I love books that play around with the concept of time. There are so many options for conflict and drama. See how all your potential life paths could have played out? Conflict. Meet your younger self? Drama. Have only a few days to find out why you’re getting flashes of the future and figure out how to save the boy you love? Conflict. Fall in love with a boy from another time period? Drama.
There are so many possibilities, and I love them all. Here are ten books that play around with my favorite trope – time.
The Midnight Library
About the Book
Midnight Library by Matt Haig
Genre: Literary Fiction
Book Review
This one deserves all the hype! I loved it just as much as I expected to.
After a series of failures and regrets, Nora doesn’t want to live anymore. But instead of dying, she finds herself in the Midnight Library, where she gets to see all her “what ifs.” What if she hadn’t quit competitive swimming? What if she’d stayed in the band? What if she’d never let her cat roam around outside? The librarian tells her she needs to find a life where she’s happy enough to stay.
As someone who likes to daydream about my own “what ifs,” this book was intriguing. I’m pretty happy in my life, but what if there were a life out there where I was richer? Better looking? Happier? Nora gets to play around with all the possibilities, and one by one eliminate her regrets.
This is a book I will read again and again. It’s an instant top-ten of all time favorite.
Mercury Boys
About the Book
Mercury Boys by Chandra Prasad
Genre: Young Adult Speculative
Book Review
Time travel to meet people by touching their photographs? Yes, please! This had a killer concept, but I felt it was a little slow at times.
After a messy divorce, Saskia and her dad move to a new town. She makes one new friend, Lila, who introduces her to a new type of photograph made with mercury – a daguerreotype. The girls eventually discover that by playing with mercury – yikes! – and then going to sleep holding the photographs, they can meet the men in them in their dreams. Each chooses a boyfriend from the past, and they bring three new friends into it – popular, smart Paige, cheerleader Adrienne and master manipulator and wild child Sara Beth.
I wish all of the relationships had a little more depth. I wanted more from the boyfriends in the past, especially Saskia’s pick, Cornelius.
The book was at its best when dealing with bullying and jealousy of teen girls and the ways they can easily create a secret world just for them. It gives a devastating portrait of the differences between toxic friendships and true friends.
Despite a few flaws, the concept kept me reading.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Meet Me in Another Life
About the Book
Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey
Genre: Science Fiction
Book Review
Thora and Santi share a meet-cute and a love of the stars, and then one of them dies tragically. But then they meet again in their next life, then again, and again, and again. Sometimes, they’re lovers. Other times, colleagues, friends, and once, he’s even her dad. Certain people repeat as well. In each life, they find a clocktower, where the time has frozen at a different point. Santi becomes obsessed with finding the pattern and meaning behind it, while Thora tries to live her perfect life.
This is an interesting take on past lives. It kept me intrigued all the way through to the surprising conclusion. A part of me wished they were star-crossed lovers in all the lives, but that’s not the story the author was trying to tell. This story has some beautiful musings on the meaning of life and the power of the choices we make.
Thank you to the publisher for the complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
About the Book
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by Victoria Schwab
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Book Review
A gorgeously-written, lush book about loneliness and the power to be seen.
Addie’s desperate to escape a dreary arranged marriage, so she makes a deal with the gods who answer after dark. Now she will live forever, but no one will ever remember her. A simple act of shutting a door is enough to make someone forget that Addie exists, and her only companionship is Luc, the paranormal being she made the deal with. Over the centuries, these enemies turn to lovers, then back to enemies. Addie seems fated to repeat this cycle forever, until, one day in a bookshop, she meets Henry, and he remembers her.
Thanks so Henry’s own ill-fated deal with Luc, the rules don’t seem to apply to him. But Luc doesn’t want to let Addie go so easily.
This book spanned centuries, moving around in Addie’s timeline in such a way to add the ultimate in suspense. Addie’s lived a million lives and met so many people as she tries to leave her mark on something, anything. Don’t let the huge page count turn you off. This book is nearly impossible to put down.
