and save herself. I watched her becoming a Princess, and I watched her being in a prison-like cafeteria. I watched her in her father's arms and continuing. 

#THAUL, #MAGAUL, #MAHEO WERE ALL SHIPS FOR ME, but I have to say that Marguerite and Paul were honestly meant to be. And I loved the way how she described love at first sight and love in general, especially since she was a teenager, and she couldn't understand what her crazy hormonal feelings were trying to tell her. At first, she thought she had something in her heart for Theo, but it was an affection for a brother. Paul, on the other hand, was someone else. He watched her from afar, but not in any stalker-gesture-like situation. He cared about Marguerite more than he cared about himself, and he only did the things he did for her and her safety. And that makes me tear up and gush because I just can't go on about their relationship since I'm sitting here, writing words like the most envious person in the world. I want them together, and I can't let their relationship ever go to the drain. I DON'T NEED PLOT TWISTS OR SUSPENSE BETWEEN THEM, JUST LET THEM BE TOGETHER.

"I also think about my Paul Markov, the one who told me that I could only paint the truth. He's with me now, asleep deep within the man I made love with. I don't know if he'll remember this later, which would be—weird. I don't know him well enough to predict how he's going to react."

Marguerite admitted that it was love, but at the same time it wasn't a relationship where they both knew each other inside and out. And this imperfection is what made the story actually perfect. 

So as we sit here at the tearjerking but happy ending, I'll tell you this: Put yourself in a situation where you basically lost all of your hope. The people you love most have basically disappeared, and you're all alone with a small device that can leave you stranded in an unknown world forever. You know that you have to be yourself, but it only makes sense that you have to change to make things better for yourself and your safety. What. The. Hell. Can. You. Possibly. DO?! And that's the question—what will Marguerite do?

Alongside a sexy love interest, NO INSTALOVE, gorgeous, memorable writing, action scenes that will actually and most literally whip your brain out of your head, Claudia Gray has written more than the best birthday present for me. She's written the best book ever, at least next to a few other favourites. 2015 is a huge year of favourites for me, but this is a book that I simply can't get out of my head, but really—not that I'd want or like to. The endless amount of possibilities includes one of the possibilities to have me obsessed with this book for eternity. And that's what I'm about to do, my fellow Firebirds. I WANT ONE. MY LIFE DEPENDS ON THE SEQUEL. NOVEMBER 2015 REALLY CAN'T COME ANY FASTER THAN THIS SLOW PACE. BEA, PLEASE HAVE IT. 

I, I just can't go on with my life any further without this book on my side, ALWAYS. What is your all-time favourite dystopian/sci-fi read?