"This is a fast-paced adventure story with the perfect mix of fantasy and coming-of-age realistic fiction."
— School Library Journal - 4.5 stars rounded up

I want to thank NetGalley, the publisher and the author for giving me the opportunity to review this book. I admit in my joy at joining NetGalley I may have been overzealous in my requesting numbers. As this book has already been published, I am choosing to work on the current upcoming publish date books in my que. As I complete those I will work on my backlogged request and will provide a review at that time. I again send my sincere thanks and apologies.

This one just wasn't for me, I felt as if I couldn't connect with any of the characters and the writing style didn't mesh well with me

Did not finish. This novel was not for me. I had a hard time connecting to the story and the characters.

A nice addition to the YA sci-fi genre. A recommended purchase for YA and high school collections where SF is popular.

Imagine seeing five versions of yourself, each one drawn from a different world. Each of you were born into the same family, had the same genetics, were — at the most scientific level — basically the same people. What might it be like, to meet another version of yourself. What is different between You Prime and the other versions of you? What small details, small choices might you make, or have made, that rippled through your life, having dramatic consequences you never even considered? Although Corinne Duyvis’s The Art of Saving the World is clearly about, well, saving the world, this is the question that lies at its heart for me: if there are five versions of you in a room, which one of them is the real you?

<<cover and back copy>>

I adore apocalyptic-level stories, and Duyvis’s previous book, On the Edge of Gone, clearly demonstrated that she knows her way around world-ending consequences. (Duyvis is also the originator of #ownvoices, and On the Edge of Gone has a brilliant autistic character who is OV. Highlighly recommended.) The moment I heard about The Art of Saving the World, I needed to read it.

While On the Edge of Gone is fundamentally about trying to survive the apocalypse, The Art of Saving the World is about trying to stop the apocalypse in the first place. At the center of the story is Hazel. When Hazel was a baby, a rift appeared in the living room. Her parents took her and fled, but the rift activity became more violent the farther away they got, so eventually they were brought back...and the rift calmed down. Hazel has, therefore, lived her entire sixteen years within a scientifically determined range that she can travel within; any further, and the rift starts to “act up.”

The fact that I liked Hazel at all in the beginning of the book is testament to Duyvis’s stellar writing, because that was a real trick that Duyvis managed to pull off. Hazel is shockingly incurious. She never questions the scientists who live on her family’s property, studying the rift. She never tries to get close to the rift. She never really wonders why her life is like this. She has accepted it as real, even if it’s occasionally frustrating. Her life is small, but she has everything she thinks she needs.

On the night of Hazel’s sixteenth birthday, the rift goes wild. No matter how close Hazel gets, it doesn’t calm down. As she races back towards her house from the sad birthday party that had been happening at the local diner, she sees her mother running holding the hand of a girl who...looks exactly like Hazel, just in a bright red party dress. Which is, of course, when things start to get confusing. We end up with five Hazels on the page, five different versions of who one person could have been. Together, they fight to make the world safe, but to do so, they have to face the fact that Hazel, the person destined to win this fight, has not been trained, guided, or supported in any way.

There are three threads of plot masterly woven through The Art of Saving the World. First, Hazel meets her mentor, a dragon who came through the rift some time ago and had been caged by the scientists. She has to learn skills, any kind of skills, to help her survive the task that has been put to her. Second, the meeting of the Hazels. Each has a nickname within the book so that the reader doesn’t have to be constantly reminded which Hazel is which. The girls are physically and emotionally distinctive, and Duyvis does a stellar job of making sure they don’t all sound alike.

And then there’s a third element, a third plotline which ends up being the culminating factor of the book: Why?

Why are people, almost always naive children, told that they must save the world, often at huge cost to themselves?

Why do we accept these stories?

Why do we believe that the only way to win is through martyrdom? Why do we rely on a Chosen One? Why do we wait for someone else to do the saving? And, even more importantly, why does the world fall apart just as the Chosen One appears? Does the monster appear and need to be slain, or does the hero seek out a monster to slay.

