"Midnight on New Year's Eve is a unique kind of magic where, just for a moment, the past and the future exist at once in the present."
— Hillary DePiano
Time is a fascinating concept. Not for nothing is it the most frequently used noun in the English language. It defines our lives, giving structure to the passing days, but it's also hard to pin down. Two people can live through the same hour in the same place at the same time and experience it very differently.
The one constant in the way we perceive time is that it flows forward. The past is done. The future hasn't happened yet. And yet, living in the present moment is kind of impossible! In our heads, we time travel constantly, because remembering the past and planning for the future shapes who we are.
Unfortunately, we can't actually travel in time. But fictional characters certainly can. And with another New Year fast approaching, it feels like the perfect time(!) to read three YA books that explore the concept of time travel ⌛📚
Thank you very much for visiting my blog today! I wish you a Happy New Year and happy reading too 🎉🎆
Tagline: Time is power. Love is a revolution.
Description: Margo is a troubled schoolgirl. After the death of her father, she’s on her way to a new boarding school in a new city.
Moon is a salesman. He makes his living traveling through a series of interconnected worlds on a network of barely used train lines.
They never should have met. But when Margo suddenly appears one day on Moon’s train, their fates become inextricably linked. If Margo wants to survive, she has to pass as a traveling salesman, too—except it’s not that easy.
Move north on the train line and time speeds up, a day passing in mere hours. Move south and time slows down—a day can last several weeks. Slow worlds are the richest ones: you live longer, your youth lasting decades. Fast worlds are sharp, cruel, and don’t have time for pleasantries. Death is frequent. Salesmen die young of skipshock. That is, if they’re not shot down by the Southern Guard first.
As Margo moves between worlds and her attachment to Moon intensifies, she feels her youth start to slip between her fingers. But is Moon everything he seems? Is Margo?
Told through the eyes of both naive Margo and desperate Moon, the unforgettable realm of Skipshock will shake the way you think about love, time, and the fabric of the universe.
It's no secret that I love portal stories, and this one is so clever! Margo and Moon are brilliant and complicated protagonists, and I was rooting for both of them equally (which left me quite conflicted at some points in the story).
So, what exactly is skipshock? I'll let Moon explain...
"You're having a little skipshock, that's all. It will pass. You've come from a place with twenty-four hours in the day, right? Now you have a quarter of that. Your body is confused by the days passing in a different way. The light is changing too rapidly for your brain to keep up with it. Your body is ageing at four times the speed. I promise you, you won't feel it after a few days."
I guess it's like an extreme version of jetlag, but with symptoms that gradually worsen until they eventually become deadly. The worldbuilding in this book is incredible. There are so many layers. All of the places we visit with Margo and Moon are memorable (and dangerous) in unique ways.
Fair warning, it all ends on a massive cliffhanger, so I'm really hoping the second book will come out in 2026. In the meantime, I'm grateful for every single one of the twenty-four hours in my day!
Tagline: Kill the past to save your future.
Description: Em is locked in a bare, cold cell with no comforts. Finn is in the cell next door. The Doctor is keeping them there until they tell him what he wants to know. Trouble is, what he wants to know hasn't happened yet.
Em and Finn have a shared past, but no future unless they can find a way out. The present is torture—being kept apart, overhearing each other's anguish as the Doctor relentlessly seeks answers. There's no way back from here, to what they used to be, the world they used to know.
Then Em finds a note in her cell which changes everything. It's from her future self and contains some simple but very clear instructions. Em must travel back in time to avert a tragedy that's about to unfold. Worse, she has to pursue and kill the boy she loves to change the future . . .
This book had me on the edge of my seat, and I was literally holding my breath at certain moments near the end of the story. I got so invested in the outcome. Although there was only one way for Em and Finn to succeed, and the inevitability of their timeline was explained with devastating clarity, all of the twists and turns meant I could never be sure what would happen next.
Here's part of a conversation between Em and the Doctor.
He looks down at me, and he actually looks sad. "Please. They'll hurt you."
I stare back at him. "And you'll let them."
He turns away. "Sometimes you have to hurt someone you love for the greater good."
"Why do you get to decide what the greater good is?" I say. "These are people you're talking about, not just numbers in one of your equations. Don't you get that? Did you ever?"
There's a lot more to the backstories of Em, Finn, and the Doctor than first meets the eye, and the relationships between them really kept me guessing. I don't suffer from book hangovers too often, but it took me several days to move on from the emotional rollercoaster of this story!
Tagline: A swoony time-travel rom-com that captures the overwhelming nature of first love.
Description: Barrett Bloom is hoping college will be a fresh start after a messy high school experience. But when school begins on September 21st, everything goes wrong. She’s humiliated by the know-it-all in her physics class, she botches her interview for the college paper, and at a party that night, she accidentally sets a frat on fire. She panics and flees, and when she realizes her roommate locked her out of their dorm, she falls asleep in the common room.
The next morning, Barrett’s perplexed to find herself back in her dorm room bed, no longer smelling of ashes and crushed dreams. It’s September 21st. Again. And after a confrontation with Miles, the guy from Physics 101, she learns she’s not alone—he’s been trapped for months.
When her attempts to fix her timeline fail, she agrees to work with Miles to find a way out. Soon they’re exploring the mysterious underbelly of the university and going on wild, romantic adventures. As they start falling for each other, they face the universe’s biggest unanswered question yet: what happens to their relationship if they finally make it to tomorrow?
This book was everything I hoped it would be—funny, smart, and relatable, with characters who really deserve a happy ending.
Although we only get Barrett's POV, she and Miles spend so much time together that there is plenty of insight into his thoughts and feelings too. They're both the perfect blend of awkward and real and likable, similar in some ways but very different in others. Being stuck together gives them the chance to decide what they really want (and figure out a few things from their pasts too).
Here are three quotes that give a bit of insight into Barrett, Miles, and their story.
"Maybe the sad truth of my life is that I don't fit anywhere, which only becomes brilliantly, painfully clear on those rare occasions I'm trying to force it."
— Barrett
"Miles treats smiles the way I do stickers and stationery—reluctant to part with them, as though they are precious things he has a finite number of."
— Barrett
"I could wake up on the same day a thousand times, and every single one would be different because of you. Every single one would be life-changing. Because of you."
— Miles
Nothing happens quickly. In the opening chapters, we can't imagine Barrett and Miles ever being together, and they share some genuinely hilarious moments as they adjust to the reality of their situation. Over time, they see beyond those first impressions to the hopes and dreams beneath. It's enough to melt the hardest of hearts!
No comments:
Post a Comment