Time After Time

January 1, 2014

Gr 8 Up-Readers familiar with Anna and Bennett's "long distance" relationship from Time Between Us (Disney-Hyperion, 2012) will enjoy following their story, this time through Bennett's eyes. Back in modern-day San Francisco, he tries to see Anna as often as possible in 1995 Evanston, IL, traveling across both space and time to do so. Things start to go wrong when Bennett loses control over his strange ability. After saving Anna's best friend from a car accident in the first book, he begins to change the past in order to avert other tragedies. He must grapple with the moral implications of his special gift and the increasingly intense headaches and bloody noses he experiences upon returning to his own time. Paying too much attention to the rules governing relativity and the space-time continuum may give readers headaches of their own, but the plot marches along at a good pace and those who like romance/adventure stories will want to find out if Anna and Bennett end up together. With the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who and movies like About Time (2013) at the box office, the time-travel theme gives this book plenty of pop-culture cachet.-Gesse Stark-Smith, Multnomah County Library, Portland, OR

Copyright 2014 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2013
Bennett mooches around his family's high-end San Francisco house in 2012, waiting for his girlfriend, Anna, to return to Evanston, Ill., from her summer in Mexico--in 1995. Bennett uses his amazing, inexplicable ability to travel through time to visit Anna in a series of trips that can't feel anything but futile. With 17 years between them, how can this romance survive? Anna's parents, ignorant of Bennett's abilities, become increasingly resentful of his seemingly cavalier treatment of their daughter. If he can't stick around, why doesn't he just leave her alone? And why does Anna put up with it? Meanwhile, in 2012, Bennett begins to use his talent the way his father always wanted him to: to correct senseless tragedies. Remarkably, he feels great after these interventions, not drained and afflicted by migraines the way he usually does after traveling back through time. Conversely, his returns from visits to Anna are becoming increasingly bloody and debilitating. Bennett serves as present-tense narrator of this sequel, describing his various agonies, physical and emotional, as he continues to pursue this hopeless relationship. Once again, Stone fails to provide readers with a solid understanding of Bennett's singular ability, seemingly changing the rules to suit her plot and characters--up to and including an apparently impossible resolution. There's romantic angst aplenty but little else to keep readers invested in either story or characters. (Fantasy. 12-16)

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