Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop

Levy, Joshua S. Finn and Ezra's Bar Mitzvah Time Loop
May 14, 2024 by Katherine Tegen Books
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Ezra has experienced his bar mitzvah several times, and know that he is stuck in some kind of time loop, but isn't quite sure what to do about it. Every Sunday at 1:36 p.m., he gets sent back to Friday morning.A couple days in to this, he meets Finn, who is also stuck in the same weekend, and is also having a bar mitzvah celebration at the Bergenville Hotel and Convention Center. Other than those similarities, the two have little in common. Finn is an only child with parents who dote on hi; Ezra is from a large Orthodox family that seems to forget he exists.  Finn has approached this experience very scientifically, trying to take notes and research how a time loop can be interrupted. His best hypothesis is that each boy needs to live a "perfect" day to make time start to progress again. Finn spends a lot of time insinuating himself into Ezra's life to figure out what would be perfect in that situation, and has already tried to delineate that kind of day in his world. The two boys do try to ask Rabbi Neumann for help with the time loop, but it's hard to get anyone to take them seriously. There is a convention of physicists in town at the convention center, and the boys think that the time loop might have something to do with that. And, who better to help them with their problem? They identify Dr. London as someone who might have the knowledge to help them get unstuck, and they work on ways to help the scientist remember her work as each day repeats. At one point, she needs a lot of gold to build a cage so that the data stays the same in each plane of existence, and the boys take several days to architect a bank robbery! As the boys go through the same day multiple times, they do undercover secrets about their lives that they didn't quite see on the first pass through. When Dr. London's research is sabotaged, is it possible that there is a third person stuck in the loop who wants to stay there? Will Finn and Ezra be able to get to 1:37 p.m., move on with their lives, but also learn to appreciate each moment more?

Strengths: Finn and Ezra were unlikely allies who got along really well and were game to try any number of different approaches to get the time loop to stop. There's a very good balance of repeating days that are interesting, but briefly recapping days that don't add as much to the plot. The family dynamics are intriguing, and I did not see Finn's crisis coming; it's hard to surprise me, so that's always great! While this includes a bar mitzvah, there is a solid reason for it, and it's also used in a completely different way than other middle grade books I've read. The boys' realization that life is greener on the other side of the time loop is a good one. 
Weaknesses: While I love the life lesson that we should appreciate each day because we never know what fresh hell the next day could bring, I'm not entirely sure that middle grade readers will have reached the developmental milestone necessary to take this to heart. 
What I really think: This is a good choice for readers who enjoy Levy's engaging writing, or who like goofy time paradox books like Wilson's Me vs. the Multiverse, Ormsbee's Vivian Lantz's Second Chances, Mlynowski and Soontornvat's Time After Time, or Thayer's The Double Life of Danny Day. 

I'm always very conscious of not wishing away the days; today is as good as it gets. I love the Stefan Pastis Pearls Before Swine comic with Rat counting down to the "great dirt nap of nothingness".