#a split second

This is a middle grade fantasy in which Elise goes to bed on the night of her birthday and wakes up six months later to find that her best friends won't talk to her anymore, but her elementary school friend whom she drifted apart from during lockdown is apparently her friend again. Together, Elise and Cora team up to find out what caused the time skip and how to put things back the way they were, but also have to face that if things do go back, they will lose this friendship again.

This was really cute! I do think it's aimed at the younger side of middle grade; it is a bit simplistic in terms of learning who your real friends are and being true to yourself, but I can hardly judge middle grade for being easy to digest. Particularly since it does become increasingly clear that there is an additional, stronger theme of processing the major disruption to their lives that lockdown was. I can't imagine how much that time impacted young children, and the skip in time here is a well crafted metaphor for it. Time travel as a metaphor for trauma and disconnection really is something I would like to see more of.