'The Clay Lion' by Amalie Jahn was a thrilling, suspenseful read. The suspense was palpable, especially as someone who tends to be partial to time-travel scenarios. Making everything work out is the ultimate goal, but when that doesn't seem entirely possible, life – past, present, and potentially future – can become chaotic, and with that chaos comes the likelihood for worry and fear.
Brooke Wallace loves her brother Branson more than anything, and as a result of this love, she has decided to use the one trip that everyone in her society is allotted for time travel to go back to the time just before his death. Her goal: try to prevent it from ever occurring. The tension is quite evident, based on a variety of factors, but especially the heartache that Amalie Jahn so perfectly captures through Brooke's first-person narration of life without Branson, as well as what life was like when he was still alive.
Her trip doesn't go quite as planned, and the difficulty of coping with losing Branson all over again is too much for her to bear. So, she sets out to re-live and alter the timeline yet again to save him, but this time she takes more liberties than she knows she should, engaging with those she didn't engage with either of the first two times (the “real” first time and the first trip to the past), and changing their future timelines as well. This mainly goes for her relationship with Charlie Johnson, a cute boy she meets and can't help but befriend. Needless to say, the trip changes things more than Brooke had planned, and she must set out yet again to try to change the past, or at least salvage what she can of the future. I couldn't help but think as I was reading how even though she wasn't trying to change anyone else's timelines, she was doing her best to remain ignorant of the fact that others could be affected second-hand. Eventually, she does learn that this is true, during one of the times she returns to the present.
Adeptly written with a hearty helping of character development and specificity in staying as true as possible to the original timeline, while still attempting to re-write history, Jahn has me hooked and eager to read more of her series. I look forward to checking out the next two novels, 'Tin Men' and 'A Straw Man.' From Brooke to Branson to Charlie, on to Brooke's parents and a cast of supporting characters who help keep the storyline moving from past to present back to past again and eventually into the future, 'The Clay Lion' captures the angst of loss, the beauty of love, and the compassion that stems from both.
Beth Rodgers, Author of 'Freshman Fourteen,' A Young Adult Novel
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