The year is 1985, and Freya, her mother, and her sister have just moved from New Zealand to a suburb outside Toronto. Freya’s father died in a bit of a freak accident, and this is their opportunity to start over and be closer to her grandfather, who lives in the city. It’s far from an easy transition for her — she’s learning not only hot to fit in in a new high school and how to navigate a new country, but she’s also struggling with the fact things feel very distanced from her. Her memories are foggy and she’s experiencing pretty terrible headaches.

Things only get weirder when Freya is on a class trip to a museum in downtown Toronto and she sees a boy walk by who looks familiar to her. She has no reason to know him but she has a feeling she does anyway. So she follows him. The first time she does this, she doesn’t act upon anything, but days later, she returns to the home she saw him enter, knocks on the door, and approaches him, asking whether or not they know one another some how. Garren thinks she’s crazy.

That is, he thinks she’s crazy until she shows him a photo that ties the two of them together in ways neither of them could have expected. It’s in this moment of realizing they are connected that the story goes from being a contemporary novel to being a sci-fi adventure. See: Freya and Garren are actually from the future. They’ve survived 2063 and have seen what happened in the world then, and being in 1985 is how they survived their lives then. Now that they’ve figured out they have each other and that they’ve got this shared experience, other people who have survived from the future do not want them to know this, and they’re out to wipe Freya’s memory of all she remembers. It’s not that her knowledge is a danger to today’s world. It’s a danger to the world of 2063.

Yesterday by CK Kelly Martin hooked me immediately, and it kept me hooked throughout the entire story. Freya is an average teen, and her struggle to figure out how to fit into her new high school and make new friends is every bit as realistic as any contemporary novel. She’s a bit hard headed, but she’s that way as a sort of defense strategy and as a way to get to the answers she needs. Freya knows in order to get to the bottom of what’s going on with her memory and with her headaches, she has to go after it herself. This involves some level of deceit and dodging responsibility. She not only has to lie to those who she’s closest to, she has to lie to those who she doesn’t really know. As for Garren, he’s a much more skeptical character and for good reason. He’s being dragged into Freya’s world reluctantly. Everything he learns about her and learns about his connection to her makes him a little more frustrated because the world he’d finally come to learn and accept continues crumbling. See, Garren is also fairly new to Toronto, and he, too, just lost his father in an accident. And now, thanks to Freya, he’s caught up in a scandal much bigger than himself. Much bigger than 1985, too.

This is a plot-driven, rather than a character-driven story, but never once are Freya nor Garren flat characters. As things in their world shift, they adapt as needed. Garren’s initial reluctance to follow Freya and his reluctance to be her partner in getting to the bottom of their world changes, but it’s not without a lot of work on both their parts. They have to form a real team here, but it’s not easy. The challenges they face on the human level gives them the opportunity to bond in a meaningful way and in a way that’s beyond just their circumstances.

Since I don’t want to spoil how Freya and Garren come to discover they’re from the future because that’s part of the payoff in the book. But what is important to know is that the future is terrifying — it’s a dystopian society. The government has taken over, and it controls everything. Because of a lack of natural resources and the threat of hostile invasion, the United States and Canada have become one country, and the capital is located in Montana (strategically, that makes sense). There is constant surveillance, and children are designed, not produced. More importantly, and perhaps most terrifying, is that the world of 2063 is lived through virtual reality. Everyone is equipped with a mesh that feels and experiences anything in the world without requiring any human interaction. It’s a way to protect individuals and a way to keep the government in control. One of the experiences the virtual reality machine excels at is the sexual one — individuals can have the physical sensation of pleasure any time they want to, by themselves, via the machine. This allows them to avoid the hassles of having to find a mate, avoid the emotional aspect of physical intimacy, and more importantly, it allows them to avoid the messy consequences of sex. It keeps the government in control, since there is no need for things like, oh, sexual education. In addition to squelching all things human from the individual, the world of 2063 is terrifying because of how much the world has disintegrated; the environment is trashed. There’s also the fact that the bulk of society is unemployed, the social classes are more divided and fractured than ever before, and the government exploits these things to further its own causes.

In seeing this future, and knowing they’re from it, Freya and Garren have their biggest awakenings. They realize they can’t solve the problems of the future in the future, but they must instead live their lives now and appreciate and nurture they things they do have. More than that though, both come to realize that nothing in the world is guaranteed, and it’s essential to live in and appreciate the moment while they can. And it’s right here during this realization that the 1985 setting is crucial. I’m not a fan of books set in the 1980s because it feels like a workaround to modern technology but that’s the entire purpose of Yesterday: this is a world where the scary, dystopian-like technology has yet to set in. It’s a world that’s familiar and foreign to the reader — it’s both close enough to today’s world that everything feels familiar, yet it’s far enough away to cause the reader to pause and reflect upon the fact that the technology we have today (including the very blog you’re reading right now) simply didn’t exist. Martin excels at making 1985 Freya relatable to today’s teens without swerving the narrative into one of nostalgia, rather than relevancy. Sure there are moments of indulgence — particularly through the wealth pop culture references — but it’s forgivable because were Freya a 2012 teen, she’d be immersed in today’s brands and bands.

