Hello Now, by Jenny Valentine, for Timeslip Tuesday

 Although it's not always obvious (and doesn't always work) I do sometimes try to plan ahead and make sure I have time travel books read and ready to review on Tuesdays.  So I placed lots of holds last week, and have just finished one of them--Hello Now, by Jenny Valentine.  At about page 100, slightly more than halfway through, it started seeming familiar....and I checked Goodreads, and found I'd read it before.  Not very long before, either--February of 2021.  I wrote of the book then "Not to my personal taste."  And this conclusion still stands.  

What follows is a presentation of why it's not to my personal taste, as opposed to a nuanced, critical and level-headed review.  I'm going to spoil the story, so if you want to go read a book I don't really like without being spoiled off you go!

It's a story of a teenager, Jude (gender never specified), disgruntled at their mother for constantly choosing to move new places when things turn sour.  Another new house, another new town, although this one comes comes with an old man, Henry, living it, which is new  This was interesting; I enjoy people exploring old houses and Henry seemed like he had potential as a character (though I hadn't remembered at this point I'd read the book before).

Then Jude's life is transformed when a magical boy, Novo, who transcends time and space and the laws of physics (literally) appears on the scene (here's another personal thing--I thought the name Novo was silly).  It's basically him appearing, being all magical pied piper (babies stop crying when he smiles on them, etc.) and saying "hi I'm your magical soul mate come transcend the laws of time and space with me" and Jude going yes and being transcended into a pocket universe bubble of space time.  This was odd, and not very interesting, because Novo showed no signs of having any particular character trait other than being mesmerizing, and Jude had no thoughts that weren't about him.  I did not remember reading about Novo a year and a half ago.

Then Jude and Novo are in  their own little bubble of a private Now and it is heady, so heady, with love and lots of description.  Good description of cliff diving, but generally not very interesting to me, except I wondered why Jude wasn't surprised that they both suddenly had wetsuits.  Where did they get wetsuits? If Novo's magicness conjured them, why not conjure more things? Why stop at wetsuits?

We switch back to Henry for a bit, and he does have character and a backstory....and a sad love story of his own (this is where I started remembering!) Turns out he was a being like Novo, who also fell transcendently for a regular mortal, and instead of being content to spend what time  he could with her in a space time bubble, he stuck around until she got old and died, and ended up being trapped in an undying aged body with no ability to flow through doors of time and space anymore. Moderately interesting. 

In any event, Jude decides to keep Novo from getting stuck like that, and good byes are hard but Jude goes off travelling courtesy of Henry's squirreled away wealth and dispassionately observes people and places with no interesting thoughts about them (Jude's main thought is "good for me I'm not home on the couch"), almost as if the  Novo experience fried their brain with transcendentness.

Novo is back in an in-between space finding to find another door to go through.

But anyway, time is certainly slippery, and I've now written a blog post.

In fairness--if you like books with lots of description (nicely written description; it does make good pictures in the mind), that's full of Feelings and Young Love, you might love this.  The Kirkus reviewer liked it more than I did:  "The author deftly handles themes of living in the moment, embracing change, and moving forward after loss. While the conclusions drawn don’t necessarily break new ground, readers will nevertheless walk away with a lot to think about."  

I am still thinking about wetsuits, and how unromantic they are both to put on and take off.....