Turnabout

This is an interesting concept and very well done. I think adult readers would actually get more out of this book than teens. At times a bit dated, but not too much. At other places, the message can feel a bit heavy handed. I think both Melly and Anny Beth are well written characters, very distinct. The ending was too happy, too easy. Also, not very plausible. One thing that drove me nuts was all throughout the book, it was said how difficult it is to hack the government, but the "Company" seemed to be able to do it every year.

Also, the back of the description on the back of the book really isn't what the story is about.

This review is also available on my blog, Read Till Dawn.

I'm named after my great-grandmother, who was born in 1900. I'm actually named after two of my great-grandmothers (Marie, my middle name, was my dad's grandmother's name), but it's the woman whose first name I share that really captures my fascination. She grew up in a completely different time, on a farm in rural Missouri. She lived a fascinating life full of ups and downs, and died an old woman living on the same farm she'd spent her entire adult life working.

In some ways, Melly is just like my great-grandmother: she grew up in a rural village in the twentieth century, and she was one hundred and one in 2000 so she must have born around the same time as my great-grandmother. The show more big different between the two women, however, is that my great-grandmother died long before 2015; Melly, on the other hand, made it much farther than that. She made it much farther than even my grandparents are going to get: to the year 2085. Rereading Turnabout for the first time in a few years, just as I'm becoming interested in researching my family history, I can't help but obsess over how awesome it would be if I could meet my great-grandmother. Meeting her when she'd unaged so far that she was biologically my own age? Even cooler. Just think of all the stories she could tell, all of the precious anecdotes and family stories. She could help me decipher my sometimes-confusing family tree, putting stories to all of the different faces. She could humanize the past with her own personal experience.

Sitting here typing this, I'm thinking that would be pretty cool for me. But would my great-grandmother have wanted to participate in Project Turnabout? I have no way of knowing - it wouldn't be as simple a choice as you'd think. Getting to live for twice your allotted time is great, but what sort of life would you have? You'd either be an anomaly to the world, living your life under a scientific microscope, or you'd spend your whole life running away from anyone and anything that could make you lose your secret. This second choice is the one that Melly and her friend Anny Beth make: to run, to hide, and to lie. They've spent the last eighty-five years completely on their own, with only the agency that initiated Project Turnabout to help them, and they haven't seen hide nor hair of their descendants in all that time because they're afraid it would be too hard to resist telling them who they really were.

I am a huge fan of Haddix's, and it's books like Turnabout that are perfect examples of why I love her writing so much. She takes an amazing story idea ( here it's an unaging scenario with so much potential), adds compelling characters with complex backstories and convincing motives, and sprinkles in some profound thoughts for the reader to chew on (in this case it's aging and death, and what exactly the consequence of avoiding them would be). She often also includes a really interesting setting (here it's her early-2000s view of what the world will be like in the future - including a scary-good prediction of voice recognition software), as the icing in the proverbial cake. So do I recommend Turnabout? That's a silly question, of course I do. The only real question is one that's been haunting me since I first read it years ago: could Project Turnabout ever happen in real life? And if it did, would I want to participate in it? show less

I've read a few books by this author and I always really enjoy how unique her storylines are. This one was interesting but I didn't enjoy it as much as some of her other books. It was written in the current timeline which takes place in 2085 and then is interspersed with flashes back to the year 2000 and moves forward from there. Melly was 101 years old in 2000 and was part of a reverse aging experiment so when we meet her in the book she is 16 years old.
I thought some of the ideas of what 2085 could look like were interesting. Even though there were always things happening it felt like nothing really happened if that makes any sense. You could sum up the book in a few sentences.
It held my interest and I wanted to find out what would show more happen at the end of the book but then I found the ending was not satisfying and didn't really answer my questions.
There was one use of blasphemy.

