Seconds to Spare

Gr 8 Up–The nail-biting action starts with the very first sentence of this superb thriller. Evelyn has been trapped in a 28-minute time loop 194 times on an airplane that’s about to crash. Each time the plane starts to nosedive, she sees a flash of white light and wakes up in her original seat, reliving the same terrifying sequence. She has memorized every passenger’s name and seat number, and has had conversations with all them, except one: Rion, the boy she met briefly in the airport. Sparks flew when their hands accidentally touched. Rion sleeps through every loop, and from what she’s discovered in his bags, he is hiding a secret. Evelyn experiments with new actions to break the cycle, but when she accidentally awakens Rion, she realizes he remembers the loops, too. The other passengers and the flight crew have no memory of the loops, leaving the pair isolated in their knowledge of the crisis and heightening every moment of suspense. Chapters alternate between Evelyn’s and Rion’s points of view, with just enough backstory to make readers care about the characters and briefly take the story beyond the airplane. Even though the tension is high, it is often relieved by moments of levity as the humanity and quirks of the others on the plane shine through. Main characters cue white.