Reviews (MM)

mm_bookcoverReviews

“Time travel is tricky. Barrows, though, proves she knows the way around the paradoxes that can stymie science fiction writers. In this companion to The Magic Half (Bloomsbury, 2009), everything happens for a reason and in the right order. Readers will be happy with the Gill family’s return, complete with its unique sets of twins, its magic house, and its time portals in this sequel that has double the adventure and four times the excitement. In the first book, Miri Gill accidentally traveled back to 1935 and rescued Molly from an abusive extended family. Now living as Miri’s twin—with history (at least in their time line) rewritten—Molly fears that perhaps she wasn’t supposed to have this happy life and should go back in time to stop her parents from meeting. With some present-day remodeling going on, though, their house has new portals opening up unexpectedly. The girls do travel back to find Molly’s mother in 1918 and, in a fateful move through a different portal, to the 1860s and the Civil War, with their older brothers stumbling back, too, as Union soldiers in Confederate territory. The plot is fast paced and thrilling until the very end. Some pieces of unfinished business—and a time-traveling cat—will have fans hoping this isn’t the last trip with the Gill family.”

—Marie Drucker, School Library Journal