This book was stunning - one of those rare reads that is larger than life. Days after I've finished reading it -- the setting, mood, story are still milling around in my head, and I keep thinking of questions that I want to talk about with someone else who has read it.

It is the age of 'The Slowing.' Earth slows down, the days get longer and longer and keep getting longer and longer, the sun's radiation grows stronger, gravity changes, birds fall from the sky. And everything changes. What time is it? What time should school start? Should we continue to follow the 24-hour day or follow natural daylight? What will happen to our lawns, our crops, to gravity? Could we have prevented this?

Everything changes, but so much stays the same: crushes on boys, fitting in, first bras, best friends, and used-to-be best friends, parents, and everything else that goes along with middle school.

Brilliantly poetic AND a gripping story, this one will keep you up at night. It is certainly a little dark and will appeal to apocalypse fans, teens and adults alike. The narrator is eleven-years-old and the story might be a little heavy for some middle school readers, but it works.

It reminds me a bit of the Last Survivors ("Life as We Knew It") series by Susan Beth Pfeffer, but the consequences of this shift in the universe don't happen nearly as quickly and are therefore tempting to ignore and perhaps even more difficult to accept.