Michelle I. Mason

In 1995, seventeen-year-old aspiring journalist Jenny is flying back home to St. Louis when her plane mysteriously lands in the year 2020.

Your Life Has Been Delayed

Alicia Dixon

This book has a really fascinating hook: what if a teenaged girl’s flight disappeared midair and reappeared 25 years later, and no one on board had changed? You would expect a lot of reckoning with life plans, relationships irreversibly altered, and finding oneself in a totally new era of technology and media. To some extent, this book does that.

However, it does not give you the character development needed to attack those issues well. The deaths of beloved grandparents is revealed and then brushed past in unbelievably quick succession. Relationships with remaining relatives and friends are touched on, but after reading the whole book I feel like I know very little about who Jenny’s loved ones are, either before or after her “Blip,” if you’ll pardon the MCU reference. 

Speaking of the MCU, for someone writing a book about a teenager losing 25 years and learning how to deal with being out of touch in the 21st century, the author didn’t do a great job of bringing herself up to speed. For some reason, The Hunger Games is brought up repeatedly. For a book set in 2020, that’s a pretty outdated reference, coming from someone who read the books and watched the movies as they started coming out when I was in high school—almost ten years ago. I’m almost certain it’s not the forefront of high school pop culture in 2020. And do we even use Vimeo anymore? 

Finally, there were weird echoes of heavy-handed morality cues for teenagers that felt forced into the plot, like commentary on what Jenny wears, going to parties, and her attitudes about sex and even having her first kiss. It didn’t fit the story well and, in places, just seemed like an adult trying to ram their idea of what behaving well looks like into something that teens will read. 

None of this is to say that it wasn’t a decently enjoyable book. It was a quick read for me, and it is fairly fun. You just can’t think too hard about the real life ramifications, current pop culture, and weird forced mores while you’re enjoying it. While I was tempted to rank it lower for these flaws, I didn’t feel it would be fair to give something I generally thought was fine fluff lower than three stars.

Jelke Lenaerts

This was so dissapointing. The idea was so interesting but it never fully delivered. On top of that we had an insufferable main character. I also heavily questioned if this author has ever interacted with teenagers. So it’s needless to say that I didn’t like it. The only reason it isn’t a one star is because I read it very quickly and I really liked the beginning. 

Paige Green

Disclaimer: I received this arc from a local bookstore. Thanks @littleshopofstories! All opinions are my own.

Book: Your Life Has Been Delayed

Author: Michelle I. Mason

Book Series: Standalone

Diversity: 1 Black side character

Rating: 5/5

Recommended For...: Young adult readers, contemporary, romance, sci-fi, time travel

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publication Date: September 7, 2021

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 367

Recommended Age: 14+ (Religion mentioned, 9/11 mention, Underage alcohol consumption, Talks of airplane harm)

Explanation of CWs: there is a lot of religion talk this book in the main character and her family are fairly devout Christians. There is one slight mention of 9/11 and there is other site mentions of harm done with airplanes or on airplanes such as bombs or using an airplane to hurt another building. 

Synopsis: Jenny Waters boards her flight in 1995, but when she lands, she and the other passengers are told they disappeared . . . 25 years ago. Everyone thought they were dead.

Now contending with her family and friends fast-forwarding decades, Jenny must quickly adjust to smartphones and social media while being the biggest story to hit the internet. She feels betrayed by her once-best friend and fights her attraction to a cute boy with an uncomfortable connection to her past. Meanwhile, there’s a growing group of conspiracy theorists determined to prove the whole situation is a hoax. Will Jenny figure out how to move forward, or will she always be stuck in the past?

Review: For the most part I really enjoyed this book. I felt like the book did really good to have that mystery of the time travel but didn't have to go that much into time travel. I also found the book very intriguing because I'm kind of a sucker for the "weird sci-fi random stuff happens" trope in contemporary novels. I also thought that the characters were all very well developed for the most part and that the world building was fairly well done.

There were only a couple things that I really didn't like about the book. The first of them being that the book was kind of medium pace but also kind of fast-paced? It felt like there was a lot of stuff going on that was going by really fast but the pacing wasn't fast, you know? It's hard to explain. I also thought that the author could have done more to give a conclusive end to the book and that some of the other minor characters in the book got more "screen-time".

Verdict: It was good!

Your Life Has Been Delayed

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