54 pages • 1 hour read
Holly SmaleCassandra in Reverse
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 23-29Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 23 Summary
Cassie returns home in the morning to find a nearly naked Derek. While she tries to avoid a conversation at first, she remembers that she needs to avoid being unfriendly, but also not be too friendly, to avoid sending “things spinning off in the wrong direction again” (207). She tells Derek a few details about Will. When he begins to flirt with her, though, Cassie decides she’s unprepared for this “whole thread” and time travels again to avoid it.
Chapter 24 Summary
At work, Cassie is very moved when Sophie offers to make all the phone calls to journalists for the SharkSkin campaign, a task that causes Cassie to fall apart with anxiety. She arranges to meet Will for his friend’s photography exhibition, initially confused because that date didn’t happen in the first timeline, and departs after asking Sophie to take a message from the person who’s just called for her (who turns out to be Artemis).
Chapter 25 Summary
Cassie arrives early to the exhibition and is surprised to find that Will, whom she assumed was late, is already there and is talking to Artemis, who introduces herself as Diana, Cassie’s first flatmate. They argue, with Artemis accusing Cassie of living in black and white and compartmentalizing people and Cassie accusing her of pathological lying. While Cassie can see that the apology is genuine, she doesn’t “like who I become around her” or rather “being reminded of who I really am” (228), so she decides to rewind time. She tells Will she’s stuck at the office and goes home instead of to the exhibit.
Chapter 26 Summary
Having gone home to comfort herself with repetition and familiarity, Cassie is surprised to be awoken by a drunk Derek knocking on her door. He investigates her possessions and tells her that Sal has asked him to check on her, since she’s enigmatic. He says that she’s “kind of childish, but also a granny” (234), and that he’s trying to puzzle her out. He comes on to her again, thinking she’d be “a bit of a surprise in the old bedroom department […] smiley-sticker sex” (234), but tells her he’s being friendly, not predatory, and that he knows she has a crush on him. She tells him clearly that there has been a miscommunication, but he doesn’t seem to register her rejection. She considers going back to avoid opening the door but decides the process is exhausting her, and she closes the door on him instead.
Chapter 27 Summary
Cassie wakes up with the sense that there’s a “puncture” in time and texts Will exactly as she did in the first timeline. This time, he’s terse, and she desperately continues the conversation, finally confirming a date for Friday later that evening. She hears a squeaking sound and goes to investigate, hesitant to intervene when she realizes it’s Sal crying. Sal expresses feeling lost and that Derek has accused her of taking it out on him. Motivated by empathy, Cassie tells her about what will happen in 13 days: She’ll tell Sal that Derek is hitting on her, but he’ll deny it and Sal will ask Cassie to move out. She admits she’s a time traveler, but then rewinds the conversation prior to this revelation and instead tells Sal to trust her gut.
Chapter 28 Summary
Cassie is upset to find that Will has planned for them to go to a pop-up near her flat for their date: “Just an Oeuf,” the predecessor to “If It Ain’t Baroque.” While she tries to convince herself she’s overthinking it, Will announces that he’s been offered a two-week assignment to film vaquitas in Mexico, and Cassie realizes that she “rewound time four months, exhausted myself trying to make this relationship work, and instead of improving the situation […] slammed my foot on the accelerator” (256), and that their breakup is thus imminent.
Chapter 29 Summary
Cassie says she wants to go home, and Will follows her out. She asks if he wants to go home with her, forgetting that in this timeline, it would be his first time at her flat, but he says yes. He asks about her color chart, and she shares a memory from early childhood associated with the color of green he asks about. After this he declares that he’s sorry, he didn’t quite understand her, and he thought she wasn’t interested in him. Cassie is open about how amazing she finds Will and that she just finds interaction overwhelming, but it transpires that he’s now met someone else.
Chapters 23-29 Analysis
In this section, Cassie begins to realize that her mode of time travel isn’t working as she wants it to. Smale emphasizes the theme of Inevitability As Opposed to the Ability to Determine One’s Fate consistently throughout this section; this theme is closely connected with situations in which time travel does effect change, but not the change Cassie expects. While “[t]ime is fragile; for every sweep of the broom, there are consequences” (263), her relationship with Will comes to the same conclusion it did previously, but three months earlier. In advance of this breakup, Cassie realizes she’s not sure what to undo and worries that if she goes “back to the beginning” (241), everything else she’s accomplished through time travel will “be simultaneously unwound” (241). Smale thus explores the question of whether the future can be changed—specifically, whether Cassie can, or should, make enough changes to overcome her incompatibility with Will, which she has not yet accepted. Though Cassie makes changes, some events of plot recur.
The sense of being unable to change important events parallels Cassie’s perspective on the inevitability of her estrangement from Artemis. When they meet at the photography exhibit, Cassie acknowledges that her sister is genuinely sorry, but that “what is done cannot be undone” (230). In contrast to Cassie’s active, paranormal attempts to change the recent past, she is still unwilling to enact non-magical change to her relationship with her sister. However, Cassie’s trajectory as a character does begin to move toward openness to change and self-acceptance. When Will is late for their date, she thinks: “I feel a sudden glistening thread of truth […] That I’m not sure a constantly later person and a person highly distressed by any form of lateness are necessarily a perfect love match” (251). This realization is particularly significant to Cassie’s character, since it represents her process toward accepting herself, including the parts of herself that she finds difficult, like her distress at lateness. Again, Smale emphasizes The Complexity and Importance of Human Connection by contrasting Cassie’s persistence in the relationship with Will with her rejection of her relationship with Artemis.
This section includes several iterations of the “thread” in which Derek hits on her, which becomes emblematic of the theme of Neurodiversity As Perceived by Self Versus Others. While SharkSkin’s owner, Jack, is offensive in his assessments of Cassie’s neurodivergence, Derek is the most malicious and persistent in his insistence in taking advantage of Cassie. Smale portrays Derek as a particularly negative example of a neurotypical character who not only refuses to account for Cassie’s way of being in the world, but also decides to exploit it. This section foreshadows later iterations of this scene, as well as Cassie’s character development: Each time Derek hits on her, she is less accepting of his untrue statements, like “I’m not a predator or anything” (235), and begins to trust herself more.
