Resonance

 Resonance by A.J. Scudiere

Dr. Rebecca Sorenson, biologist, has discovered 6-legged frogs near her family's home, and she's hearing reports of bees hovering in column formation and birds leaving their normal migratory patterns. Dr. David Carter, geologist, is seeing changes in the geology of the rocks he's digging up. Drs. Jordan Abellard and Jillian Brookwood of the CDC are investigating the rising number of cases of people dying only a few hours after complaining of stomach distress or ear pain. And all of these things appear to be happening in hotspots where magnetic polarity has begun to reverse, hotspots that are quickly expanding. The earth seems headed toward a total polar reversal with unimaginable consequences for all living things. 

There's a great build-up to the shift happening as the scientists share their findings, suggest explanations, and face the terrifying reality of what is about to happen. It's tense and exciting and then, suddenly, the shift has happened and focus switches from what could happen to figuring out what has happened and how to live now. Half the population is dead, but a few keep slipping in and out of consciousness. Every time they go "under", their vital stats drop dangerously low, but when they wake up, they clearly remember living in a different reality while unconscious in this one. 

I found it confusing when a character was dead on one page and on the next was having a conversation about other dead people who weren't dead at all in the last chapter. But just before it got annoying the explanation came, bringing a whole new set of questions with it. Earth...or maybe time...split when the poles reversed creating two different earth's or realities. While under in one they are awake in the other, but this is only true for a few people; the rest are alive in one and dead in the other, or dead in both. The determining factors for who ended up in each world become a matter of much speculation. More complications arise when two of them choose to stay in one particular reality and then have to figure out how to get rid of themselves in the other one. 

I'm sure I have you completely confused but, truly, you should read the book, which is much better written than this attempt at a summary and will make it all clear to you. Well, most of it. I thought it fizzled out a little at the end and left a lot of unanswered questions, but then half the fun of sci-fi is being left with inexplainable things to think about for days. This page-turner was that nerdy kind of fun.