Sam is kicking hard against her mother's expectations and aspirations. We first met her when she's deliberately being obnoxious during her parents' country club membership interview (and yes, I share Sam's views about country clubs and their grass maintenance issues, but still it was hard to like her at first). She and her mother, Priscilla, are clashing at every turn, and it comes to a head when Priscilla's mom, Sam's beloved Halomi, is hospitalized and in a coma. No, Sam doesn't want to be taken shopping for a Homecoming dress the next day. And tells her mother she hates her (and yes, I see where Sam is coming from, and there are failures of communication on both sides, but it strengthened my feelings about Sam being self-centered).
In any event, she has to find a ride back to school....and the driver who comes to pick her up ends up taking her back to the past.
So there's Sam, in the 1990s, in her mom's high school. Her mom is in the running for homecoming queen, and Sam knows she didn't win, and that somehow this situation soured the relationship between her and Halomi. Maybe this is what she needs to change...so she makes herself Priscilla's campaign manager.
The culture shock is real--Sam has never been more conscious of being Korean and is appalled by the racism her mom had/has to deal with daily. There's also the casual misogyny, lack of environmental awareness, and lack of technology. But sticking to Priscilla like glue, she finds her understanding of her mother deepening, finds her grandmother wasn't nearly as wonderful as a mother, and finds that they are actually becoming real friends. And on top of this, she finds herself falling by another new kid, a boy who seems almost as out of place as she is....
I never did quite warm to Sam, who I found too pushy and thoughtless, but I did very much appreciate the way she becomes more aware of what her mother is really like as a person, and more understanding of the circumstances that made her who she became. This is really well done. And I found the romance sub-plot fun as well (and was glad to see Sam doing some critical thinking about her boyfriend back in the present; there were many red flags that she was ignoring). What was the most fun though were the trials and tribulations of being a modern girl back in the 1990s, and the target audience should get a kick out of this as well.
In short, an engrossing read with enough thought-provoking-ness to keep it from being just fluffy fun, and more than enough fun to make it more than an emotionally heavy mother-daughter relationship story.
Time travel wise--Sam lucked out here. She finds a place to stay with a kind woman who she knows in her own time as an assisted living resident with dementia, and this woman not only gives her food and shelter but also money. The mechanics of the time travel were satisfactory, and the changes made in the past did have ripples, but the biggest change was in Sam's greater understanding of her mother, her grandmother, and her (now ex) boyfriend.
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