A review by mrs_a_is_a_book_nerd
Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson

4.0

I read this one on the recommendation of a student, who had pulled it from my classroom library. She was RIGHT! What a fantastic story! A wonderful blend of genres, Midnight at the Electric has it all: a bit of sci-fi, romance, history, friendship, family, mystery, and self-discovery. The story blends the lives of three young women, in three different places and times, each of whom must make a choice that will take them away from the home they've always known to an unknown future where they've pinned their hopes for happiness. Adri is one of the chosen "colonists" who will make a new life on Mars, but her choice is challenged when she spends her last weeks with an elderly cousin she never knew she had. In Lily's home, Adri finds the journal of Catherine, a girl determined to save her sister's life by fleeing the Oklahoma dust bowl storms that make Beezie quake with dust pneumonia. Catherine's journal entries lead Adri to find a bundle of letters, written to Catherine's mother by her childhood friend Lenore. The letters chronicle Lenore's desire to leave her native England home and join Catherine's mother in the U.S., where she has married and settled down. The letters also reveal a secret that will change everything Catherine knows and believes. As the novel progresses, the threads of their lives are woven together until the three are interlaced across nearly 150 years.
Meeting and getting to know all of these women was captivating, and the story was both original and absolutely lovely.