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A New York Times bestseller!
From the author of The Sky Blues and Blaine for the Win comes a speculative young adult romance about a teen stuck in a time loop that’s endlessly monotonous until he meets the boy of his dreams.
For some reason, Clark has woken up and relived the same monotonous Monday 309 times. Until Day 310 turns out to be…different. Suddenly, his usual torturous math class is interrupted by an anomaly—a boy he’s never seen before in all his previous Mondays.
When shy, reserved Clark decides to throw caution to the wind and join effusive and effervescent Beau on a series of “errands” across the Windy City, he never imagines that anything will really change, because nothing has in such a long time. And he definitely doesn’t expect to fall this hard or this fast for someone in just one day.
There’s just one problem: how do you build a future with someone if you can never get to tomorrow?
Author: Robbie Couch
Paperback Published 23 October 2023 336 pages
"The story is structured around a series of deviations and mysteries; as each mystery is solved, a new one springs up, spurring the plot onward and making the novel compulsively readable. In addition to excellent structure and pacing, Couch also provides a compelling, endearing narrator in Clark."– Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, March 2023
"Clark has been stuck in September 19th for 309 days before he finally tells his therapist the truth: he’s lonely. Partly it’s due to his parents’ divorce, partly due to his best friend moving to another state, but mostly it’s due to the September 19th time loop itself, of which only Clark is aware. Clark’s confession, however, prompts the first deviation in 309 consecutive days when his therapist gives him four tips to beating loneliness, the first of which is to make a new friend. Making a new friend in a time loop seems impossible until day 310, when a boy whom Clark has never seen before in all the previous September 19ths shows up in his trig class, and the two end up spending a whirlwind afternoon together. Beau doesn’t appear again on day 311, though, and Clark wonders if Beau could be stuck in the time loop as well, and if so, perhaps together they can finally learn how to escape. The time loop mechanic has the potential to be repetitive, but Couch makes the excellent decision to begin the narrative right at the moment that things in Clark’s Groundhog Day begin to change. The story is structured around a series of deviations and mysteries; as each mystery is solved, a new one springs up, spurring the plot onward and making the novel compulsively readable. In addition to excellent structure and pacing, Couch also provides a compelling, endearing narrator in Clark as a teen struggling to see beyond the end of his nose in his increasingly narrowing world for which the time loop is only partly to blame. In order to escape, Clark has to grow up and seize upon the rare opportunity the universe has granted him: a chance to do better." AT– BCCB, starred review