The Mirror In My Dorm Room by Lashonda Beauregard is an epic tale about time travel.

To begin with, I paralleled Justina almost perfectly when reading this book! I am a marketing student, heading into sophomore year and I am definitely ready to start a new semester! That being said, some of the comments about college are definitely true - you need your ID (it's essential), some semesters are harder than others, the information about work studies, and sometimes the older dorms are the prettiest (in style).

This book felt like it was written by a college student, which was a nice touch. I'm not sure if it was intended to read like that, but it worked.

The time travel part of this story was a fun twist to the usually typical college story. It had a similar vibe to Alice Through the Looking Glass mixed with a confused identity. Justina, a college student in current day, is now Laurice in the 1930s when she steps through the mirror in her dorm room.

I felt like this story had a lot of potential and is heading towards the right direction. At times, the story came to a full stop at a break in the chapter, which threw the flow off for me. Some of the small drama scenes could have been extended with a little more action or conversation to assist in the ease of the story's flow. I also wondered how Justina knew managers and famous singers of the 1930s when she had just traveled back through time. She didn't seem to have the memories of Laurice and was very confused, only to know things pages later that she hadn't been aware of moments earlier. It was a little strange.

There's also times where certain comments are explained more than once in the same page - Rayla is a Nursing major and is taking biology. They see her a lot in biology because she's a Nursing major, and Nursing majors have biology. This happened with quite a few characters, not just solely Rayla. My biggest pet peeve was a sentence about Roger where chemistry was mentioned three times without the full stop. At times, it felt like the comments were purposely used for comedy, but they happened so often it just seemed to be Lashonda's writing style.

With a little more description (like how Justina's cute, little pink dress looked) I think this book would really blossom into a truly magnificent piece of writing. Even a little more background on what happened to Justina as Laurice near the end instead of a sudden stop! The ending was getting so good and I was so excited to read what happened, and it was just a quick summary!

For my cons, there were some sentences I would have fixed up. For example, lots of repetition and comments ending in "said", starting multiple sentences in a row with the same word, some grammatical errors in word choice and very short 3 word sentences. The only reason I notice these things is because I had two back to back English classes these past semesters in college. Most people probably wouldn't catch on, but it's noticeable on my end.

Overall, Lashonda Beauregard has a specific writing style that wasn't meant for me. The book is really cute, lots of fun and a nice take on time travel! I definitely recommend this novel to those who like science fiction and time travel stories!

Two out of five stars.

I received a free copy of this novella from the author Lashondra Beauregard in exchange for an honest review. ( )

This is a short review of a short novella, which follows in the worn tracks of that belief of the ancient Celts that on the other side of a reflective sheet of water lies a magical realm. The variation here is that the water is a mirror and the other side isn’t magical or mythical, just the same world of reality as us but at an earlier time (1930s). The author writes “30’s”, which is really annoying to pedants like me. I should also mention she puts on her massacre (mascara) at one point and there's also a mistake in the last line (Haywoods). As said, this is supposed to be real history, as opposed to Alice Through the Looking Glass, which was all dream consciousness. There’s quite a lot about dresses and makeup in this story too, but no tea parties or hats, thank heavens. Both the scenes of present and past are in America, from the days of saloons run by the mob to more contemporary college dorms and fraternities.

This is a rounded story, interesting enough, a writing exercise about what it would be like to step into the shoes of someone living in the past (and right the wrongs) but I found a lot of things which I didn’t get on with. Repetitive sentences like this didn’t help: “I made it to the mirror and to my surprise I was able to go back through the mirror”. This isn’t the only example of a sentence distracting from the flow. It also focusses on the very small scale, fiddling with one person’s life. If you had a portal with this scope, carte blanche access to amend the past, why not fix something huge that went wrong? Send the government a copy of the history of WWII or something. Tell them not to bother with Betamax. You could even fast forward civilisation by delivering a laptop in 1930, then go back to your own time and see if it’s better or just dystopian, then have the option of returning to 1930 to confiscate it and restore the earlier version of history – two cracks of the whip and choose the best one. I agree it’s not fair to talk about something that’s not in a book but the point I’m making is that the author chose to confine their imagination to the small scale. What a responsible time traveller they must be.

This is a short piece, so a lot of questions are inevitably left unanswered. Here are a few of mine: Who had the mirror before her? When she travels across and inhabits an entertainer’s body, where does that person go? Why don’t they enter her body and see her time, like a body swap? Are they aware of her presence, especially as she testifies in a case as them – would they have any memory of this or not think it was strange? Why wasn’t she put on the spot, invited up on stage and asked to sing something? Who made the mirror? Who had the mirror before her in the dorm room and why didn’t they take it with them? Why didn’t they try to enrich themselves with it? How does it work (physically), or is it just down to magic? Why does 1 day later in our time correspond to 1 day later in their time? Has she ever considered inviting someone to study the mirror? If she really wanted to be sure the past was locked and history couldn’t be re-written as worse, she could always smash it. ( )