Genre: YA Contemporary
Description (taken from Beth Revis' website):
Can Bo live in a world without Sofia?
Bo cannot imagine a world without his girlfriend Sofia. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to. Even though he accidentally got her stuck in the past, he’s attending an elite school for kids with powers that should help him gain better control of his time traveling abilities and save her. Although the appearance of some nosy government officials at the secret school may cause some problems…
Phoebe can all too easily imagine a world without her brother Bo. Without him, her mother wouldn’t retreat into herself with worry. Her father wouldn’t lock himself away and pretend like Bo doesn’t have a problem. And she would have a chance to be a normal girl, not the sister to a boy whose paranoid delusions make him think that he has super powers and can travel through time.
As Phoebe learns to speak her heart in a family that uses silence to ignore its problems, Bo must face the fact that if his super powers aren’t real, neither are his chances to save Sofia.
Bo goes to a school for gifted kids. They all have super powers, and he's accidentally left Sofia hundreds of years in the past. But the story starts with her funeral, and Bo can't figure out why everyone's acting as if she's truly gone. Do they not have enough faith in his powers to go back in time and save her? Because he's going to save her.
Phoebe is Bo's younger sister who has had to live in his shadow. Where he gets the attention and the treatment for his needs, she's expected to be the perfect child. She's getting the grades, setting herself up for college, and living her parents' dreams. However just once, she wants to be able to let go and live a life of uncertainty like Bo can. She doesn't want the responsibility of being the perfect child living in silence anymore.
This book was very slow going for me, and I had a very hard time being in Bo's mind. It was hard and mind-boggling. I don't know how Beth Revis was able to write his character. It isn't hard for me to say I related to the sister. I was one of those 'perfect' kids trying to live the 'perfect' life. And no matter what kinds of issues you might be dealing with, you're always going to feel overshadowed by your siblings. I was the same way with my brother and then later on with my much younger siblings. But this story dealt more with mental issues and how everyone affected tried to deal. And it does point out things broken. And your heart slowly begins to melt as Bo tries to piece together what happened to Sofia. It's just a sad one for me that was hard for me to deal with.
These contemporary books are the reason I dislike contemporary but at the same time have to read one every once in a good while just because they're good. And they face those unpleasant issues that we have a tendency to bury as fast as possible.