Even as Duyvis pays loving homage to Chosen One stories — especially Star Wars, which is our lifetime’s Beowolf — she interrogates why they exist in the first place, and why we play their game. What powers move behind the scenes to organize the monsters and the heroes, and why do they do it?

If I wanted to get a graduate degree in literature, it would be so that I could dig into this book and discuss how The Art of Saving the World both cherishes and criticizes one of the most popular story forms of the Western World, and does it while writing a fascinating adventure story targeted at teenagers.

My emotional journey with the narrative of main character Hazel — we’ll call her Hazel Prime, as the other Hazels do in the novel — was strange for me. At the beginning of the book, I had a great deal of sympathy for her. It is made very clear that she has never considered breaking out of her bubble because she has been convinced that it’s not safe outside. This isn’t just for her safety, it’s for the safety of the world. So she’s calm. She’s at peace. She would like to know what the world outside is like, but it doesn’t nag at her.

As the narrative kicked into adventurous gear, I started to really dislike Prime. The other Hazels were trying to figure out what was going on (none of them had a rift in their world), trying to make plans or even share themselves with the others, kind of comparing notes to see how they were similar and different, while Prime was just...there. In retrospect, she reminded me of Seligman’s work on classical conditioning with dogs. This is gross and describes panic-freeze responses as well as some animal cruelty, so you may want to skip the next paragraph.

See, Seligman put dogs in cages with electrified floors. He’d ring a bell and then administer a “light shock.” After a few times, the dogs would react like they had been shocked as soon as they heard the bell, before the electricity had been activated. Then, he put the dogs into cages where only half the floor was electrified and put a low fence in place. He administered a light shock, expecting the dogs to jump over the fence to try and get away. Instead, they just lay down. Dogs who had never been shocked did; jumped over the fence to get away from the pain. But these dogs didn’t believe there was anything they could do to save themselves, so they just gave up. Seligman called this “learned helplessness” and it is frequently discussed in terms of social justice, abuse and PTSD, and a variety of other situations where unanticipated but regular violence can fuck you up.

Prime didn’t understand that she can change who she is, or that she can do more than she is. The Chosen One always has a “but why me?” moment, a “dark night of the soul” to paraphrase Joseph Campbell, but Prime is just stuck as hell in that spot, and when people try to move her along into another space, she just goes limp. Somehow, even though I was frustrated and irritated with her as a character, I didn’t give up on her; I kept believing that somehow she would get her shit together and do what needed to be done. (She does. Not the way I thought, but absolutely the way I wanted, even though I didn’t know it yet.)

The comparisons between this book and Orphan Black are inevitable; you have identical siblings and a shadowy science group doing shady stuff. But there are vast differences between the two, and although I’m a big fan of (the first three seasons of) Orphan Black, Hazel and her dimensional siblings made me ask different questions than I did of Sarah and her sisters (and the one brother who never got mentioned again, but that is a different post). Sarah and her sisters all grew up in very different homes, and other than being “genetic identicals” aren’t really the same people. Most of the Hazels are somewhere in the queer world, from an open lesbian to a proud bisexual to a questioning ace girl. One of the Hazels refers to herself as the token straight, a phrase that has always and will always win a laugh from me.

Beyond that, one of the Hazels has diagnosed endometriosis (and as someone who suffered from a similar condition for way too long without any help, I was *so glad* to see that addressed in a book where there’s even a chance that a teen girl might see something of herself and get treatment earlier than 37), and as they’re talking, it seems like another might have the condition as well, and is planning to ask her doctor about it when she returns to her own dimension. Another Hazel struggles with panic and anxiety and shows Prime how to help create a bit more capacity to stave off panic attacks.

When you start reading a book about how the world is ending, it’s a foregone conclusion that somehow it’s going to be saved. Someone may die, the world may end up fundamentally different than it was in the beginning, but there is going to be a world that continues chugging along. The world is, in fact, artfully saved. And then there’s Hazel, no longer Prime, trying to understand how to function in a world that is suddenly so much bigger than she expected. She’s left wondering, as anyone might, which version of herself was the right one, the Platonic Hazel.

