When dealing with high school, it’s hard enough being a normal teenager that has to go through all the teenage drama and adapt to the changing hormones that come along with being a teenager. For Maddie Flynn, being a teenage high school student becomes a lot harder with the added distraction of being able to see someone’s death date when she looks at them.

In the book When, by Victoria Laurie, the author portrays a main character that has the strange ability to see the date of someone’s death on their foreheads since as early as she can remember. After her father dies in a tragic police accident, her mother forces her to read and tell people’s death dates as a means to have more money flowing into the house.

This source of income eventually becomes problematic to Maddie when the son of one of her clients ends up murdered. After accurately predicting the date of the son’s death, Maddie quickly becomes the prime suspect in the investigation of the murder With the problems Maddie is facing with the investigation plus her weird abilities, Maddie becomes even more of a social outcast and the bullying she faces throughout the school day intensifies.

The book is told from a first person point of view with Maddie as the narrator. As a whole, the book is not a stereotypical murder mystery where the main character naively tries to solve a murder investigation and prevails against all odds. Maddie doesn’t launch an investigation with a bunch of miscreants and finds all the clues that the police were to inexperienced to find. Instead, Maddie tries her best to keep her life in balance and to keep the obstacles from overcoming her and what she wants in life.

Many readers can relate to Maddie. Though she is a prime suspect in a murder investigation, Maddie faces many obstacles that a reader can face in everyday life. Throughout the novel, Maddie faces struggles at home and in family life with an alcoholic mother. A lot of people in everyday life face struggles at home. Whether it is from fighting with siblings or something deeper, most of the times, there is some kind of strife present.

Also, Maddie and other characters in the novel meet the challenges of losing a loved one. At some point in everyone’s lives, they are faced with losing a loved one. It is something that is unavoidable and the author portrays people dealing with this trauma in various ways. This means that a variety of readers can relate to different characters in their journey to find peace in the turmoil

A strong theme throughout this novel is perseverance. Like any novel, the characters face a lot of conflict throughout the plot. They need to persevere through the turmoil and find that even though that life will be changed, that everything will be fine in the end.

The book When by Victoria Laurie is a novel that can be added to everyone’s ‘to read’ list. This book deviates from the norm in a positive way that can be liked by people of all ages.