There is a romance here between Freya and Garren, but it’s never once guaranteed. I think this subplot might be my favorite in the story because it is so tentative. I found myself so pulling for these two characters to have the ending they deserved. Martin has a skill in writing romantic tension in a way that’s authentic and that begs the reader to care. At one point, the two of them are both so scared and worried about their future that they seek solace in one another. They’re together, both of them naked and vulnerable, and they’re seconds away from their first sexual experience. Except, when the moment should happen, it doesn’t. It’s awkward for both of them, and they’re shy and nervous about approaching one another afterward. But when they do, they realize the reason they felt that way and acted the way they did was because of their experiences in the future — they’d been robbed of those raw, human emotions and confronting them together was overwhelming. They didn’t know how to act because the government wasn’t giving them the instructions to do so. More than that, though, they realize they aren’t sure what happens if they do engage in intimacy. They actually have to educate themselves about the consequences — something they didn’t have to do in the mesh of the future. What’s scariest to them and to the readers is that the world where they aren’t allowed to share pleasure with one another, the one where their bodies don’t at all belong to them but instead belong to the government, isn’t all that different from our world today. It’s scary that the things serving as warnings in the novel are things we hear and see right now, everyday. Because we DO tell teenagers they can’t act on their feelings and that they don’t own their bodies and their experiences. But it’s beyond that — we tell this to adults, too. We do a lot of denying of human experience, both the good and the bad.

Yesterday is not perfect, though. I had a lot of trouble with the world building aspect in particular, and I found that at times, the explanation for time travel came out a bit more information-dumpy than as smooth and plot-driven. Although it made sense how Freya and Garren were connected and found one another, I found myself with a few more questions at the conclusion of the story. It’s not a solid ending, nor should it be, but I wanted to know a bit more about the grandfather they shared in 1985 and what he did or didn’t know about the future. I do give Martin mad props, though, because this is her first foray into this genre, and it’s her first heavily plot-driven novel. The things that didn’t work for me did not keep me from appreciating everything else she did her.

This isn’t a didactic novel, and the messages woven throughout the story are ones the readers choose to pull out. There is a lot packed into this, and I think this is the kind of book I’ll read again and see what else I can tease out. One of my favorite moments is one of the simplest, and it’s one I keep thinking about in terms of the time travel aspect, in terms of the dystopian future, and in terms of the historical aspect of the novel. Freya and Garren are talking about their dreams and what they want to do with their lives, and Freya says simply that she wants to see the whales in the Pacific Ocean. Her goal is to see this beast of nature in the wild. It’s so simple — so so simple — but it gets at the heart of not only the notion of living in the moment and in appreciating the moment, but it gets to the heart of the environmental and social messages of Yesterday, too. And really, it gets to the whole heart of being human. It’s not an earth-shattering goal but it’s an important and worthwhile one nonetheless.

Hand Yesterday off to fans of fast-paced, action-oriented, and plot-driven novels, especially those who love science fiction and time travel novels. It doesn’t follow all of the rules of any genre, so readers who like the challenge will dig this. The flap copy compares it to James Dashner’s The Maze Runner and I can definitely see this appealing to that crowd. The secondary comparison to Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone, though, is a comparison I’m not sure I agree completely with, except when it comes to things like pacing and character development. This book further cements the fact that CK Kelly Martin is one of the most interesting young adult authors today, and she continues to challenge readers with her strong writing. And man, I give her props for one of the most fun acknowledgment sections in a long time. It certainly set the tune — yes tune — in writing this review.

Previously:
Review of CK Kelly Martin’s My Beating Teenage Heart
Twitterview with CK Kelly Martin
“So You Want to Read YA?” Guest Post by CK Kelly Martin

Review copy received from the publisher. Yesterday will be available September 25. 

It’s been over six months since Matt’s brother TJ died in Iraq. Now more than ever, Matt wants to make sense of what happened to his brother, but he hasn’t had the opportunity. With the return of his personal effects in the form of a few footlockers, he’s got the chance. The only thing standing between him and rifling through his brother’s things, though, his is father. Dad wants to do away with the things completely and move forward from TJ’s death. He doesn’t want Matt meddling with TJ’s things either. He wants Matt to pull himself together, get his grades up, and follow the path he’s meant to follow.

When Matt gets the chance to escape his father’s watchful eye, he goes through those footlockers and discovers that his brother was a lot more complicated than he ever knew. After finding a pile of letters from someone named Celia who lives half a country away, along with pictures of her and her daughter (with whom TJ has posed more than once), Matt’s convinced he needs to go find this girl. He’s going to get to the bottom of the millions of questions now popping up in his mind: did TJ have a girlfriend no one knew about? Did TJ have a child? Do those people know TJ isn’t alive any longer? Thanks to his friend Shauna, Matt gets the chance to have those questions answered — and have many more raised in the mean time.

