This is a book about black holes and bright suns and multiverses.  There are pink headphones, red neck ties and vinyl records. Someone has to stay and someone ends up leaving. There are no car chases, but there’s plenty of kissing and one fist fight. Poetry and physics are discussed, along with a smattering of philosophy. Kurt Cobain is mentioned and so is Eddie Vedder. Karaoke is performed, laws are broken and a grown man weeps. (You might, too. I know I did.)
This is a book about taking chances, stepping up and dreaming big:Â “We are capable of big lives. Why settle? Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? We are born to dream and make the things we dream about.” It is about coincidences and regret. It’s about being Korean and being from Jamaica and being all too human. It’s about practical Natasha and idealistic Daniel, and how they fell in love one NYC day despite being in the wrong place at the worst possible time. But mostly, happily, crazily, it’s a book about hope. This stunning new heartbreaker of a novel from the author of Everything, Everything brilliantly turns the tired old cliche of “love at first sight” upside down and asks the provocative question, can you scientifically make someone fall in love with you? Look for the surprising answer in a library, bookstore or e-reader near you November 2016.
“If [my father] hadn’t belted Professor Cartland that night in the Academy of Natural Sciences, I wouldn’t have had the chance to see Rachel’s eyes up close.” The first time Samuel Bolt and Rachel Cartland meet, it’s over their fathers’ flying fists. Professors Bolt and Cartland are battling paleontologists, each determined to be the best at wresting centuries old dinosaur bones from the unforgiving rock of the American West. So when Professor Cartland challenges Professor Bolt’s latest find in front of a fascinated audience, the gloves come off and Rachel and Samuel are forced to wade in and pull their fathers apart. That’s their first memorable meeting, but it isn’t their last. Soon they are each on an expedition with their fathers that end up being only a few miles apart in the badlands of Wyoming. Against all odds, and unbeknownst to their mad dads, the two intrepid teens not only share information about their respective digs but soon fall in love. Adamant about being together, the lovers hatch a daring plan to discover and cash in on the greatest dinosaur find of all time–the Tyrannosaurus Rex–and leave their fathers behind in the desert dust. Meanwhile, their expeditions are being closely watched by a Sioux party who are none too happy about the fact that Rachel’s father desecrated one of their burial pyres. Can Rachel and Samuel find the fabled T-Rex bones before their fathers or the Sioux hunting party find them? More romance than adventure, this story moves a bit slower than some of Oppel’s other intriguing works, which range from a 