Space Between Here and Now by Sarah Suk

Title: Space Between Here and Now

Author: Sarah Suk

Genre: Contemporary

Publisher: Quill Tree Books

Published: 1^st November 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 320

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: Perfect for fans of They Both Die at the End and You’ve Reached Sam, this gripping, atmospheric YA novel follows a teen with a mysterious condition that transports her to the past when she smells certain scents linked to specific memories.

Seventeen-year-old Aimee Roh has Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, a rare condition that causes her to time travel to a moment in her life when she smells something linked to that memory. Her dad is convinced she’ll simply grow out of it if she tries hard enough, but Aimee’s fear of vanishing at random has kept her from living a normal life.

When Aimee disappears for nine hours into a memory of her estranged mom—a moment Aimee has never remembered before—she becomes distraught. Not only was this her longest disappearance yet, but the memory doesn’t match up with the story of how her mom left—at least, not the version she’s always heard from her dad.

Desperate for answers, Aimee travels to Korea, where she unravels the mystery of her memories, the truth about her mother, and the reason she keeps returning to certain moments in her life. Along the way, she realises she’ll need to reconcile her past in order to save her present.

From acclaimed author Sarah Suk comes an aching, powerful exploration of memory, grief, and the painful silences we must overcome to discover our truest selves. 

~*~

Amie Roh is seventeen, and in her last year of high school in Canada. She’s lived with her father since she was six, and her mother left her – and headed back to Korea, where her parents met. Amie has a secret though – something that only a few people know about. She has a condition called Sensory Time Warp Syndrome. When she smells something, she’s catapulted back in time, often only for a couple of minutes. It’s random and has meant she hasn’t been able to live a normal life – learn to drive, date, and a few other things that she sees people around her doing without worrying what will happen to them. She can’t talk to her dad – he zones out after a couple of minutes. The only person she can confide in is her best friend, Nikita, who does her best to help Amie and makes her feel a bit less isolated. But when Amie disappears into a memory and time for nine hours, Amie is determined to head to Korea and find her mother – and see if there is a way out of Sensory Time Warp Syndrome. The memory that trigged this contradicts everything her father has ever told her about her mum, and she needs answers. Her trip to Korea will be enlightening in many ways – but will Amie find the answers she wants, or just the answers she needs?

The Space Between Here and Now is a contemporary novel with a magical, fantastical twist with time travel due to a medical condition made up (from what I can tell) for this book. Amie’s story is told through her eyes, which allows us to see how everything affects her and what she experiences, rather than the reactions of those around her for the most part, because this is her story, and nobody else’s. Only Amie can tell us how she feels and how she reacts to disappearing. Amie’s ventures into her memories and time travel when smell triggers a memory – and she doesn’t know what smell or when will thrust her back in time, so it’s a trigger that she can’t avoid. What I liked about this novel was the unique and genuine voice that shone through, because it allowed Amie to be who she was, allowed her to embrace all parts of her and let us know what she liked, what she didn’t like and what her fears were. I think it worked well too because we knew what was going on, and even when Amie and the other characters didn’t tell us things, we were given enough to work with. I wasn’t left guessing too much, which made the novel move forward better – it allowed the characters and story to evolve effectively whilst also keeping things back based on what Amie knew about her family and heritage.

The novel started out quite simply – with a basic premise, and as Amie learned more about Sensory Time Warp Syndrome, so did the reader, and we also heard how she felt, how her father’s decisions affected her. I also liked the way Sarah used Amie and her family to explore two different cultures and how they had come together, and why Amie’s father was the way he was at times. In doing so, she has given readers insight into a family dynamic and culture that not everyone will relate to or know about and shows that there are many ways of responding to something beyond your control or what you don’t understand, and this made sense for the way the real world can respond to invisible disabilities and other things they don’t understand. It showed that there are people who want to understand, people who make mistakes when trying to talk about it, or people who don’t know what to do. In Amie’s case, it felt like many of the people she let into her life wanted to help and understand, and I think my favourite person (other than Nikita) who did this was her new friend, Junho, who was amazing and supportive and loyal.

This novel was different to other things I have read. Time travel books usually involve some sort of portal – a wardrobe, a painting, a game, a book, or a stone circle – something in the place the characters are in that links them to another time and place. In this novel, the medical condition is the catalyst, an interesting twist on the whole issue of time travel in stories. And in this one, the person doing the time travelling can only visit moments from their past, rather than a time in history or a place. I liked it because it shows that there are many ways to utilise time travel as part of the plot. Overall, I found this to be an intriguing plot, and something I think is a little different that will hopefully capture the imaginations of young adult readers.