When You Reach Me

Incredibly well-constructed. I always get really confused with time-travel plotlines, but this actually made perfect sense to me. I figured out who was doing the traveling pretty early on, but since I'm probably twice the age of the target audience, I shouldn't be too proud of that. Loved it, love all the Wrinkle in Time references, and yeah.

This would be classified as a young adult book - most of the cast of characters are in the 6th or 7th grade - but I recommend it for all age readers. All of the characters are interesting, and she builds a carefully planned and crafted story for the reader. I make it a habit to avoid reading the plot summaries on front cover flaps. I did not read this one and the plot delightfully unfolded as I read. Therefore, I will not indulge in any commentary on the plot. It's just a great little book, about 230 pages of slightly large and well-spaced type, that was a perfect Sunday read.

The author states that this book was inspired by A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle.

This was so perfectly comfortable. I read it in one sitting, when I was post-call from a shift at work and it was the perfect book for my semi-sleep deprived brain to read while curled up on the couch.

There are some books that are terrific because they're profound, or the writing is beautiful or the plot is breathtaking. This isn't one of those books. This book is terrific because it's essentially the platonic ideal of a young adult speculative fiction novel. The writing is approachable by the young reader, tight with nothing extra. The story is both fun and underlined by a coming of age theme. None of it is new, but Stead does it so perfectly and with her own witty twist that I didn't really mind. Her depiction of the transformation from mean middle schooler into young adult with insight into human imperfections could have easily veered into moralizing, but it was so on the nose with the depiction that one can't really complain.

Pure fun.