Anomaly by Jennifer Milne
Publisher: Auctor Press
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Romance, Inspirational, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

What if every day you woke up as someone new?

Every day a new past, every day a new life.

Then what if one day you woke up and you were no one at all?

Ellie Coleman has been erased from existence and now she must fight for the love that no longer knows her and the life that is no longer her own.

What if you had to choose: to be erased and save the world…or to live and let it burn.

The world wouldn’t be the same if you, I, or anyone else weren’t in it.

Making the right decision isn’t always clear cut. What sounds good in the moment might turn out to have negative consequences in the future, and vice versa. I was intrigued by the many different factors Ellie and the other characters had to consider when deciding which choice made the most sense not only for themselves but also for the rest of humanity. There’s something to be said for embracing the nuances of life.

I struggled with the plot holes in this novella. For example, it was hard for me to understand how Ellie could continue to exist when she had been erased from existence. The reason given for this never made sense to me, and I found myself wishing more time had been spent explaining how it worked and why nobody expected it to occur. The ending, too, didn’t seem to fit what I’d learned earlier about the rules in this universe about what should happen to someone who exists despite every attempt to prevent that from happening. If only I could have had more information about how it all worked.

Time travel is one of those topics I automatically gravitate towards when I read speculative fiction. Even a small change in the past can have major repercussions in the future, and I appreciated how much time and effort the author put into extrapolating how her characters’ earlier decisions could logically affect what happened to them next. She clearly put a lot of thought into these passages!

One of the interesting changes I’ve seen in the inspirational genre over the past few years has been how often books do not mention this in their blurbs or other descriptions of their content. I did not go into this novella expecting to find religious themes and messages, so I thought I’d let other readers know in advance that it does have them. It’s important for readers to be able to find tales from the genres they love.

Anomaly was thought provoking.