Anxious twelve-year-old Abby is not thrilled when her mom moves their family from Pennsylvania - where Abby went to a small school with friends she'd known all her life - to Florida, where she goes to a huge public school, so that her mom can take a dream job working for SpaceNow. When Abby meets two boys, Adam and Bix, who claim to be from the future, it doesn't take a great leap for her to believe them, and when she gets a glimpse of their world, she agrees to help them - if they'll take her back with them when they go. Abby has to enlist the help of her great-aunt Nora, from whom her mother is estranged. As Abby gets to know Nora, and is befriended by her school mentor, Juliana, she wonders if she really wants to leave everyone she knows behind.

Abby's climate anxiety and her desire to escape what she thinks of as a dystopia will likely resonate with a lot of similarly concerned young readers, but the book ends on a hopeful note.

See also: Me and Marvin Gardens by Amy Sarig King, Haven Jacobs Saves the Planet by Barbara Dee

Quotes (from ARC)

...happy I sound somewhat normal instead of like the walking anxiety attach that I actually am. (33)

Humans learned long ago that the most truly fulfilled individuals are Creators, Explorers, and Caretakers. Consequently, these are the three main job categories in Avia. (74)

Real progress toward a better future, Mom believes, comes from iterative work: Improve, test, repeat. (77)

It's kind of nauseating to consider all the ways the twenty-first century is unfair in my favor. I feel like I often do: that I should be doing something, doing more, taking some action to make things better, but I don't know where to start or how to get to the root of it all. (87)

"Anxiety is...part of being human....Especially when there are good reasons to worry. You're probably just paying attention more than a lot of people." (Nora, 115)

"...problems do have solutions if we all put our minds to them." (Abby's mom Anna, 126)

"Sometimes, in regular life, I feel like I'm hurting someone or something just by existing." (Abby to Adam, 150)

"The worst thing you can do with your anger is nothing." (Nora to Abby, 204)

All I can do is try hard to make things better, to treat others well, and to ask for help when I need it. (262) ( )

Confession: I'd forgotten the book blurb specifics I'd seen months before. But on account of the book cover, I imagined that most (or maybe half?) of this middle grade sci-fi story would take place in the future and/or on another planet.

So, given that all but a few moments of this story actually take place in present-day USA, my expectations took somewhat of a hit. My interest hovered at a mild level through most of the read, dipping during some of Abby's ordinary experiences and also through some of the paragraphs and pages of info about the space program.

But then, the last quarter or so of the novel? I loved it. Even if I didn't find Abby's main friend from the future as interesting as his younger sidekick, and one or two of the eventual character breakthroughs didn't quite feel earned to me, I loved the overall culmination.

And in one of those late moments, when Abby says "because I already have"—well, I won't spoil the ending by explaining. But it resonated with me so much that I could have hurled the book across the room. In a good way.

Gah! Moments like that never get old to this bibliophile. ( )

For me, this book was just OK. I thought the premise was interesting and original but I'm not so sure the author took advantage of that. I was also excited to discover that Abby, the main character, suffered from anxiety about the future of the world. Again, I felt that the author could have expounded on this more and showed ways that Abby could have dealt with her dystopian fear in more detail. The writing was well done but I didn't get a lot of emotion from the characters. I also found that some pieces of the story didn't add up and that the kids didn't really act their age, so a bit unbelievable at times. It was a fairly quick read and did throw in a lot of space facts. I think a middle schooler who loves space will enjoy this book. 3 stars. ( )

This was a wonderful middle grade science fiction story and there aren't a lot of those for this age group. I liked how it dealt with anxiety and didn't shy away from some hard questions without giving trite answers. It doesn't attempt to imagine solutions to a lot of our problems we face today but rather focuses on attitude and personal growth, which is a great message, because the only thing we truly can control is ourselves. There were some annoying things I found with the main character but that was simply because she is a realistic tween and tweens can be annoying. I'll be passing this book along to my 14 and 11 yo's and recommending it to my librarian friends for elementary and middle school. ( )

I received a free advanced copy of this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers giveaway in exchange for an honest review.

Twelve-year-old Abby has a lot of worries, she worries about all the things on earth she can’t control like climate change, pollution, war, etc. She’s also anxious because her mom is making her family move to Florida so she can work at SpaceNow (which seems based off of SpaceX). A couple weeks after moving to Florida, Abby meets two boys Adam and Bix at a fast food restaurant. They tell her they are time travelers from the twenty-third century trying to find Adam’s missing twin sister who is supposed to show up in Abby’s time. At first I thought it would turn out at the end that the boys were making it up, but Abby ends up touching their “time sorter” device and she is transported to the future. The future she sees is the boy’s planet of Avia in the twenty-third century. A voice from the time sorter tells her there’s very little crime, no hunger, no poverty, and free education. When Abby returns from her quick glimpse of the future she decides she wants to go to this seemingly utopian state with Adam and Bix when they eventually return.

While this is a time travel story, the heart of it is the conflict between Abby, her mother and a great-aunt that Abby’s mom has cut out of their life. Helping the boys helps bring them all together and makes Abby really think twice about what it would mean to leave her time and live and the future.

There is a twist at the end about what’s really going on in the boy’s time during the twenty-third century. I would really like to see a spin off book that goes into the story of their lives in the future. Overally, this is a good middle grade book that I would recommend. ( )