The Space Between Here and Now

 Rating 4, liked the jarring mystery of this and as readers or listeners, we feel Aimee's desperation and fear.

My Thoughts:

Sensory Time Warp Syndrome is a condition where there is a synesthesia trigger, for Aimee, a smell, that causes her to disappear and time travel back into her own memory. She keeps wanting help but her father tells her that she will grow out of it. Instead, the time gets longer, alarmingly longer. I felt for her as her life is controlled by this fear of disappearing. When she fixes on the idea that her disappearances may be related to finding her mom who has disappeared, the story gets really interesting. 

I think what makes this work is the novelty of the story, but also the way this mystery is so irritatingly slow to unveil.  This came out a few years ago and I am surprised that it did not get more press. Besides being a unique story, the cover is very eye catching. 

As far as the audiobook, it is easy to listen to, easy to get caught up in, easy to finish.

From the Publisher:

Seventeen-year-old Aimee Roh has Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, a rare condition that causes her to time travel to a moment in her life when she smells something linked to that memory. Her dad is convinced she’ll simply grow out of it if she tries hard enough, but Aimee’s fear of vanishing at random has kept her from living a normal life.

When Aimee disappears for nine hours into a memory of her estranged mom—a moment Aimee has never remembered before—she becomes distraught. Not only was this her longest disappearance yet, but the memory doesn’t match up with the story of how her mom left—at least, not the version she’s always heard from her dad.

Desperate for answers, Aimee travels to Korea, where she unravels the mystery of her memories, the truth about her mother, and the reason she keeps returning to certain moments in her life. Along the way, she realizes she’ll need to reconcile her past in order to save her present.

Publication Information:

Author: Sarah Suk

Publisher: Quill Tree Books (October 31, 2023)

Print length: 317 pages

Reading age: 13 and up

Audiobook narrator: Joy Osmanski

Audio publisher: Harper Audio

Listening length: 7 hours 50 minutes

Text source: Hawaiʻi Public Library, Libby App

We Weren't Looking to Be Found

 

My Thoughts:

This book, told by two first person narrators, is a sliding glass door to mental health care, depression, addiction. When two teens end up in the same treatment facility in rural Georgia, they seem very different, but through their somewhat forced friendship, they come to realize that their self-destruction, one hidden, one not, cannot be ignored, blamed on others or bandaged over. 

The voices of the narrators, their destructive self talk and convoluted perspective (in other words, the rawness), may be triggering for YA readers who are facing the same types of situations. However, I hope that if this is a mirror for a reader, there will be hope. There is no real Hollywood ending to this book. That would be a waste of time. However, there is hope, if you want it. 

Teachers need to be careful about "diagnosing" a student by giving them this book, however, have it available for students who need to find it on their own. If it calls to them, it was meant to be. 

From the Publisher:

Dani comes from the richest, most famous Black family in Texas and has everything a girl could want. So why does she keep using drugs and engaging in other self-destructive behavior?

Camila’s Colombian American family doesn’t have much, but she knows exactly what she wants out of life and works her ass off to get it. So why does she keep failing, and why does she self-harm every time she does?

When Dani and Camila find themselves rooming together at Peach Tree Hills, a treatment facility in beautiful rural Georgia, they initially think they’ll never get along―and they’ll never get better. But then they find a mysterious music box filled with letters from a former resident of PTH, and together they set out to solve the mystery of who this girl was . . . and who she’s become. The investigation will bring them closer, and what they find at the end might just bring them hope.

Author: Stephanie Kuehn

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

Publication date: June 21, 2022

How to Become a Planet

 

My Thoughts:

Pluto Timoney rockets the reader into the black hole of depression and anxiety. The author refuses to let us breathe as the opening scene keeps literally pounding frantically to get to Pluto from the other side of the door.  I know that young readers will empathize with Pluto. That this is a powerful mirror, window and sliding glass door into mental health for readers that need this book is a given. 

For me as a teacher, though, the strength of the character writing put me in my feels and I could not erase my parental empathy with Pluto's parents. Whenever love is not enough as a parent, there is such an immense feeling of guilt and helplessness. I raised three kids that went through that black hole of adolescence and we all made it through fairly unscathed. However, this book just pushed me back in. 

The intentionality of the metaphor that threads through the book on "what is a planet" added to the character's  name and her connection to the new classification of Pluto being "not a planet" is a little too obvious in adult literature, but I think it really strengthens middle grade literature. This will be a great literature workshop pick for 7th grade. 

From the Publishers:

A Publishers Weekly Best Middle Grade Book of 2021
One of The Nerd Daily's “Anticipated Queer Book Releases You Can’t Miss in 2021”
One of Lambda Literary's “May’s Most Anticipated LGBTQ Literature”

The two most important things to know about Pluto Timoney:  (1) she’s always loved outer space (obviously); and (2) her favorite season is summer, the time to go to the boardwalk, visit the planetarium, and work in her mom’s pizzeria.

This summer, when Pluto’s turning thirteen, is different. Pluto has just been diagnosed with depression, and she feels like a black hole is sitting on her chest, making it hard to do anything. When Pluto’s dad threatens to make her move to the city—where he believes his money could help her get better—Pluto comes up with a plan to do whatever it takes to be her old self again. If she does everything that old, “normal” Pluto would do, she can stay with her mom. But it takes a new therapist, new tutor, and new (cute) friend with a plan of her own for Pluto to see that there is no old or new her. There’s just Pluto, discovering more about herself every day.