Description
Thirteen-year-old Rowan is helping her older sister Ash paint her bedroom when she discovers a mysterious ring that transports them both back in time to 1999. To a party being held in the very same house!
While Ash dances, Rowan unwittingly disrupts the laws of time, and when she wakes up back in the present day, her sister is missing, and - even worse - everyone in their family seems to be forgetting she ever existed.
With the help of her magical neighbour Verity, Rowan must find the courage to travel back through the history of the house. But can she find everything she needs to rescue Ash before her sister disappears forever?
A warm and beautifully told time-slip novel, brimming with secrets, gentle magic and the strong bonds of family, from one of Australia best-loved children's book authors.
Review
A beautiful and intriguing time-slip novel about a very special house.
Rowan, her parents and her two sisters live in a very old and mysterious house in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. Rowan loves the house, and she has always felt like the house has feelings of its own. Feelings that she could somehow sense…
When Rowan is helping her big sister Ash paint her bedroom, they discover a beautiful blue and silver ring, long hidden behind a cupboard. In a tussle over who gets to keep it, they crash heads and both wake up in the same bedroom - only it’s 1999 and there's a house party raging downstairs! Ash decides to join the party, but at thirteen Rowan is much younger than the crowd of partygoers and so she hangs back – only to encounter a much younger version of her Mum and her unpleasant then-boyfriend, Damien.
Despite all the time-slip books that Rowan has been gifted by her delightful but slightly peculiar neighbour, Verity, that warn about the dangers of interfering with the past, Rowan can’t help but intervene. But when Rowan falls asleep and wakes up back in her own time, with Ash left behind and seemingly stuck in 1999, has Rowan accidentally made a terrible mistake?
With a lot of help from Verity, who has more secrets than Rowan could ever have expected, it becomes clear that the only way to save Ash from disappearing forever is for Rowan to time travel - back to many different periods of time in the history of their very special house - and collect a sliver of glass from each one that they can use to bring Ash back to the present.
But is Rowan brave enough and clever enough to slip through time again and again without unwittingly disrupting things any more than she already has? Or will she risk just one more tiny bit of meddling to help bring a family back together?
Rowan is thrown into the middle of different historical periods with each slip in time, making this is a compelling story that journeys from the present through a hundred years of history - from the Indigenous Land Rights movement of the 1970’s, to a family farewelling their son off to war in the 1940’s, and a dying artist and her daughter in the 1900’s.
A magical story about the true meaning of family and neighbourhood, love, loss, and the links that can reach through time, with a cast of wonderful and eclectic characters, I was absolutely captivated and finished this in one sitting.
Middle grade readers will absolutely love this book.
Reviewed by Kate
