Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

4 stars!

I love love love Neal Shusterman so I just knew I had to read this.

Much like his other books, this will keep you on the edge of your seat and it will have you gripped to it the whole time.

The concept is original and really enjoyable, I highly recommend.

I’m not sure this one was for me, I found it to be an ok read but it didn’t massively grip me and I found myself getting bored in parts

I think this may be my least favourite Neal Shusterman book that I have ever read. Something about this book I could not connect with at all. Maybe I simply do not like Neal's stand alone books.
I really did try to like this book but after it took me multiple attempts to read this book, I knew it simply was not a book for me.
I am sure someone else will love this book, I really did love the writing as I always love Neal's writing, but this story and characters did not capture my attention the way I wanted it to.

I absolutely adore Neal Schustmeran's writing, and this book is no different. His way of writing just completely captivates me from the first page and, much like his previous Scythe series, absolutely flew through it.

I really enjoyed Neal's previous books, but I feel like he missed the mark with this one. The characters were interesting, but I didn't find them believable and the story seemed a bit too moralizing. But that won't discourage me from reading more of his books!

Game Changer is a well-intentioned novel in which the author tried to address many issues of the current time, but he might have missed, in his mission to condemn all the bad stuff to notice that this book is basically a white savior narrative where a young, white, straight, popular football player mansplains a lot.

For trying tackle all the bad stuff in the world that are and always will be important. I felt there was too much time spent with the issues of Katie and Landon (head cheerleader and football quarterback) and what may or may not be happening between them. That is also an important topic, and I do not think it was handled well at all. There were too many issues being addressed without enough impact.

I understand the whole "You can't understand a person until you walk in their shoes", but it just boggles my mind that Ash literally had to [ witness segregation firsthand, experience homophobia as a gay man, and experience misogyny/sexism as a woman to understand those issues. Ash shouldn't have to go to the extremes to realize that just because he doesn't have the same problems that other people do, that those problems don't exist

All in all, while a well-intended novel, Game Changer landed just a little off the mark. Neal Shusterman's fantastic writing style kept it together the best it could, but in the end, that's not the most important part. There are so many author who could write about these subject from an own voices perspective and I feel it would have been more important in the subjects covered and would have made it as a whole more enjoyable. If I want to read about struggle I want the narrative to line up with the problems and I although I can appreciate what Shusterman was trying to do, it just didn’t work for me.

This book is a perfect blend of the existential weirdness of Douglas Coupland, the teenage drama of Patrick Ness and the ridiculousness of Quantum Leap. But despite the breezy style and easy readability of it, it features some heavy topics - racism, inequality, homophobia and domestic abuse. It's fun and fluffy but relevant and serious, far-fetched but not far from the truth and, if it is guilty of not fully engaging with the issues it brings up, it could be said to be thought-suggesting rather than truly thought-provoking.

After reading the book Dry from this author and then seeing this on netgalley there was no way that I couldn’t wish for it. And I am so happy that my wish got granted! So a big thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for sending this one my way.

In this one Shusterman tackles all of the big topics, from racism to sexism to domestic abuse and when I read this book it made me feel like this was a book written because we need change. However, there are some mixed feelings about this book on whether or not it actually hits the mark and to be honest for me it does. In a few parts this was slow going but I think that’s just because of how intense the book is rather than because I found it boring.

I thought Ash was an okay character and I thought that the situation with the Ed’s and all the baths were very interesting.

This was a harder book of Neal’ s for me to love. I had to read past the fact that it was American Football and i am an Australian girl who has never seen a game of American football, but its his writing wins out and is amazing.

I am leaving an average review for this as sadly I have been unable to read and review the book. It was sent to me as a protected pdf that I could only read through the adobe app and the text is much too small for me to be able to read on my phone and its just impossible for me to enjoy. I do love Neal Shusterman and intend to buy and read this as soon as possible!

I've been trying to write this review for so long but unfortunately can't find the right words to describe what made me so uncomfortable about this book. As other reviewers have mentioned, this book tries to deal with so many different topics that it ends up not really saying anything impactful about any of them. The writing was really good, Neal Shusterman is a very talented author, but unfortunately, the content of the book itself fell flat. As a disabled person, I also felt very uncomfortable with the ableism at the end, where the main character suggests that becoming disabled is a fitting punishment for one of the villains in this story.

I wanted to love this and there were certainly things I enjoyed, but overall this book was a huge disappointment.

This was a did-not-finish for me. I loved the idea of alternate realities and I thought that it was going really well until in one of the alternate timelines Ash (the main character) is a drug dealer and that was when I stopped reading. I think that I would have been ok with it if the author hadn't taken it upon himself to list out the names of every single drug that was being sold. Overall I loved the premise of this book but not so much the execution. Happy Reading :)

DNF @17%

I requested this book because of Neal Shusterman even though the story doesn't seemed interesting. I though his name is a guarantee for a good book, but it was so boring, I just can't finish it.
I just read 17% but I got so many theories. Ash was so boring, I don't care about him. He was so antipathetic, I just hate to read from his perspective. I hated this "What is happening with me" monologues, they were so boring, and the truth is that I didn't care what is with him. I hated the atmosphere, too. I just can't handle anymore, I give up.