This book challenged how I felt and thought about the hero’s journey, about stories about the Chosen One, about how our environments impact our beings, and about which version of myself is the one that is the most correct. I delved deep into the heart of this story and loved every second of it. I think this book would be most enjoyed by teenagers, as opposed to kids like my 12 year old, who could absolutely read this book, but wouldn’t understand the nuance of the content. I can’t possibly recommend it enough.

I was drawn to this by the doppelgänger shenanigans and got an original view on the Chosen One trope and an intriguing and fresh take on the involvement of a mysterious government agency. Cannot recommend this enough!

Content warnings include: violence and injury, (near) death experience, abduction/hostage situation/being held at gunpoint, imprisonment, panic and anxiety attack, medication; mentions of queerphobia, endometriosis.

I recently read The Space Between Worlds, which also features different dimensions of the same world clashing, and one of the things I enjoyed about it most was seeing multiple versions of the same person, the effects small and big differences can have on the same person, and which things remain the same regardless of circumstances.
Now, despite both books having the same core concept, they couldn’t be more different.
The Space Between Worlds is adult fiction, for one, while The Art of Saving the World is YA. Thematically the former deals with class, priviledge, race and (im)migration, while the latter is centered around the Chosen One trope and finding out who you really are, and what defines you.
But the one central difference that I found most intriguing was that Cara (mostly) dealt with different versions of other people, while Hazel was surrounded by other versions of herself.

Not only did that spark a big chunk of the more introspective part of the plot and the central character arc, it also was just super fascinating to read. All the little things that Hazel notices about the other Hazels, and which she hates – because she recognizes them as her own habits. My initial reaction to Hazel’s almost repulsed reaction to her doppelgängers was shock, but then it hit me. Because I absolutely would react the same way. I hate watching videos of myself, hate seeing my mannerisms and gestures and way of talking and textured skin and my own feelings…. and seeing all of that reflected times four, surrouding me constantly and not just when I look into a mirror in a controlled way, or in one of the very few videos of myself, sounds excruciating.
It also made for a wonderful subject matter for a YA novel.

That internal plot was a great balance to the more action packed plot around the interdimensional rift and why the other Hazels appeared in the first place! I won’t go into that, because finding out the why is a big part of the plot, but I will say that I found it a very nice and fresh take on the good old Chosen One trope.

Another things that is common in a lot of novels but was handled in a super cool way here was the involvment of a ~mystery government agency~ (MGA – it really is called that in the book.) Because of course, if an interdimensional rift opens up in the US of A, the government would get its fingers into that pie ASAP.
It would have been easy (and let’s be real, fitting) to just make the MGA the antagonists, maybe throw in some investors or corrupt senators, and it would have made a great plot. But The Art of Saving the World chose a different route, and it was unlike anything I’ve read before, which I adored. Government agencies in fiction tend to be either the villains or the unquestionable heros (and sometimes both, starting out as one and ending as the other.) Here they are neither, because Hazel grew up with it. The MGA is a part of her life. It’s annoying to constantly have an agent breathing down her neck, but the agents are also the only people allowed in the house aside from her family, and they are the ones who sing her Happy Birthday songs and such. But they are also the ones who keep her from seeing anyone not her father, mother, or sister, and they also almost shot her sister the one time she sneaked out.
I don’t want to give more away, but I really adored the way it was handled!

Overall I really enjoyed the book. The short chapters make it readable and lend themselves both to binging because they fly by so fast and to reading slowly or in between other things because it’s always easy to find your way back into the story and get a quick feeling of triumph for finishing a chapter after a short time.

I highly recommend the book, both because of the above mentioned plot points that intrigued me, but also because it has quite lovely questioning rep, as the protagonist is a questioning asexual lesbian. She also had undiagnosed anxiety, which is thematized, and endometriosis is a topic as well.

thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review! this has not affected my review in any way, all opinions are mine.

2.5/5
hazel spent her entire life confined to a 1.5 mile radius to keep a dimensional rift under control, until her 16th birthday, when the rift moves, more hazels appear, and everything hazel thought she knew changes drastically.

we're starting with the things i liked because that's easiest. i did end up liking the conflict with the powers that be. i wasn't sure how deep that line would go, so i appreciated where it went and the characters' reactions to it. without going into any spoilers, i thought that aspect was really interesting and THAT was a part of the story i really liked and wished it hadn't taken so long to get to. (the resolution i'll talk about later) i liked how the hazels were so different but similar, but maybe that's because i'm in a child psych class and interspersed reading this and reading about how we develop from our environment as well as genetics. i liked the hazel dynamics! i thought they were a fun group and got attached to them very quickly. i thought how the magic weapon came about was interesting. and, hey! dragons are fun! the sexuality rep was pretty good, and there were some funny lines and moments!

but also.. there were so many frustrating moments where it was just...an exposition dump. both the reader and hazels have information hidden from them for so many pages and then it's just all revealed because ??? we're given a reason, but i personally didn't find it satisfying, and it made hazel prime passive for a huge chunk of a story where she was meant to be becoming MORE active after a life of passivity. i'm ALL for passive characters, but the way hazel's active- or passiveness was handled became frustrating. i think it just fell a little too much into the telling over showing for me. it also made the pacing feel really uneven. the first 2/3rds were really rough in that regard for me, while the ending really picked up the pace and i found to be the most enjoyable part.

also i think this was an attempt to subvert the "chosen one" trope, but it fell flat to me. while i truly did enjoy a lot of the anxiety scenes around the concept — the clapping scene in particular i found i really liked — it didn't really feel like ALL that new of a take on the chosen one. maybe that could've gone further? i'm not sure.

this is a tiny thing, but it really bothered me that four never got a name. i can't say colors are all THAT much better, but they at least were identifying factors (before red changed out of her dress). even alpha got a different name. but four was just...four. and four NEVER got a distinct personality in my mind. i can think of one (1) difference between her and prime, and that really bothers me. there was so much exploration of how the hazels were different and a few identity crises, so it felt like four n e e d e d to be more distinct by the end and she just! wasn't! like what did she add to the story other than being fourth? i literally couldn't tell you. i get that there's l i t e r a l l y a conversation about this about 2/3rds through the book but it doesn't matter because it still deeply bothered me

the resolution to the climax made me mad and the ending just left me...sad and empty feeling. i wasn't expecting things to end perfectly, or tragically. they honestly ended very realistically but it just didn't....hit right? it felt not impactful enough and just a touch too real for there to be anything satisfying about it. i got the point but...i don't know. it was sad, but not cathartic. if hazel prime had changed more i'm not sure if that would've been a better ending. i don't know if there IS a better ending. i'm just left feeling like...yes this is how anxiety works. this is realistic. and i struggle with it every day. maybe that's why it's upsetting, because it's just too similar to me. there isn't enough of a change, it's just some small steps. maybe i'll feel different about the ending tomorrow but right now, right out of this book, i feel upset and conflicted

i think, in the end, the struggle this book has is that it both wants to be plot driven and character driven. and it can be both — there are plenty of stories that have adventurous plots entertwined with deep character exploration — but i think this book missed the mark for the majority of it. it came together toward the end, but that means you have to get through the clunkier beginnings to hit the smoother parts. for at least the first half, to explore hazel, or the hazels as a collective, the action would stop dead. i think there was a way that this exploration could happen alongside the action of saving the world without the sometimes jarring switches between action and character, but unfortunately, we didn't get it

while reading this book, i spoke to friends about it, as it's kind of in my nature to liveblog things i read and watch. and at some point around halfway through, one of my good friends said "ngl i cant tell if you hate the book" and that might be a good stance to stand by.

