It doesn’t make any difference that I am way past Liz Kessler’s intended reading age group. She still catches me every time, and her latest time travel novel was no different. I raced through it, despite knowing it couldn’t end well for everyone.
I mean, it can’t, can it? If you really can travel in time – and of course you can – someone will get stuck or jump forward or something. And if they do, they won’t be where they first belonged.
Mia’s grandad vanishes into thin air, and because her grandma is devastated, she has to accompany her mum to go and visit, to see if they can help.
I know quotes are boring but I absolutely loved this paragraph from chapter one: ‘I’d like to ruthlessly destroy your life by taking you to the middle of nowhere, where you’ll die a slow death from boredom, loneliness and a general lack of anything that makes life worth living’ as said by Mia’s mum. Except she didn’t actually put it as wittily as that, but I wish she had. It would make this parent-talking-to-child business so much more fun, as well as true to life.
Right, let’s get on with this destroying of Mia’s life. They don’t even have a mobile signal in this hole of a fishing village. But Mia goes out, and she meets someone she wants for a friend, and then she meets someone else who is friendly. But nothing is quite as it seems.
There is a boat that is there some of the time, and at other times disappears inexplicably. Now, you and I know that this is typical of time travel, but it takes Mia some time to work out.
After which she has to get a grasp on what’s what and how she can resolve the situation. If she can. Who will stay and who will have to go?
I can’t see how any young reader can resist North of Nowhere.
