Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop, by Joshua S. Levy, for Timeslip Tuesday

Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop, by Joshua S. Levy (May 14, 2024, middle grade, Katherine Tegen Books) is a groundhog day type timeslip story that's tremendously fun (which I expected, having found the authors previous books to also be very entertaining).  And yet it's not all fun and games; there's a more thoughtful thread running through it as well.

Ezra's Bar Mitzvah is an ordeal to be endured, what with family tensions, his little sister barfing on his shoes, and the painful struggle to get through all that is required of him.  He's just glad he's reached the end on Sunday afternoon and it's over...when he finds himself back on Friday, having to do it all over again.  And again, unable to figure out how to end the madness.  

When he finds there's another boy in the same venue also caught in an endless Bar Mitzvah loop, he's relieved to have someone to join forces with. Finn has lots of ideas on things they can try to change things enough to make it out.  But efforts to make things perfect don't work, asking for help from Rabbi Neumann doesn't work (although these conversations are thought provoking and I enjoyed them), and they are running out of ideas (but not out of time.  They have lots of that.)

Then they notice that they are sharing the hotel with a convention of physicists, who surely must be able to help figure out how to break a time loop.  And indeed, Dr. London is interested, once they've convinced her (by knowing things they couldn't know, learned in previous iterations) that they are telling the truth.  It's tricky for Dr. London, because she has to keeping starting over and over every Friday, but the boys become skilled at helping her remember.  (I really liked that the scientist who cracks the case is a woman, who's not eccentric or weird but just a good scientist).

To save her notes, she needs gold to build a science cage to keep her data safe from vanishing every Sunday, and with lots of repeated practice, Finn and Ezra carry out a bank heist, and things seem hopeful.  But as they loop, not only are they getting to know each other really well, envious of things each has in his life that the other doesn't, they learn more about the people around them, most importantly, their families.  And what they learn makes them uncertain that they are ready for time to start moving forward again....

 The two boys are clearly defined characters, not just in the externals (Ezra lives in an Orthodox household crowded by siblings, making do but with no safety margin, and Finn is an only child of comfortably off parents, for whom religion is somewhat tangential) but in their personalities--Finn is a mad whirl of idea, and Ezra is a more thoughtful observer).  This difference keeps each time loop feeling fresh for the reader, and Finn's wild ideas keep things fresh(ish) for the kids too, although they had to put in a lot of practice weekends for more complex undertakings, like the bank robbery....

There's a lot of entertainment to be had in the looping, with many days seen in detail, and others, that don't progress the story, tidily recapped.  Some loops have poignant realizations, some have humor and excitement, and it's all good reading, although considerable suspension of disbelief is (not surprisingly) required (I had no trouble suspending mine). The kids have the freedom to waste their time, to savor moments while knowing they aren't going to be lost, to experiment with how what they do affects others. And so when time starts running normally again, they are prepared to live each day as if it will never come back again...which of course it won't.

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher