How do you feel about the back and forth chronology?

[Evergreen Park]

The narration in this book jumps back and forth in time between characters and settings. How did this work for you as a reader? How would the story have been different if the story had moved chronologically?

[Anna]

I found it really frustrating in the beginning of the book, when I was still getting to know the characters, but by the middle and end of the story I thought it worked beautifully. It contributed to the feeling of these two separate worlds colliding and merging, if only for a moment, and then swinging out away from each other again, as if this apocalyptic war and the fates of these characters really did have something to do with this small blue stone. A chronological narration would have had less suspense, less mystery than the back of forth telling.