Saving Lucas Biggs

By: Marisa de los Santo, David Teague

Narrated by: Angela Goethals, Steven Kaplan, Josh Hurley

Perfect for fans of The Thing About Jellyfish, Echo, and Hour of the Bees, this charming time-travel story from husband-and-wife team Marisa de los Santos and David Teague follows one girl's race to change the past in order to save her father's future.

Thirteen-year-old Margaret knows her father is innocent, but that doesn't stop the cruel Judge Biggs from sentencing him to death. Margaret is determined to save her dad, even if it means using her family's secret - and forbidden - ability to time travel. With the help of her best friend, Charlie, and his grandpa Josh, Margaret goes back to a time when Judge Biggs was a young boy and tries to prevent the chain of events that transformed him into a corrupt, jaded man. But with the forces of history working against her, will Margaret be able to change the past? Or will she be pushed back to a present in which her father is still doomed?

Told in alternating voices between Margaret and Josh, this heartwarming story shows that sometimes the forces of good need a little extra help to triumph over the forces of evil.

©2014 Marisa de los Santos and David Teague (P)2014 HarperCollins Publishers

narration could be better

Narrator Angela Goethals was difficult to listen to, the other narrators read with good expression.

Couldn't get past the juvenile writing

The description of this book had me at "time travel." Several chapters in, I could see where the story was headed, and I could have been along for the ride. But I gave up because the writing sounded as if the author was still in middle school.

It seems the author took lessons about active verbs to heart; every time a character speaks, the author uses another verb to describe the way the character says the words. Everyone is busy exclaiming and gasping and protesting and responding, and 'verbing,' their way though every interaction. It's exhausting.

Child characters speak and act the way a person unfamiliar with actual children might speak and act.

Historical details feel like they've been pulled from an encyclopedia, and the characters live in the past as if they, too, emerged from that same encyclopedia. The scenarios and people in the past might have been inspired by descriptions of actual historic situations, but they exist only on that research-based level. They might be based on facts, but they're entirely lacking in truth.

Finally, the conflict is predicable and entirely lacking in subtlety. There are "good" characters and "bad" characters, and it's obvious who is who, and the conflict between them is forced through that narrow lens.

This is the way most young people write as they're learning; it is not what I expect from a published novel. I will not be finishing this one.