Official Review: Once Every Never by Lesley Livingston

[Alexandra Bayer]

Clarinet Reid has always felt a bit too average in a family full of extremely smart and dedicated people. But that all changes when she goes to visit her aunt over the summer with her best friend, Al. There, she goes to a museum and feels an intense and insane attraction to certain Celtic artifacts not yet on display. Despite the rules, Clare touches one... and shimmers back several hundred years, to the time of the artifact. When she manages to get back to her own time, she realizes that it's not just that one artifact that can make her shimmer. However, it's not all of them, either. Clare must find out how and why she can take shimmer-trips through time, while battling against an evil man intent on using her to serve his purposes and trying to amend ancient wrong-doings. But some things aren't meant to be meddled with.

I had read two of Lesley Livingston's books prior to this, so I knew that she was a good writer. It seems that every book she writes is the type of book I would be interested in reading. I picked up a copy of Starling, too, which I'll be reading in some time. This book I actually found to be a better read than Wondrous Strange and Darklight, which were the two I'd read before. Not only were the characters in this book funny, they were also sad at the proper points. I also liked how the focus of this novel was on Druids. Druids are very underrated and not many people even know of them, let alone write a book based on them. Not only did I learn more about Druids, I also learned about the time of Celtic warriors. I love it when authors take what could potentially be a boring history lesson and use the magic of words to bring it to life within a great book.

Livingston touched upon topics, though not going into great depth, that are simply mind-boggling. The thought about how changing one simple detail in the past can spiral and warp the future got me thinking. There were several sections of this story where I thought the end of the book was near and everything would be wrapped up, when another twist happened and Clare had to go back in time and change the future. One thing I wondered about, though, was if Clare's friends would remember what things were like before. If Clare changed the past so it affected the her time, why would her friends remember anything other than what happened in that world? Clare remembering, I could understand, since she was able to travel between both timelines, but the friends weren't. Therefore, shouldn't they have forgotten everything that had happened before time was altered again? This was one thing I found to be slightly dubious. Another thing that got me thinking was, as Clare put it, Chicken or egg? Apparently Boudicca, a Druid queen, used blood magic - Clare's blood - to keep her coming back to their time, since she could be a valuable asset to the Iceni. That's why certain objects brought Clare to the past. However, then how did she get to the past in the first place so Boudicca could get her blood? My head hurt just thinking about it.

There was one thing about Clare I didn't like: she was hormone-driven. There was not only one boy in the picture, but two, in either timelines. There was Milo, the hottie geek nowadays; and Connal, the Celtic warrior Druid from the past. She kept going back because of Connal, as well as friendships made with Comorra, a princess. She kissed Connal, but led Milo on. She knew Milo had had a secret crush on her for around five years, so when she kissed Connal, she didn't tell him or Al, although they were supposed to learn everything about her trips in order to help figure things out. I also found the romances to be a bit cheesy; well, one romance, really. I liked Clare and Connal together, because they had an interesting connection. But in the present day, I thought that it was unrealistic and, well, cheesy. First off, Milo is two-plus years older than Clare, and he'd had a crush on her since he was fourteen? Without seeing her since then? And then when they were together and he talked about writing her a poem in Elvish, let's just say, I didn't like them as a couple.

Another thing I didn't like was how quickly Clare learned about everyone in the past, because I had trouble keeping up with names like Boudicca, Comorra, and Macon, and associating those names with the characters. Clare and Al do their research on the internet. I'm not sure if they found actual sites that are up, but I know there are some about these famous people. I guess I could have looked up the characters myself and match the internet personas with those in Livington's book, but for me, that takes too much effort when I'm just trying to enjoy a book.

I thought this was a very good, as well as educational, book. Lesley Livingston keeps producing great reads. I'll definitely remember her in the future when I'm looking for a new book. I would give this novel four stars. It was in third person, which normally equals three stars, but I thought this book deserved it. I would suggest this story to anyone interested in Druids, time-travel, and difficult romances.