Book Review: The Same Backward as Forward

I am a big fan of Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ The Inheritance Games and Hawthorne series/world. When Games Untold came out last year, one of my favorite novellas in the collection of novellas set in the Hawthorne universe with our beloved Hawthorne characters, one of my favorite ones was the one about Hannah and Toby – Avery’s mom and the Hawthorne brothers’ uncle. It was all told from her POV about how she met Toby, nursed him back to health after the explosion on Hawthorne island, and fell in love before they had to leave each other. Their story was so good and heartbreaking because if you’ve read The Inheritance Games you know they won’t end up together. Anyway, it was one of my favorite stories in Games Untold. So when Jennifer Lynn Barnes announced she would be writing Toby’s POV and putting it, along with the original Hannah POV story, into one novel called The Same Backward as Forward I knew I had to get it.

Since I already read Hannah’s POV in Games Untold I only read Toby’s POV this time around. I loved going back to their story and seeing everything from his perspective starting from when he wakes up after Jackson saved him from drowning after the explosion/fire and Hannah is using her nursing student skills to nurse him back to life. I appreciated reading from his perspective, but I didn’t find it as interesting as when I read Hannah’s POV. I don’t know if that’s because it’s not new to me anymore and I know the basic story already of what happened between the two of them or if Toby’s POV is just not as interesting as Hannah’s because a lot of this one happens in his head as he waits each day for Hannah to show up and he’s just in pain and trying to remember his life/who he is.

I still enjoyed it, I just wasn’t as hooked in as when I first read their story. However, I was still moved and sad when Toby had to leave even though I already knew what happened and I knew they wouldn’t end up together, it was still sad. And seeing Toby find out Hannah had died was devastating.

A really cool feature of this book is that half of the book is Hannah’s POV and then to read the Toby’s POV you have to flip the book over.

If you’re a fan of this series/universe I think this is a must read because there are a few more clues planted for what I feel is going to be a huge, explosive grand finale in the last book coming out this summer.

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