Personal Effects tackles the topic of grief head on, and it does so while developing a believable male protagonist in Matt. Matt is aching; even though he and TJ were never close, Matt is incredibly proud of his brother. He wears that pride loudly, too. When one of his classmates openly defends his anti-war stance and wears a shirt bearing the names of those who had died in combat, Matt becomes very angry. To the point he swings his fist and earns himself punishment. Aside from being sensitive about what other people say, he’s also letting his grief impact his education. He’s getting terrible grades. The thing is, he doesn’t care. He has bigger worries, and where he ends up in the future isn’t one of them.

For the most part, I found Matt a good character. My problem with him, though, unraveled later on in the story. It’s impossible at this point not to spoil a big plot point, so if you don’t want it ruined for you, skip on down to the next paragraph. When Matt heads to Madison from his home in Pittsburgh, he’s expecting to meet Celia and expecting to learn that his brother may have had a child he told no one about. Except that’s not at all what Matt learns. Instead, he discovers that the “C” signing off in all of the letters he read was from Celia’s brother Curtis. Matt had been gay, and because he was in the military, he kept it completely secret. He didn’t feel safe telling anyone, due to don’t ask, don’t tell. More than that though, he didn’t feel safe revealing that to his family, either, especially given his father’s abusive streak. Where this pertains to Matt, though, is this: Matt is angry about this, maybe even a little bit repulsed his brother was homosexual. I don’t have a problem with him having his feelings — and frankly, I found them rendered believably — but I did have a problem with this being the problem Matt finds. He’d developed an entire fantasy involving his brother being married and having a child. Matt never has a problem with this. In fact, he seems almost excited by the idea. But the second Matt learns his bother was gay, that’s when he flips a switch. It was hard for me to believe he’d be excited by one thing and so disappointed in another, especially as it seems knowing his brother had an entire family in secret would somehow be more angering than him being gay. Each person decides their own views on these issues, of course, and Matt can believe what he wants. The thing is, I need to understand Matt’s thinking to believe it, and I never felt I got the opportunity to know him well enough for this to happen. He’d felt very protective of his brother, and in these moments, he felt cold and angry with him instead. The switch flip didn’t work for me, and I had a hard time through the rest of the novel buying Matt’s reactions to different events.

Through the story, Matt attempts to take his friendship with Shauna to more of a romantic relationship. While I believed his feelings, I found them to be a little bit boring. Shauna wasn’t interested in him, and it was obvious. He spent a long time offering us physical reactions to being in the same room with her and for the most part, I found this didn’t advance either character and it dragged the pacing. Shauna, for me, was a well-developed character and she was the kind of person Matt needed in his life. She was an advocate for him, even when his mind sometimes went elsewhere. She was, if you will, the exact opposite of what Matt’s father was: where dad wanted to continue holding Matt back and continue hurting him, Shauna offered him the tools to move forward, even if it meant getting herself in trouble.

My biggest holdup with the story — and this is a personal issue, not something most readers will struggle with — was that TJ was an automatic hero. Because he’s dead, we don’t ever get the chance to evaluate him for who he is. We’re instead in Matt’s shoes and we’re forced to judge him through Matt’s eyes. And Matt, despite some of his feelings and reactions while in Madison, sees his brother as a hero. I don’t ever doubt that TJ was brave and deserved the sort of respect he was given, but I have a hard time with books where a dead character is the central device in moving a plot forward and he’s got some sort of status that keeps him from being a full or flawed character. More than that, though, the fact his death came through war, which is such a heavy topic and one which readers bring their own experiences to the story with, furthered this. The responsibility of judging TJ comes on the reader, since it’s not there in the story. It’s tricky then to look at a character who doesn’t get the chance to tell his story or offer himself completely, knowing his life ended during the Iraq war, and make a judgment about him. It makes the reader feel either good or bad about themselves in that assessment. That said, the secret TJ harbored didn’t make him flawed. It made him more respectable in my mind. But I felt a little led into believing only that about him. I couldn’t get beyond what he had against him.

Despite the flaws, I really enjoyed Personal Effects — Matt’s story kept me engaged, and the writing itself worked with the story, rather than against it. While I felt myself emotionally distanced, I definitely see other readers finding this the kind of book they connect with on that level. This book has great guy appeal, but it certainly will work for female readers, too. I’ve talked before about Dana Reinhardt’s The Things a Brother Knows before, and I think for readers who may not be ready for that story, Kokie’s book will be a great starting point. That’s not to say it’s weaker, but it’s a bit of an easier read and a little easier to digest. The pacing is faster, too. As more teens deal with the reality of having a brother or sister in combat, these sorts of books take on greater importance and I am glad that they’re less about sending a message about war itself and more about the after effects and emotional, human issues around war. Aside from working well for teen readers, Kokie’s novel will have great adult appeal. This is a strong and believable portrayal of grief and loss without ever focusing on those as key elements of the story. Matt never sets out to tell us how he grieves. He just does it.

Review copy provided by the publisher. Personal Effects will be available September 11.