99 Days? A more accurate title would be How to be a Horrible Girlfriend 101.

I'm not going to lie. This was mostly a cover by for me. I mean, look at the cover! I was in the mood for a cute and light romance yesterday, so when I entered Barnes and Noble and saw this cute cover, I thought, hey this looks like exactly what I'm looking for... I was wrong. After reading the synopsis, I was even more intrigued about the story an the plot line. Basically, this girl screws up her relationship with her boyfriend with his brother and ran away to a boarding school. Now she's back in town and this is the consequences of her actions. 

Like many other readers of this book, I am still, the day after reading it, highly conflicted about how I feel about this book. I want to like it, and I do like it (in fact, I read the entire book instead of working on the homework I was supposed to be doing), but at the same time, some parts (mostly after the halfway mark) had me wanting to throw this book across the room to shake some sense into these characters. In the end, I decided that, yes, I did enjoy the book, so I've decided to give it a 7.3/10 stars and a 4/5 stars on Goodreads, but it was a hard choice. Contugno's writing is so realistic, it got me hooked from the first chapter (slash day, the book is separated by days), at the same time, the realistic writing was what this book had an issue with, as well. This story was very raw and real, it didn't really try to cover anything up- which I am okay with but the direction it took just had me getting highly annoyed with some of the characters. The main character, Molly Barlow is very, extremely flawed. For the most part, I appreciate a flawed main characters, it makes a story feel more real, but it's Molly's horrible choices that she made that made me really not root for her at the end of the book. 
I should start by giving you the blurb so that you can understand slightly: 

Day 1: Julia Donnelly eggs my house my first night back in Star Lake, and that’s how I know everyone still remembers everything—how I destroyed my relationship with Patrick the night everything happened with his brother, Gabe. How I wrecked their whole family. Now I’m serving out my summer like a jail sentence: Just ninety-nine days till I can leave for college, and be done.

Day 4: A nasty note on my windshield makes it clear Julia isn’t finished. I’m expecting a fight when someone taps me on the shoulder, but it’s just Gabe, home from college and actually happy to see me. “For what it’s worth, Molly Barlow,” he says, “I’m really glad you’re back.”

Day 12: Gabe got me to come to this party, and I’m actually having fun. I think he’s about to kiss me—and that’s when I see Patrick. My Patrick, who’s supposed to be clear across the country. My Patrick, who’s never going to forgive me.

Let's start by talking about the characters, shall we? Molly Barlow, as I said before, I found highly irritating. She's the protagonist in the story and in the beginning, I really did sympathize for her and root for her. And then she made a colossal amount of bad choices and yeah, we all make bad choices, but her's were just really dumb choices and it made me feel disconnected from her character. I thought this whole story would be trying to right the wrongs of her past and stuff. Nope, it's just Molly making the same mistakes all over again. Molly is incredibly selfish. I mean, before the book even started, she'd already slept with her boyfriend's brother, but I can forgive that, we all make mistakes ( I mean, maybe not that big of a mistake, but whatever.). As long as she was on a path towards redemption in this book, it would've been okay with me. I like to see a character learn from their mistakes. Does Molly? NO. She just repeats her past mistakes and doesn't even think about the effect her actions will have on others.  That was the most off putting thing about her, all she thinks about is herself. She doesn't even stop to think that her actions might hurt others and it just really pissed me off. Something equally as bad as Molly's selfish actions is that after the bad fallouts of her selfish actions, she just feels bad for herself and doesn't even seem to see her own fault in the situation. How do I come to that conclusion? She's willing to repeat her past mistakes. Ugh. 

Now add Gabe Donnelly. I was rooting for Gabe this entire story, even from the beginning. That's why Molly's actions pissed me off even more than they regularly would. She hurts a lot of people in this book, especially Gabe. Who is Gabe? Well, he's the brother that Molly cheated with. I thought I probably wouldn't like him, I mean, he did sleep with his brother's girlfriend- but I actually loved his character. He's so sweet and it's evident from the beginning that he really cares for Molly. He's very forward about what he wants, yet he doesn't push anything on her. Gabe is very charismatic - which is the exact opposite of his brother, Patrick, but more on that later. Just like Molly, Gabe is flawed. Contugno has that going for her, she writes very realistic characters with realistic flaws. Gabe's biggest flaw is that he really likes getting what he wants (but don't we all?) but other than that, Gabe is a good guy. Out of all the characters in this book, I found myself liking Gabe the most. 