it was interesting. it was fun to talk about. i don't know if i actually liked it, and so i've had to look at it more from a craft point of view, which i don't actually do for most books. most of my ratings are based on my emotional reaction and mine to this one was just sort of... eh. so a 2.5/5

(also random fun fact, i know they're all blonde but rainbow, but i literally couldn't stop imagining red as dahlia hawthorne from ace attorney because they paired dress with the word red. i know her dress is red. i know she changes out of it early on. i tried so hard to unsee it. i failed miserably)

I loved this Dark Mirror-Esque teen Sci-Fi title. So many Hazels are trying to save the world. I think that teens will gobble this one up, There are so few books in this category for them, and I am a sucker for The Chosen One as a premise.

Plot:
When Hazel was born, the fabric of her world ripped open in her backyard. She’s spent her whole life unable to go further than 1.5 miles from her house which has become more like a military base. This all changes when on her 16th birthday when the rift becomes unstable and sends through Hazels from other dimensions and instructions for a quest.

My thoughts:
The Art of Saving the World was a unique take on the chosen one trope which seamlessly blended sci fi elements into the modern world and followed a cast of distinct and relatable characters (which is particularly impressive as several of them are the same person).

This book cleverly played with traditional storytelling methods and cliché plot devices and tropes to create something unique. I loved how it presented and subverted the typical expectations of the chosen one trope and conventional character roles, such as the mentor. These elements and discussions of what makes a good story were central to this book and really fun to read about. I also appreciated the representation in this book, with an asexual lesbian main character with anxiety. The book explored Hazel’s internal struggles of questioning her identity, especially when faced with a much more confident and outgoing version of herself. It also didn’t shy away from showing the difficulties of having anxiety, especially in such a high stakes situation. The sci fi elements easily blended into the modern world and presented an interesting setting and cast of characters.

However, I found that the book was perhaps a bit longer than necessary and that it dragged a bit. And, honestly, I was bored at times. Although I sometimes related to the characters and enjoyed Hazel’s development, I didn’t really connect with any of them and struggled to care about them or the stakes in the book which took away some of my enjoyment.

The Art of Saving the World was well crafted and had an interesting take on common storytelling methods and tropes. However, I just wasn’t invested in the story or characters which is essential for me to enjoy a book. This unfortunately meant that the book fell a bit flat for me.

*eARC received in exchange for an honest review via NetGalley*

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

When Hazel Stanczak was born, an interdimensional rift opened near hear home. Until her sixteenth birthday, Hazel cannot go much more than a mile away from it without it 'acting up' - expelling items and creatures from other dimensions into ours.

Disaster strikes on Hazel's 16th birthday, when the rift goes out of control and spews more foreign objects into the world and then comes unmoored and drifts away. It falls on Hazel and four other Hazels from other dimensions, along with their dragon advisor, to deal with trolls drawn from other dimensions and bring the rift under control.

I gave The Art of Saving the World four stars on Goodreads. It's a worthwhile book to read, but it included a lot of introspection and the ending seemed too flat for me to give it the fifth star.

At first I wasn’t sure I liked this book, but then I started to enjoy the way it played with tropes. The last quarter of the book was a fun adrenaline rush.

I LOVE this book. It takes a common trope found in fantasy and young adult (the chosen one who must save the world) and turns it on its head because she isn’t Chosen, she’s chosen by those who pull the strings. It’s such an interesting concept, with Hazel having to save the world from a random threat that just jumps through a rift between worlds. I also love that the book really addresses sexuality and doesn’t brush over the topic. The Hazels have various sexualities. It even addresses asexuality, which is often ignored in literature. Overall, an AMAZING book.

Thank you so much to netgalley for sending me a copy of this book. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it if it sounds interesting to you. I will read nite by this author

First sentence: The rift that opened on our farm the evening I was born was like a shard of glass: sharp and angled and not quite transparent, but tilt your head a little and it might as well be invisible. So no one could blame my parents for not noticing it that first week.

Premise/plot: Hazel, our heroine, finds out she is a CHOSEN ONE. She won't have to save the world alone, however, for others have been sent through the rift to help her as the POWERS THAT BE stand silently by watching and judging their progress. Those others include a DRAGON and four other Hazels. Yes, four other versions of herself from four different alternate realities have come through the rift and are there to help this Hazel, this CHOSEN ONE Hazel live up to her destiny.

But what evil(s) is she saving the world from? And what are the consequences of her success or her failure? Is this a game of Whose Line Is It Anyway where the points don't ultimately matter? Is the system rigged? Why is there a system to begin with?

My thoughts: The premise starts off strong. I will say that the prologue and first chapter or two show a lot of promise. Ultimately, however, I found this novel to be an almost complete mess. It depends on what you are personally looking for. If you are looking for an epic adventure-quest where an actual world needs actual saving from an actual threat and a hero/heroine goes through a journey--literal or not so much so--to reach the place where he/she can save the world and find that place to come into being their best self...then this one is...well...it's not that. But was it ever meant to be that? Probably not ever.

If you are looking for a novel where you literally have conversations with yourself, then this is the book for you. It is mainly talkity-talk-talk. Hazel, this world, this Chosen One, Hazel, isn't really all that in tune with her inner self and inner desires and who she is and what she wants and how she wants her life to play out day to day. She's not solely to blame. Far from it. She literally has been kept within a two mile radius of her house since she was six days old. So if she's not quite your normal teen, well, there's probably a good reason for her to not quite be so self-aware. (That being said, being self-aware isn't always easy in the best of circumstances.)

Essentially, Hazel is an asexual lesbian with anxiety issues and a case of shyness. By seeing how other Hazels handle life, she begins to become more self-aware and motivated to be truer to herself.

So how does saving the world fit into this plot? Well, that's where it gets messy and complicated. The more inward and self-introspective the novel turns, the floppier and clumsier this whole "must save the world" nonsense becomes. By the end, it's just absolutely ridiculous.

But were readers ever supposed to be focused on that aspect of the novel? Was that ever truly the point? I'm not sure it was. I think the novel was always about Hazel's self-discovery and realizations by getting to know other versions of herself, by becoming friends with her other selves.

I liked the idea of alternate realities and seeing other versions of yourself, of exploring what ifs, etc. I just wish the whole saving the world aspect of it wasn't there as a distraction.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My opinion was not affected by the free copy.

I'm definitely taking a break from YA. I just couldn't get into this book and eventually skipped to the ending. There are some relateable things in this, but the multi-dimensional plotline was a lot less interesting than I expected.

I think I'll start with the biggest problem: the "chosen one" plotline. Hazel was just declared the "chosen one" to save the world... for reasons. There was no real reason why, or why none of her alternate selves could be the chosen one instead. Unless they talk about that later in the book, in which case I didn't read that far. Chosen one plots are nothing new, but it does get boring when the main character is declared a savior just because some higher power or wise sage said so.

This one is probably more of a nitpick, but I didn't care for this being first person. I would've liked to see events through some of the alternates. Also, the alternates were referred to as things like "Red", "Four", and so on, which to me felt dehumanizing. I realize they're all named Hazel and that would get confusing, but there had to be a better way to distinguish them that still gave them names. If this was going to be first person, I would've liked more time spent on narrator Hazel so I really knew who she was and what her life was like before all this stuff started happening. There are some glimpses, but it felt like I was being told rather than shown, for the most part.

I will say that teens will probably identify with Hazel in ways. She's struggling with her identity and seeing alternate versions of herself opens her eyes to all her quirks and flaws, as well as possibilities if she chose to behave one way versus another. There's this nice scene where one of the alternates guides Hazel through an anxiety-reducing technique. Those were parts I liked; I just wish I could've focused on them more.

I don't know if it's because there was way too much stuff going on and I couldn't connect, or I didn't feel like I knew all the alternate Hazels very well. Whatever it was, this book wasn't for me. I would still recommend it, though, because I think teens would relate to Hazel's issues.