Again Again
About the Book
Again Again by E. Lockhart
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Book Review
This book dishes up high school romance with a dash of a whimsy and a bittersweet sense that nothing is permanent. After her brother’s drug addiction splits apart her family, Adelaide loses herself in a whirlwind romance with Mikey Double L, who dumps her right before the summer of their senior year. Adelaide is shattered.
Adelaide’s spending the summer working as a dog walker for teachers at her private school, trying to get her grades up after a semester where she didn’t have the emotional energy to even try and struggling to both feel lovable and to learn to love. But then she meets Jack at the dog park, and begins to think he might be everything she’s looking for.
This book pulls the reader into multiple universes, where each small choice Adelaide makes leads to a very different outcome. The style is lyrical and lilting with the prose sometimes lapsing into verse, mostly when Adelaide is having an emotional breakthrough. You’ll find yourself glued to the page as choices lead Adelaide to fall in love in different ways with different people. Maybe Adelaide will find love in an alternate universe or maybe she’ll find it in this one.
The dogs that Adelaide walks are characters in this book, and they are perfectly delightful. They have adorable names – how can you not love dogs named B-Cake, Rabbit, the Great God Pan, Voldemort and Ellabella? Each one has their own great personality, and we even get to peek into their thoughts from time to time. They added an extra layer of playfulness that I loved.
Adelaide’s a character you can root for again and again, and I loved how we got different glimpses of the supporting characters’ personalities in each universe. In the end, this is a story of how, when we open ourselves up to love, we also open ourselves up to pain, and we may not know what our perfect happy ending will look like until it happens.
Trigger warning: addiction
Thank you to the publisher for the complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Waking Romeo
About the Book
Waking Romeo by Kathryn Barker
Genre: Young Adult Speculative
Book Review
“(We’re) squatting in a world that was built in the past, and peaked there. Died there, even. And yet here we are playing house, pretending there’s a pulse.”
In this post-apocalyptic wasteland created by selfish humans, Romeo and Juliet’s romance is a matter of life and death, not just for them, but for the whole world.
Nearly everyone time-traveled to the future hoping for a better life, but they didn’t think about the fact that the future they dreamed of would be built on the ashes of the society they left to crumble. With no one left to fix things, the future kept getting bleaker and bleaker, and the travelers kept jumping further and further, hoping for a better tomorrow.
Romeo and Juliet live in a tiny community of non-travelers, and their ill-fated romance occurred before the start of the book. But this Romeo and Juliette haven’t died – at least, not yet. Now Juliette’s permanently disabled, and Romeo has been in a coma for two years.
Their paths cross with a small group of time-travelers called the Deadenders, people snatched from the brink of death to try to fix the timeline. They’ve been sent with one mission: wake up Romeo. But the threads of time keep getting more and more tangled, and their task is harder than they can possibly imagine.
The world the author has built is breathtakingly bleak and brutal, littered with crumbling buildings, malfunctioned time travel pods and the bones of unlucky time travelers. The survivors try to keep a sense of normalcy, but their world shrinks day by day and their food supplies from the past won’t last forever.
This book is action-packed and tightly paced, but this is not a book to skim. It takes careful attention to keep all the timelines and time-traveling jumps straight in your head.
Juliette’s a heroine to root for as she comes into her own and learns to be resilient in the face of the dangers thrust upon her. She finds a guide in Elliot, a member of the Deadenders about her age, and together, they set out to wake Romeo and set into motion all the events to come.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
You've Reached Sam
About the Book
You’ve Reached Sam by Dustin Thao
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Book Review
This book plays out the ultimate fantasy of everyone who’s lost someone: What if you could pick up the phone, and they could take your call? Julie’s lost her boyfriend, Sam, and all their shared plans of getting an apartment together after their high school graduation. Now Julie’s alone, drowning in an ocean of grief, until she calls Sam’s phone.
Their relationship is shared through flashbacks, Julie’s memories and her conversations with others about him. Sam seems pretty much perfect in Julie’s mind, which is probably how anyone would feel about someone they’re grieving.