Patrick Donnelly is Gabe's younger brother and Molly's ex boyfriend. For the first part of the book, you mainly get to know Patrick through a series of memories Molly has about him. They grew up together and eventually just started dating. I was never rooting for Patrick, but from the beginning I thought Molly would end up with him, I mean, spoilers he's on the cover. Even though I wasn't rooting for Patrick, I could see the appeal from when they were younger. He's very aloof and separate from the world. I guess he's the brooding dark type next to his light, charismatic and friendly brother. I can deal with that, there's nothing wrong with the brooding dark type. Except as the story continues along, I got to realizing something. Patrick is a grade A dick. The first sign is from Molly's memories, though he may complain about Gabe being annoying when he doesn't get what he wants, so is Patrick. He was a bit of a controlling boyfriend, from what I could see, and then the things he does in the second half of the book are just unforgivable. Add to that some of the things he says? No. I really ended up disliking Patrick Donnelly's character. Like Molly, Patrick makes dumb, selfish choices and doesn't even seem to think about how it might effect others. His and Molly's choices end up hurting a lot of people, including themselves. Even though, yeah, Patrick was hurt a lot in this book, I just couldn't sympathize for him because in the end, he brought it on himself. 

Usually I don't look at the themes of books, but the themes in this book really stood out to me. I read a review that said one of the themes in the book is that you don't get infinite second chances. And I really agree with that statement. This book shows that you do not always get a second chance and your actions and choices can ruin some of the best things you have in life. Seriously Molly Barlow is a perfect example of what not to do in life. When running into any bad choices, just do the opposite thing Molly would do and chances are, you'll be good. Another evident theme in this book is LEARN FROM YOUR MISTAKES. Especially if those mistakes lead to ruining a family. Seriously. A third topic covered in this book is the double standard. If a girl sleeps with a guy she's considered a slut, but the guy seems to be able to get away with it, without being shamed. Yeah, that's an issue this book really did cover. 

Molly's relationship with her mom was something that really hurt my heart to see. Except I could see why their relationship was the way it was. Seriously, this book is just full of bad things. If you just do the opposite of basically anyone in this book, you'll probably have a good life. This book has Bad Parents, Bad Friends, Bad Lovers and just about bad everything else as well. What did Molly's mother do that was so bad? She wrote a book that revealed her daughter's deepest darkest secret. A message to all the parents out there, if your child is willing to trust you with their darkest secret, DO NOT WRITE A BOOK ABOUT IT AND HAVE THE BOOK PUBLISHED. If you do that, I think you should have instead written book called Bad Parenting 101 or How to Estrange your Child From You In 10 Easy Steps. Never the less, seeing Molly's relationship with her mom hurt me, because, as some of you might know, my mom just died about three months ago and I now thoroughly believe in showing your loved ones how much you care for them. 

Anyway, if you're considering reading this book, I advise you to go into it expecting a lot of bad choices to be made. It is a good read, the writing style is enjoyable and the plot did have me unable to tear my eyes away from the book. But I just could not bring myself to really love the book because of all the dumb, selfish decisions made over the course of the story. This book had a lot of potential to be good, and, in my opinion, only use about thirty percent of it. I think there were a lot of other routes this story could've taken that would've made it a five star book, but it fell flat there. The characters are so realistically flawed, so if you like realistic stories, this is definitely one you should read. It certainly is one of those raw and real things. Not the fluffy cute story I was looking to read yesterday. 

Anyway, thanks for reading my slightly rant-ish review. Hopefully I'll be able to get another one up soon, but with exams just around the corner, I'm not so sure. If you're interested in seeing my actual thoughts while reading the book, feel free to friend me on Goodreads, I'm Anji Cooper. I can tell you that all my thoughts posted while reading this were very angry thoughts. 
​-Anj

Bracken's take on time travel was both exhilarating and unique. Now, I'm not going to say that I have a lot of experience with time travel stories, but I certainly haven't even heard of a take on time travel like this. For those of you who didn't know, Alexandra wrote one of my favorite series, The Darkest Minds (I highly recommend it, if you were thinking  of reading it.) The thing is, even with the Darkest Minds, the first fifty or so pages were kind of boring and hard to get attached to. It's only after the first fifty pages that I actually got invested in those books and to be honest, it took about the first hundred and fifty pages for me to get interested in this book. There was a lot of exposition. In all honesty, I did prefer the Darkest Minds Trilogy to this, but Passenger pleasantly surprised me. 

This book follows the perspective of its two protagonists- Nicholas Carter and Etta Spencer. Etta is from the 21st Century and is blissfully unaware of the time traveling life. Nicholas is from the... eighteenth century? (I think) and has some deep regrets. The idea of a romance between two characters from different centuries is quite interesting, though, I have to admit, Etta and Nicholas' romance wasn't one I grew particularly attached too. To me, it just seemed like it was moving too quickly. I get it, they only had like a week or so together but seriously, it way too much for the amount of time they actually spent together. I could've lived with the romance if a certain thing hadn't occurred towards the end of the book, it all just seemed like too much, like I really already wasn't in love with the romance, but the event towards the end just made me feel more cut off and unattached to the series. Also, to really grow attached to characters, you have to have some kind of connection to both people involved. I didn't really have that connection with either Etta or Nicholas. I'm no violin prodigy nor am I a sailor. And their emotions weren't exactly something I grew connected to, either. I just couldn't put myself in their shoes, which made it kind of hard to understand these characters. 
Okay, now I'm just stating all the things I didn't like about that novel, that'll make y'all think this isn't a good read. Trust me, this book is worth picking up, you just have to be patient with the plot and with the characters. 
Something I really enjoyed about this book was the suspense and the element of mystery. I did find myself really enjoying the time travel element as well as the element of mystery surrounding Rose Linden aka Etta's mother. Rose was a minor character, not actually appearing in many of the scenes, but she's the whole reason the story is happening and I found her character fascinating. She's probably the character I was most interested in while reading this book, I really hope we get to find out more about her in the next books. Her character is cold and cunning. To her, the ends justify the means, but she's not an antagonist, I find that kind of character very interesting.  She's still very much a mystery to the readers, you find out some about her a long the way, but I'm very curious to know what really happened to her from her perspective. 
Someone I'm expecting to see a lot more of in the next book is Henry- someone I don't think we saw in this book, but I'm sure, since this is a duo logy, that we'll be meeting him sometime soon. Another character I'm interested in seeing more of is Augustus Ironwood. We don't know much about him other than he was a jerk after Rose left and was madly in love with her. In the next book I'm hoping Alexandra unravels some of these mysteries. 
Anyway, this book is quite interesting and I highly recommend it if you're into time travel or suspenseful stories. The whole idea of this book is a time traveling treasure hunt- which is different from anything I've ever heard of and I found it quite fun, wondering where they'll go next and such. I'd give this book a 7.5/10 stars. I enjoyed it and will most definitely be picking up book 2 when it comes out. 
 
Synopsis: 
passage, n.
i. A brief section of music composed of a series of notes and flourishes.
ii. A journey by water; a voyage.
iii. The transition from one place to another, across space and time.

In one devastating night, violin prodigy Etta Spencer loses everything she knows and loves. Thrust into an unfamiliar world by a stranger with a dangerous agenda, Etta is certain of only one thing: she has traveled not just miles but years from home. And she’s inherited a legacy she knows nothing about from a family whose existence she’s never heard of. Until now.

Nicholas Carter is content with his life at sea, free from the Ironwoods—a powerful family in the colonies—and the servitude he’s known at their hands. But with the arrival of an unusual passenger on his ship comes the insistent pull of the past that he can’t escape and the family that won’t let him go so easily. Now the Ironwoods are searching for a stolen object of untold value, one they believe only Etta, Nicholas’ passenger, can find. In order to protect her, he must ensure she brings it back to them— whether she wants to or not.

Together, Etta and Nicholas embark on a perilous journey across centuries and continents, piecing together clues left behind by the traveler who will do anything to keep the object out of the Ironwoods’ grasp. But as they get closer to the truth of their search, and the deadly game the Ironwoods are play­ing, treacherous forces threaten to sep­arate Etta not only from Nicholas but from her path home . . . forever

(also sorry for the hurried review, I have a bunch of things due in school tomorrow!!)