SOLVED. YA trilogy mystery with time travel and parallel universe elements but doesn’t have a classic sci-fi feel? Read around 2013 and focuses on a boy who lost his mother and a parallel version of him who’s a girl who didn’t lose her mother. [s]

[Ray]

I read the first two books in high school and it was a trilogy that I never read the 3rd book for. I think this was around 2013. I got the book from a library in Ontario, Canada. The book was a recommendation from a librarian after I requested a YA book that has cool modern time travel or parallel universe elements to it. The book was in English.

I remember that there were two perspectives the book was told from, starting with a boy. He was somewhere in his teenage years? I think mid-teens? The boy moved into this house with his dad and his dads girlfriend (might have been his dads fiance or new wife) that the boy deemed to be a bad person that he really didn’t like. He missed and loved his mom dearly.

He found a small statue of a tree at one point which would trigger a power that brought him to another parallel universe where his mother was alive and there was a girl living his life instead.
**Spoiler**


He found out that there were 4 parallel universes closely connected? Created by a 50/50 method. So if a decision was 50/50 (Like his mom dyeing or the main character being born a boy or a girl) there might just be a divergence created instead where both outcomes happened in parallel.

I remember at the end of the first book the small statue of the tree broke and the girl and boy versions of each other got stuck in the other persons parallel world.

At the start of the next book the girl said that the woman her dad married in the boys universe was actually really kind but she missed her own mother of course.

The girl version was definitely more mature than the boy version.

I’m pretty sure in the book they started communicating again through a hole in the tree that they’d leave letters in there for each other. There was also an older male relative (uncle? Dads uncle?) who could walk through all 4 parallel worlds (and was called crazy for it I think??).

I’m pretty sure the older male character that could walk through the parallel universes was in a coma for decades?

At the later half of the 2nd novel I know the boy went back in time? I think to stop the young version of the man who can walk through parallel worlds from going into a coma. He kept trying and succeeded on his last attempt but ended up killing himself by mistake (I think he fell out of a tree and got strangled by a plastic bag he brought to the past)

When he was dying he remembered seeing his mom crying on a bed (in the first book I think?) and at the time he hadn’t understood since she was the one that had died. And now in his last moments he realized that it was him that had died and that the magic here was very much time travel and parallel dimension connected.

The 2nd book ended with him dead so I didn’t want to read the 3rd at the time. By the time I was ready to read the 3rd about 6 months later, I couldn’t remember the name. I haven’t been able to finish the trilogy and now it’s been haunting me for 9 years so any help finding the trilogy would be appreciated!!!

[Becca]

A Crack in the Line by Michael Lawrence, the Aldous Lexicon trilogy?

[Ray]

Becca wrote: "A Crack in the Line by Michael Lawrence, the Aldous Lexicon trilogy?"

Yeah! That's it! Thank you so much!!!