SOLVED. About boy when his father disappears tries to find him by going out and figuring out machine his father made/ everybody else in world is gone too except few other kids/time travel [s]

[Faith-Victoria]

I read it around 2014 or 2015 I think. Also, I don't think the title has much to do with time travel. The boy's mother mysteriously vanished after birth and the dad is working on a machine to bring her back ever since. He never really tells the boy how the machine works. One day, the dad sails off in a row boat to do something and promises to come back for the boy's 12th or 13th birthday. He doesn't come back, and the boy notices that everybody around him has vanished, too. He sails off the island, bringing the machine with him to find his dad and figure out how the machine works. He finds some other kids who live together and figure out that everybody disappeared on the same day. Every kid has their own "thing" they do. There's this one kid who makes the "Internet" by connecting pieces of info with strings. After this is all SPOILERS After some events, they figure out that the machine can bring the missing people back. The machine is set to the date of when the people went missing. This means that the machine takes the people from that day and time travels them to the present. The boy finally decides to try bringing back his mom and sets the date to his birth date. He basically transports his mom from that day to the present. That is why his mom "disappeared" after giving birth to him. Basically, this is about how the future affected the past, and the past also affected the future.

[Rainbowheart]

The Missing Persons League?

[David]

Rainbowheart, thanks for the pointer, but being very familiar with TMPL, I can state that the book OP is looking for is not The Missing Person's League as I am very familiar with it. I do agree with you that the first thought that went through my head was TMPL, but nothing else matches.

[Justanotherbiblophile]

David wrote: "I do agree with you that the first thought that went through my head was TMPL, but nothing else matches."

100%, me too.

[Ayshe]

The Only Ones?

[Faith-Victoria]

SOLVED!!! The book is The Only Ones by Aaron Starmer.