Blaire is the one thing that does not belong

This book is in the paranormal realm. I'm also planning on trying something new at the end of the post I will ask or give out 3-5 discussion or insight questions about the book to get you thinking about things. I'm not sure if I will post my thoughts or answers to the questions yet or leave it up to you. If I do give my answers it will be about 5 days after the post gets published. Of course like always spoilers are a given.

Sixteen-year-old Blaire Adams can walk through mirrors. It is called breaking symmetry. She can reach through mirrors; grab things and even step inside. Eleven months after her father vanished without a trace, he's found wandering outside The Scripps Research Institute vomiting blood and speaking gibberish, his only possession a diary filled with an unrecognizable language. He has a message for her. As he dies in her arms, he claims he never vanished, but she vanished. 

On the other side of the mirror, she lives every teenager’s fantasy: a universe all her own, zero consequences. When finished, she just steps back into reality and smashes the mirror and in an instant erases every stupid thing she did. Gone. It never happened. In a nearby military quarantine zone, scientists are being called in from around the world to sequence a previously unknown strain of DNA. When her father’s autopsy reveals a rare chromosomal disorder, she inherited Blaire begins to suspect her father’s last words weren’t induced by amnesia. 

Like her dad, she has an additional set of instructions in her genes instructions for what, doctors can’t say. Only one thing is certain: it’s what killed him, and it will kill her too. Now she’s haunted by nightmares. The only clue she has is a lasting feeling of déjà vu. That, and the nagging suspicion that all she knows is a mirage. She is certain of two things though it may mean confiding in the wrong side of good and evil, he has the answers she needs. But breaking symmetry is also dangerous. First, there’s the drug-like rush she gets when passing through the glass, like a shot of adrenaline. She suspects it’s degrading her body, making a new copy of her each time a reflection of a reflection, each one a little hazier. Then, of course, there’s the risk of getting cut off from reality.

When trapped in a broken reflection, she must flee through a mind-bending maze of mirrors, going deeper into the nightmare as she struggles to grasp a betrayal, uncover the chilling truth about her ability, and somehow find a way out of a dead-end universe that “never happened.” Somehow, she must find a way home.

Broken symmetry is a very unusual book and I have not read anything like it before. There are many technical and scientific physics discussed in this book, that can be hard for the average reader to understand. The whole concept that these individuals have one extra chromosome and Blaire has two make them unique to walk through mirrors. Blaire starts her internship at the company where her father worked helping them by crossing over into mirrors. First, she finds out that crossing over is harmful, dangerous, and killed her father. When they crossover they get sick throw up has bled from their noses has trouble breathing. After you have done 300 you expire and turn to ash and it's like your insides have been eaten out and you can get crossover sickness.

It does not affect Blaire as much since she has 48 chromosomes one more than her father, Amy, Damian and Dr. Charles Donavan. The reason for the crossing over is the group is trying to get information about an artifact that the Military found and is keeping in a quarantined area. To make things more complicated Damian and sometimes Blaire's memories overlap so they know what happens in the reflection as well as the source as they called the real world where the person first and truly exists. Damian tells Blaire there a 3 rules everyone must follow when crossing over. 1 After ever walk you destroy the mirror. 2. Never ever nest crossovers within crossovers, which means never go inside more than one mirror. 3. Make sure nothing living comes back with you through the mirror. Blaire at first after hearing all the harm that crossing over can cause she is scared to go through with the missions also she does not like the fact that Damian kills the people in the reflections willy nilly claiming they are not really real so she has that moral dilemma to contend with. 

Blaire has a best friend named Josh who asked her to go to prom but when she meets Damian and learns from him how to break symmetry she starts to have feelings for him and since she is spending so much time at her internship her relationship with Josh gets strained. In one crossover they find out that the artifact has human DNA on it and it turns out to be Blaire's The whole crossing over gets worst near the end of the book where Dr. Charles Donavan takes Blaire's father's dairy and tries to hide or run from Blaire and Damian after his daughter Amy goes missing in a reflection and later is found dead.  Charles takes them on a wild goose chase through many different mirrors going down a level each time, which is called nesting and creates something called recursions. Damian and Blaire are following the path of Charles and soon they start getting sick and then Damian does not make it and he tells Blaire to keep going and find the source and bury him in it. She soon finds Charles and he is dead and then she finds the artifact and remembers what happened. When she was four years old she did her first crossover through a mirror at a shoe store so Blaire was the only thing that did not belong in this world she was in a reflection all her childhood and did not know it.

Once she is back in her source world she does bury Damian and goes to find Dr. Donavan but of course, no one in this world knows her as a 16-year-old girl since she been gone all this time and she does not know what to do. Charles tells her that he never started his company and that he does not crossover anymore. She got a note from Damian that she found when she buried him saying go home. When she got to her house there was Damian under the hood she walked toward him and when he looked up he ran to her and they kissed. She was confused because she thought he would not know who she is, but since he has the overlap he remembers everything that Blaire and his reflections did. Blaire enrolled in her old school she knew the kids but they did not know her so they got there happy ending through all the trouble and turmoil Blaire had to deal with she survived and found her way back to the source. 

So all in all I really enjoyed this book the character was well developed, the plotline was fleshed out good, great research on the whole chromosome/ breaking symmetry concept. Also, the ending was not predictable I would not even fathom a real guess that Blaire was in a reflection had some clues that pointed to it once I finished the book but did not give to much thought while reading it. 

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does Dr. Donavan send Blaire and Damian on a wild goose chase through the mirror?

2. Was there any kind of hints that would reveal the true ending?

3. Could a person really Break Symmetry and go through a mirror?

4. What is the hardest thing for Blaire had to do?