MERCURY BOYS

An insecure teen girl becomes fascinated by daguerreotypes and time travel through dreams.

When everyone learns about her mom’s affair with a substitute teacher half her age, Saskia and her dad move from Arizona to Connecticut for a fresh start. Saskia is having trouble adjusting to her new reality and doesn’t feel like she fits in at school; she’s an outsider, mixed race, and not rich. A class assignment to study an early pioneer in photography and a subsequent visit to the university archive to see his original daguerreotype with new friend Lila results in an amazing discovery: Saskia can now visit the inventor in her dreams. In an effort to befriend the popular girls, Saskia shares her time travel secret and pressures Lila to help the rest of the group steal photos of their own, forming the Mercury Boys Club. Prasad explores power dynamics among teen girls through an interplay of various influences such as wealth, appearance, and race (Lila is Latinx, Saskia has a Black mom and White dad, and the other girls are White). Although the character development is not strong, depictions of the teens’ dysfunctional family lives are woven throughout the story, making the appeal of the club and the girls’ hysteria convincing. The speedy conclusion leaves a lot of unanswered questions, however, and readers will wonder what was actually true.

An interesting premise with uneven execution.