The In-Between, by Rebecca K. S. Ansari

Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for The In-Between (Walden Pond, January 26, 2021), by Rebecca K. S. Ansari, a deeply moving fantasy about being seen when you feel abandoned.

Cooper's father left his family three years ago, essentially abandoning them. And Cooper has felt lost ever since, distancing himself from his friends, doing only the minimum of what his mother asks, and interacting with his little sister, Jess, only when annoyed by her.  The creepy girl who's moved in next door, who won't stop staring at him as she sits on her swing for hours, is just the newest annoyance in his life.  

But when Jess shares a mystery with him, the creepy girl, Elena, becomes much more interesting.  The insignia on her private school uniform matches that worn by a boy killed in a train accident a hundred years ago, who was never identified.  And as the two of them search for the insignia online, they find it was worn by another unidentified child, lost to the tragedy of a more recent supermarket collapse in Korea. 

Cooper breaks from his pattern of distancing himself to befriend a new boy, Gus, who he and Jess introduce to their mystery.  Gus has family problems similar to Coopers; he's been sent to stay with his grandmother while his parents sort things out.  He is just the friend Cooper needs, providing an outlet for all the hurt Cooper has been keeping to himself.  And so for the first half or so of the book, the focus is on Cooper's real world life, with the creepy girl a background thread.

But then the kids find that they are the only ones to see the girl and her shiny rehabbed house.  Their mother sees only a dilapidated ruin.  And as they press forward into the increasingly disturbing mystery, Cooper and Jess begin to wonder why they can see Elena, and why she is now their neighbor, and more disturbingly, if she is a harbinger of a tragedy that's going to hit them.

Elena provides no answers, barely speaking them, but when Cooper follows her through her house, he finds himself in a place that makes no sense, the In-Between, and finds out the truth about the mysterious girl, and how her own life ended in a tragedy that no one cared about.  Now the In-Between now has her trapped, sending her from one disaster to the next. 

Will the same thing happen to him, Gus, and Jess?

By the end of the book, Cooper has laid out more clearly the hurt he feels about being unwanted by his father, and Gus has being just the friend he needed to bringing him out of the perfectly natural self-absorption of his unhappiness to a more outward facing understanding of those around him.  This part of the book is by far the strongest, and though I was sorry for Cooper, I do appreciate that we get in him a fictional boy to whom the author gives the chance to share his worst feelings, and to cry about them, with his friend.  I hope this is something that might give other boys in similar circumstances the validation that being sad isn't the same as being weak.  

I also appreciated that Jess has diabetes; this seemed to me, from admittedly second hand knowledge, well done.  Cooper was supportive of her at first, but this had turned to impatience and annoyance.  It was good to see him realize that Jess is even more fed up about it but is stuck with it, and he's able to turn back to being on her side.

The fantasy part of the book was a slightly more mixed bag for me.  On the plus side, the premise of the lost girl travelling from one disaster to the next was brilliant, and set up a tangible sense of impending doom.   I'm going to count this as my time slip book for this week, because Elena is sent by the In-Between from one mission to the next; as well as the tragedies Cooper and Jess discover, we are directly shown her mission to the Triangle Shirt Waist factory, and it is gut wrenching.   As is then ending of the book, as the kids realize just what Elena's missions entail.  It is a humdinger of the ending, that reverberates back through all that has come before it just beautifully!  It was an ending that required Cooper to act, which was good--it gave his character growth during the story a really solid point.

I was a bit disappointed that there's no push to explain the In-Between more directly; there are many unanswered questions.  Are there other lost kids on similar missions?  Is the In-Between a self-aware entity?  Kids who come to this for Fantasy might find it takes too long for anything truly fantastical to happen, and might feel a bit of let down that the fantasy stays somewhat dreamlike in its inexplicable unreality.  

But kids who like realistic family tension, slow build up of suspense and mystery solving, and heart-wrenching endings, will doubtless love it all.

Here's some of the praise this book has gotten (I agree with it all!)