The Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga

The first book I read over winter break was The Shape of Thunder by Jasmine Warga. This realistic fiction novel is about Cora Hamed and Quinn McCauley, estranged best friends who are coping with the devastating aftermath of a school shooting. Cora has been mourning the loss of her sister, Mabel, for the past ten months when she receives a package with a note on her doorstep for her twelfth birthday from Quinn. Cora wants nothing to do with Quinn because she thinks Mabel wouldn't want them to be friends anymore, but at her grandmother Grams's insistence, she decides to open the box and investigate its contents. Meanwhile, Quinn feels guilty about her brother Parker's actions and blames herself for not trying to stop him. After researching time travel and coming up with a plan to fix everything, she waits for Cora to open the box of articles she delivered. When Cora finally agrees to help Quinn for Mabel, they work together to open a wormhole at the giant oak tree that Parker helped Quinn climb down when they younger and go back in time to save their siblings. As time travel proves more challenging than expected, they have to determine if their friendship is worth saving.

Although it has an undercurrent of grief and loss because of the school shooting that happened prior to the events of the story, I enjoyed this novel. As I was reading, I had a great deal of empathy for both Cora and Quinn because they were coping with their loss in different ways. Cora deeply misses her sister, while Quinn wonders if she could have stopped her brother. It didn't surprise me that they would both want to believe in the impossible and find a way to go back in time to prevent the tragedy from happening in the first place. From the beginning, I was rooting for Cora and Quinn to rekindle their friendship. While I never really thought they would successfully time travel because the novel is realistic fiction, I firmly believed that trying would help them realize how much they mean to each other. I also loved learning what inspired the title of the novel because it gave insight into what Cora's mom was like before she left Cora, Mabel, and their dad years before the book takes place. All in all, The Shape of Thunder is an important story of healing and the power of friendship and accurately portrays the grieving process that families directly impacted by school shootings go through. I recommend this book to anyone who has lost a loved one or wants to understand why bad things happen.