Hello Now by Jenny Valentine (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Hello Now by Jenny Valentine
Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-399-54695-2 $17.99
E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-399-54696-9 $10.99
Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 8-12
Jude has newly moved to a seaside British town when she meets Novo, a strange, amazing boy who is able to make time stop or all happen at once (“You can stay inside any Now with me,” says Novo to her). They soar into a love like she’s never imagined, but Henry, the strange old man who lives in Jude’s house, makes clear the tragic future: if Novo stays with Jude in her time, bathing her life in the glory she’s newly found, he sentences himself to eternal loneliness once she dies, same as Henry currently suffers. Basically Babbitt’s Tuck Everlasting revisioned as a passionate YA love story, this is an exquisitely told romantic fantasy, golden yet lacerating (“I’m bleeding love story all over the place,” says Jude), that goes beyond the mechanics of its premise to the shimmering strangeness of being in love and the metaphysics of presence and togetherness. Readers may not be 100% clear on the fantasy mechanism, but they’ll find Jude’s rapture unforgettable.
