The Age of Miracles

Tile: The Age of Miracles
Author: Karen Walker
Pub: 2012; Random House
Pages: 288
Genre: Young Adult, Dysfic, Science Fiction
Etc: Thanks you LibraryThing's Early Review Program

The earth slowly stops
Moving as fast as it had
What will happen next?

I'm not really sure what my initial appeal was to The Age of Miracles.  I'm generally rather pick when perusing the titles of LT's Early Review program because gawd only knows I have plenty of my own books to read.  Still, something caught my attention and lo' and behold it showed up on my doorstop.

I wasn't a fan.

Whew.  I'm glad that I got that out there while I could because I have a sneaky feeling that this book is going to be one of those books where EVERYONE loves it except for me.  Yup.  I'll be the cheese that stands alone.

Julia is just a normal pre-teen growing up in SoCal with parents who don't spend a lot of time together, a boy that she thinks is cute and therefore obviously couldn't possibly notice her, and a best friend who she shares everything with.  Normal adolescent issues.

Except, one morning the world changes.  As my little haiku insinuated, the earth begins to slow down.  The girls hear this news and race outside to look for evidence, but of course everything appears normal.  The sun is still there, people are still mowing their lawns - you see? Normalcy.

Until eventually the normalcy stops and the nights run longer and Time has lost meaning and the people are trying to find it.  Meaning and Time.

And this is where I open up a can of meh.  I wanted Walker to explore - to follow through - with the what if's.  This I feel was played down quite a bit.  Sure, sure when the media first gets a hold of the information I get that people are going to be divided: those that freak out and those who don't.  BUT once those who don't realize that the shizat really is hitting the fan, don't you think that they'll start freaking out a bit too?  I just didn't get that vibe.

What I did like is Julia still experiences normal adolescent issues.  THAT was pretty realistic for me (and probably why I two-starred the book rather than one-starred it).  I mean, it's like that feeling you get when someone close to you has died, and then you have to run to the grocery store to pick up something mundane like toilet paper and it's all weird because everyone else around you is normal and you're suffering, longing, missing but the world IT just keeps moving.  So yeah - even though, in fact, the world is slowly stopping its movement, Life is still going on.  That kept it real.  Kudos there.

I just wanted more.