Paperquake (Time Travel Mysteries)

by Kathryn Reiss

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

2.5 stars

I bought this book from the Scholastic Book Fair when I was 9 and remember reading it and loving it as a kid... so there’s 20 years of nostalgia attached to this book. Unfortunately, it didn’t really age well for me. Rereading it at 29, I found there was a lot of dated references and I hated how shallow the characters were. The temporal time travel bit relies HEAVILY on suspension of disbelief. The writing style also felt a bit awkward - a little too old for MG, but definitely not mature enough for modern YA. Adding to the fact that the main character calls in a fake bomb threat and is ultimately called a hero for it in the newspaper (although this is 1998! So they couldn’t trace the call - drat!) I actually hesitate to even recommend it to an appropriately aged reader... don’t want kids to think that stealing things from museums to solve mysteries and calling in bomb threats because you had a bad dream/vision is okay... eek. So this one fell pretty far for me.
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Original Review: 4 Stars