Passenger On A Wild Ride

Passenger On a Wild Ride

By Madison O.

Alexandra Bracken is the masterful creator of the book Passenger. She is new to the game and touts a young and refreshing writing style very similar to authors such as Marie Lu and Maggie Stiefvater, both incredibly noted for their popular young adult fiction that tugs the reader into their world. Bracken has also written The Darkest Minds, Never Fade, and In the Afterlight.  Passenger is a tale of time travel and a little bit of romance but most of all focuses on the adventure of going to a new place in an antiquated world.

The protagonist Henrietta "Etta" Spencer has always been talented with the violin. She does not always enjoy playing but it garners the attention from her mother that she is constantly seeking. Soon tragedy strikes in the middle of an esteemed symphony she was playing at and she is pulled into a very unfamiliar world. A ship full of all men in 1776 to be exact. Etta is not the soft spoken, gentle lady that is typical of the time and the confusion from the men about her manners and etiquette is quite humorous. Soon Nicholas Carter crosses her path and it is not like love at first sight but there is an undeniable connection that he tries his best to pretend isn't there. Eventually they end up having to go on a conquest to find an object that has been missing for decades to get Etta back to her original time because without it she will never see her mother again. But this object is nothing ordinary, it causes harm to everyone whose path it comes across. This trek begins a cross country adventure through the years that leaves a lasting imprint on Etta, Nicholas, and the time period she thought she was meant to be in.

Bracken did a great job of creating the worlds that Etta and Nicholas were in. It adds an extra dimension because she had to be historically accurate with her setting. The setting was also in other countries so it was interesting to hear about different places in different times. I don't think Nicholas as a character was quite developed enough. He was a main character and he had a lot of insight about the time traveling business but the reader did not get to hear much of his backstory because Bracken focused so much on Etta. The ending was a little sloppy and it was too easy of an ending. It was very easy to tell that everything was going to end up perfectly and that doesn't make for an interesting read. Etta's attitude toward people besides Nicholas is kind of annoying, she is very "woe is me". I did enjoy the pacing of the book though and I was never bored.

I had never read anything from this author before and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the work from a new author. She is fantastic at setting the scene and if you enjoy historical fiction I would definitely recommend it to a fellow reader.