This Strange and Familiar Place

June 1, 2013
The mystery deepens as time-traveling Lydia struggles to set right the past that she inadvertently altered--driving her beloved grandfather insane six years before her birth. Lydia knows the Montauk Project is no crazy conspiracy theory; her family's been victimized by it twice now. Worse, she doesn't know if she will ever see her beloved Wes, a Montauk "recruit," again. Readers won't be remotely surprised when he appears and whisks her back to 1989--the year her grandfather in this altered timeline was committed to Bellevue and then disappeared--so they can investigate and perhaps learn how to set history right. Oh, and kiss swooningly, of course. In 1989, Lydia poses as a recruit assigned to investigate, with Wes, a New York City politician who--gasp--has some connection to her grandfather. (How this top-secret, technologically advanced, hyper-regulated operation fails to notice the black sweatpants and hoodie she wears instead of standard-issue shiny black spandex is just one of the many details this novel hand-wavingly dismisses.) The plot juggles three elements: Lydia's quest to right her timeline; the Montauk Project's cruelly sinister exploitation of homeless children as time travelers; and Lydia and Wes' irritating pushmi-pullyu romance, in which either Lydia or Wes continually worries the other's undying love has suddenly died--a ham-handed contrivance that does not noticeably amp romantic tension. Guess what: There's another cliffhanger. Stay tuned. Or not. (Science fiction/romance. 12 & up)

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September 1, 2013

Gr 7-10-In this sequel to So Close to You (HarperCollins, 2012), Lydia Bentley has returned through the time machine to her home in 2012. But it is not the home that she remembers. Her trip to 1944 has altered the time line drastically, and Lydia is desperate to get her old life back. When Wes, the Montauk Project operative who helped her return home, appears one night, Lydia is only too willing to travel with him through time again. Their new mission takes them to 1989, hoping to reverse Lydia's grandfather's disappearance, uncover the truth about the Project, and extract Wes from it permanently. However, time travel proves to be much more complex than that. As more facts surface, the possibility of escaping the Project becomes slimmer and slimmer. This Strange and Familiar Place starts out cautiously but slowly rises to a heart-pounding finish. Carter's characters are again complete and engaging. Readers of the series will anxiously await the conclusion of the trilogy and the resolution of Wes and Lydia's stormy romance.-Sara Saxton, Tuzzy Consortium Library, Barrow, AK

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