I loved the Arc of a Scythe trilogy by Neal Shusterman, so when I heard about this book I was keen to read it.
Game Changer follows highs school American football player Ash, who discovers that when he performs a particularly hard tackle, it causes shifts in the universe. Initially so subtle he thinks he must just have remembered things wrong, the shifts become more significant until Ash’s entire identity changes.

Books exploring parallel universes are something I find fascinating, and this is no exception. The author uses this as a way to explore how biases affect so much of our lives, and how the smallest of changes in the past could have lead to a very different present.

Thought-provoking and gripping, many of the issues dealt with are ones which have come very much to the forefront over the past few years

Neal Shusterman’s latest book is a spotlight on our current world. Using the ‘what if?’ to great effect, he takes us on a journey to a parallel universe, then another, then another as Ash explores different life possibilities as the whole of existence starts to fray. Another creative, pacy, exciting novel from one of the best YA writers of our time.

Gamechanger
Neal Shusterman
Ash Bowman is a starting linebacker for his American high school football team. A quarterback sacking lands him into a parallel universe, and he keeps up this hit/time-hop, each time making changes to the universal fabric. Ash’s brain fumbles with this and he must confront his ideas of race, relationships, crime, homophobia and abuse until he meets some skateboard-riding interdimensional mentors who help guide him to understand and more.
With the philosophical overtones of Jostein Gaarder’s ‘Sophie’s World’ and the SF edge of Patrick Ness’s ‘More than this’, Neal Shusterman has written a thrilling time-hop adventure that is the thinking teen’s follow-on to classics like ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’. Shusterman’s brilliant ‘Arc of a Scythe’ series is a tough act to follow, but ‘Gamechanger’ is surely that. He takes on huge issues, but the tone is perfect – none of the condescension you might get in, say, a pre-packed PSHE lesson. This is a safe space for teens to question their own choices, knowing it’s not too late to change. Shusterman even manages to shoehorn in the pandemic, proving how up-to-date and real the story is.
I enjoyed the style, Neal Shusterman has a natural flair for conversational, fluid writing. The relationships are the important things here, although there are some technical words and a mench’ for Stephen Hawking for the theoretical physicists. He manages to create a believable neighbourhood that unfolds cinematically in the mind’s eye. In another author’s hands, you might question the sheer number of issues addressed, but Shusterman manages to do this expertly, never losing any momentum or interest.
I was really thrilled that the main character shares my surname. It’s so exciting to see oneself in print, but I believe most teenage readers will find ‘Gamechanger’ east to identify with. There is, as they say, something for everyone.

Fab concept but felt rushed though.

I've loved all the Shusterman's I've read. I chose this seeing his name and casting a brief glance at the synopsis. And it's a wonderfully enticing prospect anyway - parallel dimensions!

High school football player Ash doesn't really think too deeply about the lives and problems of those around him - a younger brother he doesn't have much of a relationship with, a friend with a controlling partner, he even slept with his best friend's sister.

We don't see Ash as a bad guy, he's a regular teenager, but we do feel the confusion as he takes a hit in a game one Friday night and finds that the world around him stops at blue lights now, and not at red. And then it happens again and more and bigger changes begin to seep into reality.

In a plot with elements of David Levithan's Every Day and reminiscent of old favourites Sliders and Quantum Leap, Ash learns that he's moving between parallel universes... that one small change can affect a whole lot of other things... that things really could be worse... and that he'd do anything to get back to his own dimension.

While I enjoyed the book, the character and the concept, looking at it as a whole, I was disappointed that some things felt glossed over. Dimension jumps cover broad and big topics: race, gender, homosexuality, controlling/abusive relationships, drugs, sibling relationships - yet some of these could have been whole novels in themselves and are barely touched upon.

Shusterman does take the time to build a narrative with some scientific-sounding backstory/encompassing structure as to why and how this is all happening to Ash, and I did like the idea of this and the new characters this brought in. The continuity of Ash's life and how new changes fit with old ones worked.

I'd have rated this more highly for spending more time on each iteration, for exploring the issues raised in worlds related to Ash's friends and his own changed body. A lot was fit in but not mined for its possibilities.

Still worth a read and recommending, fascinating idea. Some violence but not graphic. For ages 13 and above.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

I was left underwhelmed with this after having been such a fan of Neal Shusterman's Arc of a Scythe trilogy. I wanted to love this just as much, but at times I felt like it was a white saviour kind of novel, with the main character mansplaining a lot of things.

This unfortunately wasn't for me and I'm really sad about it as I've really enjoyed this authors other works but overall the story was not what I had hoped for from the vague synopsis and I didn't get the urge to continue the story. Its definitely well written but I was the wrong audience.