North of Nowhere by Liz Kessler (review)

Eighth-grader Mia and her mother are spending spring break in the small English seaside town of Porthaven as they help Gran run the family inn and search for Mia's suddenly missing grandfather. During the week, Mia encounters a series of strange things—a boat that seemingly appears and disappears, a decades-old journal, and a strange boy who seems oddly familiar—that lead her to believe that her grandfather has somehow time traveled, an assumption that turns out to be true but not at all in the way she presumed. The eventual revelation of Grandad's secret is a rather delightful headscratcher that will have readers revisiting various plot points to see just exactly how the puzzle pieces all fit together. Unfortunately, Mia exists mostly as an engine to get to the big reveal, and she's forced to make one illogical choice after another to move along the plot. Although it lacks the same poignancy and depth as Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me (BCCB 9/09), readers who enjoyed the mind-bending twists in that one may appreciate the shifts in the space-time continuum here.