Reviews with content warning for Racism - See You Yesterday

Reviews tagging 'Racism'

See You Yesterday by Rachel Lynn Solomon

2 reviews

crufts's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Barrett Bloom is a disaster on two legs. After a horrible final year of high school, her first day of college ends with her accidentally setting a frat house on fire.

There's the big bronze W that stands for What Did You Just Do? and Who Are You Trying to Fool? and Why Did You Think College Would Be Any Different?

But the next morning, Barrett wakes up... and it's the first day of college again. She's trapped in a time loop.

Soon she discovers that fellow student Miles is also trapped in the loop. Unfortunately, he's a fussy, reserved, rigid nerd who lectures her about physics in an infuriatingly pompous tone. Can Barrett deal with Miles long enough to free them both from the loop?

The book's blurb is unusual, as it spoils three major events: (a) there's a time loop, (b) Miles is trapped as well, and (c) there's a romance.

Although I imagine this wasn't an easy choice for the author to make, I think this was a great idea because it clearly explains the genre of the book, i.e. it is a romance with a sci-fi angle.

This is also the first book I've read with an explicitly Jewish American protagonist. This was quite cool and I liked how the Jewish characters were portrayed, including not only the religous aspects of Judaism (e.g. Shabbat) but also the ethnic and cultural ones (e.g. the protagonist's Big Jewish Hair and fondness for New York bagels).

In general, Barrett was extremely likeable as a protagonist. Her snarky tendencies were softened by her endearing determination to help her mother and other people affected by the time loop. I also liked how she was genre-savvy and considered how time loops work in fiction.

The romance was absolutely adorable. The development of the main characters' relationship seemed very natural and believable.

However I did think it was a little too convenient that Miles turned out to be

a Nice Jewish ~~Doctor~~ Physicist, when only 5% of UWashington students are Jewish and the random chance of Barrett being stuck with another Jew would be low

. I think this could have been lampshaded with some comments like "Wow, fancy that, what are the odds?".

The plot and pacing are great. I was impressed at how the author created a sense of momentum and plot advancement despite the looping structure. This seems to have been achieved by having the characters work their way through phases of emotion mapping to the Hero's Journey, e.g.

New Allies and Enemies (meeting Lucie and Miles), Fun and Games (trying to fulfill all their dreams), the Abyss (getting revenge on Cole leaves Barrett feeling worse than ever), Transformation (changing goals to look for the time travel professor), etc

I also liked how various themes and symbols were woven into the story. Barrett's fight to escape the time loop mirrors her fight to move past the horrible events of her highschool years, which still appear to her in flashbacks.

One improvement I would suggest to the story is to make the time loop mechanic more believable:

The idea that going down into a basement increased the gravitational pull on the protagonists in any significant way is not believable. They probably would have experienced bigger gravity differences simply by travelling around in the way they did (going to different cities, places that would have been closer to sea level, etc).
This gravity-based gimmick is also unconnected to the way the protagonists got stuck in the first place (which seems to have nothing to do with altitude).
I agree with the choice to make the method unrelated to emotion/character development/etc, as otherwise the rest of the plot wouldn't make sense. It just needed to be something that would be impossible to do by accident, e.g. performing some high-powered physics procedure in the university labs, instead of just descending to a certain altitude.

Overall, I had a blast reading the book and enjoyed the whole thing. I would definitely recommend it.

Content Warnings

emily_mh's review

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I really liked the romance here between Barrett and Miles. Miles was sweet and dorky and respectful and I’m learning that I can only do allocishet romances when the guy is like that. I thought him and Barrett had lovely chemistry and their banter wasn’t obnoxious or annoying but felt kind of natural and loving.

I loved that character development was a huge part of the novel for both Barrett and Miles. Barrett is realising her self-worth and processing some trauma related to bullying, while Miles is learning to engage in life without fear. I think it’s super important to me personally to see romances where the people involved have their own things going on outside of the relationship. It makes the overall story much fuller, and the characters involved so much more dynamic.

The time loop underpinning the whole plot was essential to my enjoyment of this book. It is honestly one of my favourite sci-fi tropes. I just love seeing how the same day can produce totally different results, and the characters involved get to take risks and be playfully chaotic. I thought Solomon did a pretty good job with the trope here; it definitely gave the story the direction it needed. I do think certain parts could have been cut out or pruned, because the middle did start to sag with repetitiveness.

Finally, I loved the college setting! Solomon captured the campus vibe really well, especially how that first day of college feels. Reading this has really urged me to seek out more new adult stuff.

So this book was sitting around a 4.25/4.5 stars, but then the ending happened. Without spoiling anything, I believe a large part of it wasn’t necessary, but if Solomon really wanted to include it, it could have been done in a much better way. So I dropped my rating to a four. I did consider dropping it lower but this book is genuinely good and my reasons for disliking the ending in particular are probably down to personal taste.

Rep: Jewish MC, Jewish Japanese-American LI, sapphic Jewish SC, questioning SC

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