This book was reviewed on the Literary Club Podcast episode 81
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1984185 show less

I thought for sure this book would be incredibly sad, what with people growing down and all, but it was actually really interesting. Melly and Anny Beth are part of project Turnabout. Project Turnabout was a project where senior citizens who were close to death were given a drug that began a reverse aging process. Theoretically, when they reached middle aged again, they were supposed to be given a drug that would stop their aging and allow them to live indefinitely. Unfortunately, the second shot doesn't work. In addition, for every year they grow down, they lose the memory of their previous lives.
Now that Melly and Anny Beth are in their teens, they realize that they need to find someone to care for them, once they begin to get too show more young to care for themselves. Unfortunately there also seems to be a reporter on their trail looking to expose them. Eventually they find out that AJ the reporter, was just doing research for a family book and she agrees to care for them. The go to the institute to talk to them and get basic info on what will happen and find out that no one else from the experiment has survived this long. It is implied that the reason Anny Beth and Melly survived was because they felt the need to redo their life properly. The institute has believed that it was wrong of them to do this and has been blocking all studies to help people live longer. Now they are thinking about offering it to everyone to give them the opportunity to redo their life.

Things to take note of: society is obsessed with documenting themselves. Story is told in alternating journal entries, one from the beginning of the experiment, when they lived in the institute and one from Melly's current life. Scientists never actually got approval to test the drug. People seem to need a purpose in life (this is shown over and over based on the types of jobs and lives Melly and Anny Beth lead on their second chance.) show less

teen science fiction. Two old ladies, having taken a top-secret experimental serum, have aged backward and are now in their teens. They are the last surviving subjects in the experimental group (originally 100 senior citizens); those that have taken the 2nd serum to reverse the process have all died and the two girls will soon be too young to care for themselves. Kind of an interesting premise, but not a super exciting story; it's wrapped up nicely at the end without much fuss (or even very much danger). Haddix is an author often recommended but this story disappoints.

I thought for sure this book would be incredibly sad, what with people growing down and all, but it was actually really interesting. Melly and Anny Beth are part of project Turnabout. Project Turnabout was a project where senior citizens who were close to death were given a drug that began a reverse aging process. Theoretically, when they reached middle aged again, they were supposed to be given a drug that would stop their aging and allow them to live indefinitely. Unfortunately, the second shot doesn't work. In addition, for every year they grow down, they lose the memory of their previous lives.
Now that Melly and Anny Beth are in their teens, they realize that they need to find someone to care for them, once they begin to get too show more young to care for themselves. Unfortunately there also seems to be a reporter on their trail looking to expose them. Eventually they find out that AJ the reporter, was just doing research for a family book and she agrees to care for them. The go to the institute to talk to them and get basic info on what will happen and find out that no one else from the experiment has survived this long. It is implied that the reason Anny Beth and Melly survived was because they felt the need to redo their life properly. The institute has believed that it was wrong of them to do this and has been blocking all studies to help people live longer. Now they are thinking about offering it to everyone to give them the opportunity to redo their life.

Things to take note of: society is obsessed with documenting themselves. Story is told in alternating journal entries, one from the beginning of the experiment, when they lived in the institute and one from Melly's current life. Scientists never actually got approval to test the drug. People seem to need a purpose in life (this is shown over and over based on the types of jobs and lives Melly and Anny Beth lead on their second chance.) show less

I thought for sure this book would be incredibly sad, what with people growing down and all, but it was actually really interesting. Melly and Anny Beth are part of project Turnabout. Project Turnabout was a project where senior citizens who were close to death were given a drug that began a reverse aging process. Theoretically, when they reached middle aged again, they were supposed to be given a drug that would stop their aging and allow them to live indefinitely. Unfortunately, the second shot doesn't work. In addition, for every year they grow down, they lose the memory of their previous lives.
Now that Melly and Anny Beth are in their teens, they realize that they need to find someone to care for them, once they begin to get too show more young to care for themselves. Unfortunately there also seems to be a reporter on their trail looking to expose them. Eventually they find out that AJ the reporter, was just doing research for a family book and she agrees to care for them. The go to the institute to talk to them and get basic info on what will happen and find out that no one else from the experiment has survived this long. It is implied that the reason Anny Beth and Melly survived was because they felt the need to redo their life properly. The institute has believed that it was wrong of them to do this and has been blocking all studies to help people live longer. Now they are thinking about offering it to everyone to give them the opportunity to redo their life.

Things to take note of: society is obsessed with documenting themselves. Story is told in alternating journal entries, one from the beginning of the experiment, when they lived in the institute and one from Melly's current life. Scientists never actually got approval to test the drug. People seem to need a purpose in life (this is shown over and over based on the types of jobs and lives Melly and Anny Beth lead on their second chance.) show less