An interesting premise, let down by a distinct lack of substance both plot wise and with the characters. The book is clearly aimed towards the YA audience so I can overlook the endless talk about clothes, nail polish, ripped abs, brushing lips and ice hockey.

My main gripe with this book is the lack of suspense and urgency in the writing - it starts with a lot of promise as the protagonist tries to make sense of her situation. Then a few chapters in, the reader is basically handed the whole plot on a silver platter, told from another character's point of view. I found the shift in perspectives very distracting, almost lazy, the author choosing to use this third person's viewpoint to explain things rather than the let the reader unravel the mysteries through the eyes of the main character.

Instead, she goes continues about her daily life, oblivious and more concerned with making the hockey team than finding the cause or a solution to her predicament. Not only until the last pages does the plot and mystery pick up again, only to be left hanging for the next book.

I did enjoy the interactions between the characters, especially the solidarity between family members and her close friends but they ultimately lacked depth. ( )

Love this Indie author (not sure we can still call her that). These have the "love story" of Twilight with time travel thrown in. No vampires, clean romance. Young adult but I am 55 and love them! ( )

I was really looking forward to reading this book, given the number of rave reviews it was getting, but there is no way I could recommend it to anyone. There's a good idea there somewhere that shows promise, and I think given a few rewrites and some serious editing, this could morph into a seriously good book. But as it stands, Portal reads like a very rough first draft that's been committed to paper and pushed out as a finished product. The whole thing just doesn't mesh together well, and there are all kinds of holes and inconsistencies in the plot. The constant (constant!) brand-namedropping just grates and seems to serve no purpose whatsoever. It worked somehow in American Psycho, but here? Not so much. I know this book is the first part of a trilogy, but while reading it I got the impression that Rose herself didn't have the answers to my questions, and I have no desire to buy the second and third books in the series to figure out if the author finally worked out what she wanted from this book. ( )

Review to follow. ( )

In all honesty, about three quarters of the way into this book I was so confused as to what was going on primarily because I hadn't read the synopsis and therefore I was totally oblivious to the fact that it was a sci-fi-ish young adult book that dealt with alternate dimensions (that is what I get for purchasing a book on Amazon simply because it is 99 cents) and because I was so confused as to what was going on, I actually debated whether to just set the book aside and not finish it (which I rarely ever do). But I decided to stick it out and I can't pinpoint exactly when everything clicked for me, but it did and the book/ storyline became amazing.

The boys in this book are entirely swoon-worthy and I find it strange that I think so because they are all popular jock boys and usually those type of boys annoy the crud out of me (like Nash from Rachel Vincent's "Soul Screamers" series or Erik from the Cast's "House of Night" series). I think why I liked them so much was that we actually saw a range of emotions from them, they weren't super arrogant boys who looked down upon others, no, they were the type of boys who would do anything in their power to protect those they cared about.

I really like Arizona as a character, she was spunky and really stuck to her guns. I think that had we been introduced to "Barbie Arizona" I wouldn't have been able to deal with this book, but lucky we got the rough and tumble Arizona (and I didn't even mind all that much when she did have her infrequent "girlie" moments).

Now while I did love the book there were a few things that did bother me. Like the dialogue for instance. Typically I am not one to pick up on any iffy-ness things with the dialogue (usually I am too busy being swept off my feet by the male lead), but in this book there were a few sections of dialogue that made me want to pull my hair out, specifically when Ariele was telling Arizona about her theory as to why their lives were all messed up. This section seemed like I was reading an instruction manual or something, it seemed very robotic in a way (it was choppy and didn't flow well)- seriously, Ariele goes on for two pages explaining her theory without breaking whatsoever (I don't know how she could have talked for that length of time without taking a breath). And the name dropping. There was a ton of designer brand name dropping throughout this book, like "Here is that (insert designer's name here) clutch that you have been bugging mom about" or "I slid on my (insert name brand here) jeans on".

But all in all, I think that this is a great book and I am looking forward to reading the other books in the series! ( )