Teva is sixteen. She goes to school, studies for her exams and spends time with her boyfriend, Ollie, and best friend, Maddy. To the rest of the world, she’s normal. But when she goes home, she’s anything but. Because at home there are twelve other Tevas – nearly one for every year she’s been alive. Because once a year, Teva separates into two, leaving a younger version of herself stuck at the same age, in the same house…watching the new Teva live the life that she’d been living.
More of Me is a beautifully original concept - each year Teva separates and another Teva tears herself into the world to live out her life. The first-person narrative takes us further and further into Teva's complicated existence as she is forced to take her place with her predecessors, becoming cut off from the world while yet another Teva quite literally steps into her shoes.
Evans handles this complicated plot with ease and delivers a novel that is at once gripping and fascinating. Teva is instantly likeable, and yet she is legion and we are pulled back and forth with her tangled lives. Each version of Teva is subtly different from the next, manifesting all of the personality facets within our own lives. As Teva ages she steps outside the child she once was and moves on, until the time she knows that she can't keep doing this for the rest of her life.
The story twists and turns and we feel torn as we identify with Teva and the emotional wrench she faces each time she has to let the new Teva take over her life. For a while we feel that there can't possibly be a way of resolving this story...... but don't worry, trust the writer on this one!
More of Me is Kathryn Evans' first book, and if this is the standard we can expect from her I'm sure that there will be many more. Teva's story is so well rounded that it is a very accomplished story and I am very much looking forward to reading Evans' future books.
More of Me by Kathryn Evans is published by Usborne on 1 Feb 2016
ISBN - 978-1474903028
Reviewed by Dawn Finch
President CILIP, Children's author and librarian
www.dawnfinch.com
New book - Book of Worth
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