Shift

Shift by Kim Curran
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Have you ever wished you could go back and make a different decision? Turn left instead of right? Answer the phone instead of letting it go to voicemail? Sixteen-year-old Scott Tyler can--he's a Shifter, with the power to change his reality by deciding to change decisions he's already made. Sometimes that saves his life. Sometimes it kills his sister. And then there are the decisions that lead to meeting a girl named Aubrey...and being hunted by a brain-eating psychopath.

I read an advance copy of Shift, courtesy of NetGalley, and I loved it! A very fast-paced read from a new British young adult author (so new, she's not even on Fantastic Fiction yet). The story is set in modern-day London, but with a few tweaks: some children are born with the ability to "shift," to change their minds and thus their realities. These children are recruited to join a special school that trains them to control their abilities, and the teenage "graduates" go on to work for a variety of departments, including mapping likely outcomes of Shifts and "fixing" timelines gone wrong. At the onset of adulthood, entropy sets in, and Shifters lose their abilities. At least, that's what everyone believes until Scott and Aubrey stumble over some evidence that reality is not what it seems.

For readers' advisors: story doorway is primary, setting secondary. There are a few swear words and some violence, but not much.  The ending could have benefited from a slightly longer explanation of what happened to Scott.

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