Book Review: ‘Skipshock’ by Caroline O’Donoghue (sci-fi time travel romance)

I’m a huge fan of Caroline O’Donoghue.

I love her Gifts trilogy and her podcast, Sentimental Garbage, is my favourite podcast, so the second I saw this cover and then the synopsis dropped? Obsessed. Why it took me so many months to read after it came out I can’t even tell you…

Margo is on a train when she slips into another dimension, passing from the height of Irish summer into the chill of an alien winter, from a 24-hour day to one that begins and ends in just six hours. From a stranger on the train – a travelling salesman by the name of Moon – she learns that New Davia is part of a world scarred by uprisings, travel bans and world sealings. Power is determined by time – who has it, who doesn’t, and who has the freedom to travel between time zones.

Can Margo find a way to get back home – or will she choose to stay in a world where her youth is slipping away faster than ever before, but where she may have found the only person with whom she would choose to spend eternity?

I absolutely loved Skipshock and I can’t believe I waited so long to read it, but I’m glad I got to read it this month.

There’s always an adjustment period when starting a sci-fi or fantasy novel as I get used to the world and its rules, but I felt like I had as much of a grounding in how it worked as Margo did at all times; I never felt lost or left behind and while the world was rich and well-developed, it was never convoluted for the sake of it. The idea of trains between areas of this world, each determined by the length of their day, was really cool, and like an exaggerated version of time zones on Earth. Then we have the people from the places in these worlds and the discrimination and differences for certain characters as they travel on the trains.

Margo’s amazement and confusion as she arrived in New Davia felt authentic and vivid and I was so excited to learn more about it along with her. Even though she was only 17, this is an older YA novel, she felt both older and completely spot on, especially as she started to develop feelings for Moon. I loved the way that their individual stories unravelled, and how they came together and became intertwined. There were a few moments and reveals that really took me by surprise and I ended up devouring Skipshock in two days.

I really hope that O’Donoghue continues to explore genre fiction and I’d really, really love to see her tackle sci-fi and fantasy in adult fiction.

Thank you to Walker and NetGalley for the review copy!