All Our Yesterdays

September 30, 2013
Terrill debuts with a thrilling blend of time-travel adventure and teenage drama, first in a planned duology. When Em and Finn make a daring escape from prison, they use a time machine to journey four years into the past in order to assassinate the man who made temporal jumps possible and turned their world into a totalitarian dystopia. In the past, 17-year-old Marina is focused on her crush on her best friend James until his older brother, a politician, is shot. Soon Marina, James, and their friend Finn are on the run to discover who's behind the attack, while Em and the older Finn stalk their true target: James. Timelines collide, with both the present and the future in jeopardy. Terrill plays with time-travel paradoxes and the idea of destiny as her characters meet, interact, and reconvene at different stages in their lives and in surprising ways, leading to an unexpected climax. Occasional plot wrinkles and confusion surrounding the mechanics of time travel are minor blemishes in an otherwise tense and gripping narrative. Ages 12âup. Agent: Diana Fox, Fox Literary.