Once Every Never by Lesley Livingston

Title: Once Every Never (Never #1)

Author: Lesley Livingston

Publisher: Razorbill Canada

Release Date: July 14, 2011

Source: Purchased

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Clarinet Reid is a pretty typical teenager. On the surface. She’s smart, but a bit of a slacker; outgoing, but just a little insecure; not exactly a mischief-maker...but trouble tends to find her wherever she goes. Also? She unwittingly has a centuries-old Druid blood curse running through her veins.

Now, with a single thoughtless act, what started off as the Summer Vacation in Dullsville suddenly spirals int a deadly race to find a stolen artifact, aver an explosive catastrophe, save a Celtic warrior princess, right a dreadful wrong that happened centuries before Clare was even born, and if there’s still time--literally--maybe even get a date.

Once Every Never is one of those books I had been looking forward to for the longest time. So you can imagine how excited I was to finally be able to read it. Let me just say that it was even better than I even hoped it would be and I wish there would have been more of it.

Clarinet Reid was most definitely not looking forward to spending her summer in London with her boring archeologist aunt. The only upside to it all was that her best friend Allie was coming to London too. That and Milo, Al’s geeky cousin who has turned into a hot geek since the last time Clare saw him. But soon enough, what Clare had thought would be a boring vacation turns particularly interesting and exciting. Soon enough Clare discovers she can travel back in time when she touches certain objects. Now her vacation is filled with Celtic princesses and hot Druid dudes. But of course it’s not all fun and games when it turns out that certain people want to use Clare’s ability for their own ends. But will Clare be able to save a Celtic princess in the past, all the while keeping her friends safe in the present without changing history too much?

Lesley Livingston is a fantastic writer. This is something I already knew from having read her Wondrous Strange trilogy but it was reinforced with Once Every Never. In this new book, she crafts a story that takes place in two completely different worlds that works perfectly. The time traveling doesn’t feel out of place at all and the two worlds fit together as if they were always meant to be that way. While reading the book I could easily picture the places where the story took place in London having been to many of them. But I could just as easily picture Celtic Britain and the Iceni village as well as imagine myself in some of the places described. That’s how amazing a writer Lesley Livingston is.

Clare was sort of like a reluctant heroine. At first she wasn’t really interested in anything but as the story progressed, she became more and more interested in everything. All of a sudden she was actually paying attention to the information everyone was giving her. But that might have had something to do with Milo and Connal. What was particularly interesting with the characters was how the present day characters fit perfectly with the Celtic princesses and the Druid princes. I could just as easily picture Clare with either Milo or Connal even though the latter has technically been dead for some two thousand odd years. Same goes for having Al and Comorra as Clare’s best friend. It’s not so much that the characters from the past and the present were interchangeable but more that they all felt completely real and I could relate to all of them regardless of the time period they were from.

Once again, Lesley Livingston has proven how great a writer she is with Once Every Never. I strongly recommend everyone reads this book. But be careful, Lesley Livingston’s writing becomes just as addictive as the story she tells.