Julie blames herself for the accident, and she’s falling apart. Seriously, this girl does not know how to grieve in a healthy way! From skipping his funeral to shutting out all of her friends, she’s a total wreck until her phone calls with Sam helps her find the strength to begin to move forward. It’s a slow-burn storyline, but heartfelt and emotional.
This is a heavy book, but ends on a hopeful note. It has a lot of valuable insight into living your life when you’re the one left behind.
Thank you to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the advance review copy of this book.
Where It All Lands
About the Book
Where It All Lands by Jennie Wexler
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary
Book Review
What if a single coin flip could change someone’s life? When new girl Stevie shows up on the first day, best friends Drew and Shane fall hard. But they’re determined that this won’t ruin their friendship, so they decide to flip a coin to see who gets to ask her out.
If you’ve ever wondered what would have happened if you had made a different choice, this is the book for you. Wexler takes us through both outcomes, one of which brings life and death consequences for someone within their circle. This has a perfect rhythm, as we flip back and forth from Shane, Drew and Stevie’s point of view. I loved how Wexler had the same events repeat in both timelines with very different consequences.
The characters are memorable and fun. Stevie’s more than just the new girl, she’s someone looking for affection from a distracted football coach dad and struggling with the impact of his decision to move for his job every few years. She’s a talented saxophone player who dreams of music school. Drew’s a football player who loves sci-fi and looks out for his geeky best friend. And Shane’s a geek with a heart of gold who wants a chance to break out of the friend zone with the girl of his dreams.
I fell in love with this story that intertwined chance, fate and teenage angst into one beautiful package.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the advance review copy of this book.
The Love That Split the World
About the Book
The Love That Split the World by Emily Henry
Genre: YA Time Travel
Book Review
Emily Henry’s well-known for her popular adult romances Beach Read and People We Meet On Vacation, but I think her true masterpiece is her debut, this beautiful, philosophical time-traveling story of first love. It’s a very different, less commercial style than her more famous books.
Natalie Cleary hasn’t seen one of the Others in three years, not since her EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy to help her process her adoption trauma. She was beginning to think her mother was right and the Others were imaginary, despite her best friend telling her that Grandmother, her main visitor, knows too much to be a figment of her imagination. Grandmother mostly appears to tell Natalie Native creation stories, until she reappears after a three-year absence to say, “You only have three months to save him.” Grandmother leaves Natalie with two clues, find Alice Chan and “the answer is in the stories.” The only problem is Natalie has no idea who she is talking about or what to do.
Natalie has to solve the mystery while dodging her ex-boyfriend, Matt, who is still in love with her, and a student body who decided to vote them “Most Likely to Get Married” despite the break-up. Then the world starts shifting in and out of focus, changing from the town Natalie knows and loves to a town that has the same people, but the details are different. The other version has a beautiful, football player pianist named Beau. As the shifts intensify, Natalie and Beau keep finding each other. But they disappear out of each other’s worlds at inopportune times.
Natalie’s determined to find answers, finding Dr. Alice Chan and enlisting her help to contact Grandmother, who Natalie is convinced can find a way for her and Beau to be together.
The Girl I Was
About the Book
The Girl I Was by Jeneva Rose
Genre: YA Time Travel
Book Review
This book is about what it takes to build a meaningful life: love and connections.
After she gets fired from her job and the love of her life dumps her, Alexis wakes up back in 2002, during her freshman year of college. After she gets over the shock, she discovers that her younger self is there too, running around partying and not going to class. Alexis decides she must have been sent back to fix college-age Lexi so their life ends up going a different direction.
I found the younger Lexi very difficult to like. She’s an entitled brat who hates the older Alexis for being more mature and for gaining weight. That made it harder to connect with the story.
The book had some humorous moments as Lexi tried to figure out how to send Alexis back, including a plunge in a muddy, stinky hot spring that looked like diarrhea. But the author’s writing is at its best when she dives into the grief Alexis feels when she sees departed members of her family again.
The ending of the book was sweet.
For more great reads, check out my fifteen favorite YA novels of 2021.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I get commissions for purchases made through links in this post.
