Throwback

YA fiction

     If you are a fan of teen goes back in time and meets their teenage parent narratives (like I am) you're really going to want to get your hands on Maurene Goo's Throwback.  It combines a suspenseful plot with real character insight and a romance you'll be rooting for.

     Sam finds herself often clashing with her mother, Priscilla.  She feels that she can't ever live up to her Mom's academic and social expectations.  It doesn't help that older brother Julian is the whiz kid genius now enrolled in Yale.

     Her grandmother, Halmoni, is the family member Sam feels really gets her.  She is devastated when Halmoni is hospitalized in a coma after suffering a severe heart attack.  There's no guarantee she'll pull through.  When the next day Sam's mother offers to let her play hooky to buy her a homecoming dress, which she doesn't even want, she explodes.  They have a big fight.  Her mom tells her to find her own way to school.

     The Throwback (rideshare app) driver is very strange.  The destination driver Marge takes her to is even stranger.  It's her high school all right, only in 1995.  And guess who's running for homecoming queen.

     The only way Sam can get back to her own time is to help Priscilla win homecoming queen.  But Priscilla's classmates and a Halmoni very different from the one she knows and loves are going to make this quite the challenge.

     I found this book very hard to put down for even a few minutes.  I suspect you will too.

On a purrrsonal note, I found myself pondering what insights my kids would have gained if as teens they'd been able to violate the laws of physics and visit my teen years which were about the worst years of my life with a severely brain damaged sister, parents who fought constantly, and pressure to be an adult, the invisible daughter who never gave anyone a moment of trouble.  I think it would have helped them realize why I'm so gregarious and flamboyant as I am today because they would have seen me fighting so hard just to be a teen and to be myself and to be seen.

Jules Hathaway 

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