Waking in Time

Gr 9 Up—Stanton delivers a delightful time-travel romance in this tale of Abbi and Will, two Midwestern college students hurtling through the 20th century in opposite directions. The novel begins with Abbi's first night of college in Madison, WI, during which she's transported from the present to 1983 in the first of many jumps that will eventually take her all the way to 1930. Along the way, she gets a glimpse of Madison in multiple decades, taking readers on a tour of 20th-century youth culture: fashion, music, manners, dating rituals, and women's rights all play a role in the storytelling. Abbi's observations of the university campus reflect changes in the physical and cultural landscapes. As with all good time-travel stories, recurring characters provide essential clues. Here, they are a professor who has been working on Abbi's case since long before she initiated her travel, and a boy, Will, whom she meets for the first time after he's already loved her for decades. The entire adventure centers on the mystery of Abbi's grandmother's life in Madison as a young woman and her dying request that Abbi "find the baby." Tumbling through time on opposite trajectories, Abbi and Will somehow manage to work together to solve a mystery and discover the truth about Abbi's family history. The romance is believable, the time-travel mechanism is complex, and the ending, while perhaps a little too neatly wrapped up, is still quite satisfying.