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Carolyn Cohagan began her writing career on the stage. She has performed stand-up and one-woman shows at festivals around the world from Adelaide to Edinburgh. Her first novel, The Lost Children (Simon & Schuster, 2010) is a middle grade fantasy which became part of the Scholastic Bookclub and was nominated for a Massachusetts Children’s Book Award. The first book in her YA trilogy, Time Zero (She Writes Press, 2016), won eight literary honors, including the 2017 Readers Favorite Award and the 2017 International Book Award. She is the founder of Kids With Pens, a creative writing organization in Austin dedicated to fostering the individual voices and offbeat imaginations of kids ages 8-15.
Reviewed by Romuald Dzemo for Readers' Favorite
Time's Up is book three in the Time Zero Trilogy by Carolyn J. Cohagan and a terrific conclusion to an intriguing dystopian story. Mina and Juda are forced to return back home to Manhattan and they don’t want to. They spend days trying to find a way out of it, but Ram won’t have any of it. They know they are wanted by the authorities and that Mrs. Asher is also looking for them after the death of her son. But there is something even more sinister: Ram has a dangerous technology and he’s ordered them to kill their Divine Leader, Uncle Ruho. Otherwise, Ram will bomb the Island. Mina has a very difficult choice to make: kill one man to save every other person she loves or find a way to kill her nemesis. Either way, it is a challenging and arduous task, and is she up for it?
I was pulled into Time's Up right from the first page. The dialogues open the narrative and they are amazing, unveiling layers of the characters slowly and introducing the conflict. The author knows the “showing” technique of storytelling and she uses it well to engage the reader. The premise is very strong and it is introduced immediately: Ruho claims to be a descendant of God and Ram thinks he is blasphemous and wants him taken out in order to trigger the Ascension. But the consequences of such an act are frightening. The tension starts building from the first page and grows more intense as the story progresses. Carolyn J. Cohagan’s characters are wonderfully written, multidimensional, and believable. There is so much to love in this story, from the strong plot, the beautiful prose, to the powerful characters. Time's Up doesn’t disappoint. A delightful read!
