It Wasn't Always Like This

February 8, 2016
Immortality with the boy you love sounds dreamy, but it’s a nightmare in Preble’s (Finding Paris) intriguing if overplotted thriller. It’s 1913, and 17-year-olds Emma O’Neill and Charlie Ryan have been in love for years. Their happiness evaporates when a strange man persuades their families to drink his homebrewed anti-polio potion; while it wards off polio, it also prevents them from aging. After tragedy strikes, Emma and Charlie flee Florida to avoid the evangelical Church of Light, whose members believe that their immortality is a sign of the devil. In a move meant to be noble but that instead paints him as deeply unsympathetic, Charlie parts ways with Emma. In the present day, Emma becomes a private investigator, determined to find her lost love and the church members who are killing teenage girls in an attempt to draw her out. Preble’s memorable characters and unusual take on being forever young are mired in a tangle of unneeded story lines, including Charlie’s stint as a war pilot and the church’s dubious scheme to find Emma. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jennifer Rofé, Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

March 1, 2016
Nearly 100 years after accidentally drinking from the Fountain of Youth, perpetually 17-year-old Emma investigates a series of murders. Through flashbacks, readers learn how inadvertently drinking from the Fountain of Youth in 1916 eventually led to the tragic murders of Emma's and Charlie's families, both white, at the hands of the congregation of the Church of Light. While the two flee for their lives, Charlie decides separation is the safer choice and deliberately breaks Emma's heart to convince her to leave him. Both soon regret the decision, but without a plan or modern modes of communication, they are unable to reunite. Flash-forward to present-day Dallas, where Emma, still searching for Charlie, finds herself also investigating a string of murdered girls who she believes are also victims of the Church of Light. After a neighboring girl is kidnapped, Emma hopes to rescue her by using herself as bait--a decision that ultimately leads to revelations about the day when she and Charlie gained their eternal youth. Interspersed throughout Emma's mystery story are chapters dedicated to recounting how Charlie has spent his life; these effectively capture the loneliness, isolation, and even regret that accompanies the secrecy required by eternal youth. The novel's resolution is awfully quick, but the storylines' convergence is largely satisfying. A modern Tuck Everlasting with a thriller twist: fun, in spite of its improbabilities. (Paranormal mystery. 12-16)

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April 1, 2016

Gr 8 Up-Seventeen-year-olds Emma O'Neill and Charlie Ryan are immortal and in love forever. In 1913, they and all their family members, living together to jointly run a Florida nature museum, were tricked by a huckster into drinking a tealike potion concocted from the plants and waters of the elusive "fountain of youth," believing they were receiving a potential vaccine against polio instead. Eventually, when the fanatical leader of the local cultish Church of Light realizes that no one in either family is aging, even Emma's toddler brother, he declares them evil and burns their buildings to the ground. Only Emma and Charlie escape and hence survive, since burning is one method of killing immortals. After splitting up for safety, they elude resolute Church descendants through the decades until the present. Emma, who becomes a private investigator, follows trails of murder victims who look disturbingly like herself and Charlie. Charlie goes to war and adopts several identities. All the while, both try desperately to reconnect with the other. Told in third person with chapters set in decades past and present, the story holds convincing characters, a captivating plot with some twists, an aura of time travel, and an array of vivid settings that make it easy to suspend disbelief and accept the slightly pat yet satisfying ending. VERDICT Teens who relished the classic Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt will revel in this tale with a related premise for older readers.-Diane P. Tuccillo, Poudre River Public Library District, CO

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016
Grades 9-12 Emma O'Neill has been 17 for nearly a century, thanks to the immortality potion she and her boyfriend, Charlie Ryan, and their families drank one night. When a fanatical religious group convinced that immortality is an abomination traps the O'Neills and Ryans in a building and burn it to the ground, Emma and Charlie manage to escape, but they're separated in the aftermath. Over the next 100 years, Emma searches for Charlie and hones her PI skills, which come in handy when those fanatics' followers murder a string of girls who look just like her. When one abduction hits close to home, cynical Emma uses it as an opportunity to track down the killers in the act. Preble adeptly weaves together snippets of Emma's past and present, gradually outlining her transformation from an optimistic, winsome teen to a hardened, lone-wolf type, albeit one whose heart still flutters for a certain eternal boy. The investigation is the heart of the story, but teens will be equally charmed by Emma's noir-inflected narrative and her decades-long romance.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)