"Opposite of Always" by Justin A. Reynolds (2019)

 **Young adult coming-of-age story!  Time loop! (I love me a good timeloop).  And contemporary black characters.  What's not to love?**

So. You know that saying “Time is undefeated”? This is a story about the time that Time lost.

I don't read a lot of Young Adult, which is why there aren't very many posts in that genre.  This book is very young adult, without a doubt, although certainly well-written.  It's about first love, about balancing your friendships against your first real relationship (i.e. something everyone does poorly), it's about the changing relationship with your parents as you approach college, it's about how to understand yourself and your place in the world.  It's full of teenage angst, although usually in a pretty fun way ("Whoever said silence is deafening must’ve been waiting for Kate to contact him, too.")

But you know, it's also a timeloop novel, and man am I just a sucker for a good timeloop novel.  After meeting the girl of his dreams at a party, our young hero Jack chases her, gets the girl, and they start figuring what that means--until he learns that she is terminally ill.  And she passes.  And . . .then he wakes up four months prior, back at the party where he first met.  Oh yeah, we're doing this.  All You Need is Puella Steins;Groundhog Day, let's keep resetting time until we get it right.  Until we save her

That said, a quick sidebar about young adult fiction.  I will wave down below if you just want to read about this book, you can skip this entire aside

But yes, while I don't read much young adult, I'm hugely in favor of its recent resurgence, lets get kids reading.  In particular, I'm blown away by the diversity now available to young readers

While growing up, as much as I loved the Chronicles of Prydian, His Dark Materials, Tamora Pierce's various works, the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, The Dark is Rising series, etc. . . . all of those are inspired by or set in "Vaguely Medieval Europe" (and, in the case of Prydian, a direct modernization of Welsh mythology.  Man, I should go back and reread those).  If I wanted to read something set in any other culture, the pickings were very slim.  The arrival of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson didn't do anything to change that

Yes, we had the Tales of Earthsea, with a dark-skinned protagonist, but even that was created largely out of Le Guin's wonderful imagination, rather than being inspired by a particular culture.  Hell, pretty sure I read "Taiko", the incredibly bloody 1000-page epic novelization of Japan's Sengoku Period, when I was like 12 years old just because it was the only thing I found with the Japanese setting I so desperately craved

(it should be noted though, that after finishing the Prydian Chronicles, Lloyd Alexander did branch out and write stories inspired by other cultures, which is amazing.  "The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha" (1978), "The Iron Ring" (1997), and "Gypsy Rizka" (1999) being particularly great examples inspired by ancient Islamic, Indian, and Gypsy traditions, respectively.  Man, I really need to go back and revisit Alexander, what a joy that man was) 

Nowadays, I'm happy to report that this isn't the case.  Over the last ten years or so, there has been an absolutely fantastic surge in young adult novels set in an incredible range of cultures.  From the abstract, like "Daughter of the Moon Goddess" (2022) inspired by the legend of Chang'e or "The Gilded Ones" (2020) in a fantasy world inspired by ancient African civilization . . . to this historic, like "Shanghai Immortal" (2023) in which a Chinese fox spirit hides escapes the underworld to hide out in Jazz-era Shanghai or "Dread Nation" (2018) in which the War Between States is preempted by a plague of undead, and young black kids are forcibly conscripted to become zombie hunters.  Like, are you with me?  There are so many amazing options and I am all here for it

So it's into this fantastic wave of minority-character young adult fiction that we slot "Opposite of Always", timeloop scifi with black main characters.  How great is that?

::waves:: hi everyone!  We're back to talking about the book, sorry for the long digression!

So.  "Opposite of Always" is not set in a fantasy world.  It's set in our modern world, right here, but with a full cast of minority characters.  And it's a lot of fun.  More importantly, this isn't a story about young black kids growing up in the projects (not that those books aren't important as well, hot damn was "More Happy Than Not" an incredible, unbelievable work of literature).  The main characters are contemporary middle-class American kids, dealing with the same issues most of the intended audience deal with themselves

Yes, one of the characters is dealing with his father getting let out of prison, and that is certainly a source of a great deal of pathos in the novel:

“But I tell him to stay away and I’m the bad guy. I let him back in and I start the countdown until he messes up again. I’m screwed no matter what. Story of my life, right?” Franny says, smiling. Except I know his real smile. His happy smile. This isn’t that. This is his I have to be tough, I can’t let anything faze me smile. This is the smile that I see most.

However, the other characters are dealing with much more mundane problems, like leaving home for college and worrying about fitting in.  And yes, while sickle cell anemia, the disease from which Kat4e suffers, does disproportionately affect people of African descent, the idea of having to deal with the illness of a loved one is pretty damn universal

And yes, it does a pretty damn good job of capturing that very, very distinct part of a modern young person's life:

We spend the rest of the night driving around, picking up fast food, popping our heads out of the car to howl at people, at the three-quarter moon, at our disappointments. And no, maybe it’s not the same thing as your dad finally showing up and telling you he loves you. Maybe it’s not your parents deciding they’re still in love, to give it another go. Maybe it’s not a phone call from the girl you’re super into, admitting that she hasn’t stopped thinking about you. IRL, there are no video-game power-ups for broken hearts. But this is something. It’s not nothing.

I loved this book because of the incredible diversity of its entirely ethnic minority characters.  They each have different home lives, different problems, different concerns.  And oh by the way, a big step forward for our main character is realizing that his problems are not the only ones in this story, hah.  But it's a story about a huge cast of characters, all of which feel very real, feel like people you meet in your everyday life, find ways to come together and support each other through tough times

In the end, thanks to his Groundhogging, Jack learns at a young age the lesson it takes a lot of us far longer to learn (and some of us never do):  Our actions have consequences:

“I’m sorry, Frann . . . Francisco. I’m really sorry.” 

“No, you’re not. You feel guilty. Learn the difference.”

Consequences are both a good and a bad thing.  Yes, the mistakes we make can hurt those around us, those we care about.  But also, never underestimate your ability to help others, even with as little as a kind or supporting word.  It seems trite, written out like this, but it's a wonderful message told in a very nice little book.  I did enjoy the ride

I loved this book

“That’s life, though. You have problems. But you keep trying. You fight for the things you love.”

“But what if those things don’t love you back?”

“Well, then you’re screwed,” Jillian says with a mini laugh. “So, maybe it’s not how something ends that matters. Maybe it’s about having something good, even for a little while.”