Princess Marie is sickly, quiet, and shy. She has never lived up to the standards of Queen Eleanor the Second, Supreme Ruler of the Franco-British Empire. She lives in the most powerful empire the world has ever seen, due to the help of the Head Merlin and his control over the only supply of magic in the world. Marie must marry and produce an heir to keep the empire strong against their greatest enemy: Prussia. The two kingdoms need to unite to stop the never ending war, and the only way is for Marie to marry the heir to the Prussian throne.
Over the course of two days, Ben and Maggie have met and fallen in love, only to die together countless times. They struggle again and again to resist the pull of their fate and time itself. Every time they come closer to breaking out of the time loop, everything becomes more deeply ingrained and more inescapable. They think up a desperate plan to break free and survive, but what if their only shot at not dying is to live apart?
Evie’s life may not be normal, but she likes to think it is, even if she works for the International Paranormal Containment Agency, her former boyfriend is a faerie, she can’t help but fall for an incarcerated shape-shifter, and she is the only one who can see through the glamours worn by paranormals. But when she learns that she is at the heart of an age-old prophecy that foretells the destruction of all paranormal creatures, she realizes her life may not be what she thought it was. So much for normal.
Henry Page has never been in love, and he's fine with it. He's much happier focusing on college and the future, and becoming the newspaper editor at his school. When Grace Town walks into Henry Page's school one day, he practically overlooks her. Were it not for her rather oversized boy's clothes and the cane she walks with, he may have ignored her completely. But their paths cross in the form of the newspaper, and sparks fly, and Henry's about to learn for the first time just how stunning and disastrous love can be.
What had she just done? She had obediently opened a door and stepped through into blackness, without even knowing if there was a floor on the other side.
This consists of four stories--"quarters," Sedgwick calls them--from four different eras. Each is a compelling, haunting meditation on human nature. Each has horror undertones, confronts suffering and misery. Each is distinct in style, tone, setting, and action. Each involves philosophical musings about the meaning of spirals in the way of Jungian archetypes (universal, archaic patterns and images that derive from the collective unconscious and are the psychic counterpart of instinct; Wikipedia).
Told mostly in reverse order, But I Love Him chronicles the relationship between Anna and Connor. The reader is introduced to Anna, a high school senior, who has spent the past year focused on Connor, and has slowly given up the people and things that were important to her prior to meeting him.
In Zeroes we were introduced to a group of teens with unusual, mostly subtle superpowers who find themselves in an increasing amount of trouble with both drug dealers and the police, using the very powers that got them into trouble in the first place to get them out again. I liked the novel a lot, so when I found out about the sequel, I was very excited.
