Author Highlight: Rachel Lynn Solomon

Our next author highlight is Rachel Lynn Solomon whose books tackle complex emotions with emphasis on personal development entwined with spiritual faith in some cases. Which sounds really sophiscated but I love how she is able to blend heavy topics into typical YA rom-coms.

My library only had three of her books, and one which I already reviewed, Today Tonight Tomorrow, so I’ll just focus on her debut and her latest book. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get my hands on her others soon.

Solomon’s debut You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone is a dual POV of twin sisters, Adina and Tovah who your typical opposite twins who are dealing with a emotionally draining homelife as they watch their mother decline from Huntingdon’s disease. For those who don’t know, like I did when I first saw the name, it kills your brain’s neurons so slowly you lose function of your body movements, your mood changes, you lose your memory, and then you eventually die as you forget to eat, can’t move and you’re fed from a tube and there’s no cure so it’s heartbreaking all around. It’s also genetic so on their eighteenth birthday, they take a test to see if they have the inheritance gene.

Adina does. Tovah doesn’t.

Tovah wanted to know, as the future med student she’s very driven and needs to have plans and goals. Adina didn’t so it’s a cruel irony to find out that she may eventually lose all the things that make her, her like her graceful hands that make her a viola prodigy, lose her personality and memory. Even before the test results, the sisters had been estranged for years from a personal rift, but they secretly had hoped the results would have bonded them. It only drives them further apart.

Adina has always felt that she has been underestimated and undervalued compared to her sister. Tovah was going to be the doctor, her goals were worthy while her family think her dreams to become a viola soloist are less stable. It’s not like she’s going to change the world like Tovah is. But she is going to move people with her music and with the test results, she feels she has to act now to get everything she wants done before the disease takes hold. This drives her to act more recklessly than usual, initiating a sexual relationship with her much older viola tutor. A pattern with her as she gravitates to older men since she doesn’t connect with kids her age and thinks she so mature. This leads to a dangerous spiral as she clings to her tutor for more than he is willing to give, and lashes out at her sister whom she views as flaunting her happiness. Tovah will go on to have a long life, Tovah will get to have a career, family, everything and Adina is determined to destroy that happiness. Maybe it will be easier on her family if they hate her, they won’t mourn as much as when she’s gone.

Meanwhile, Tovah struggles with the guilt of knowing she’s lucky. She knows she’s lucky but also feels incredibly aimless and helpless when her carefully constructed plans fall apart. She’s unable to reach out to her sister, not when she also feels jealous of Adina as the pretty, confidant one. Her guilt conflicting with her anger that Adina is using her illness to justify her bad behavior.

There’s a lot of heavy stuff and while both do some pretty mean things to each other, Solomon keeps your firmly on their side as you see how their negative headspace is exacerbated by the threat of Huntington looming over them. Amidst it all is conversations about romance, sexuality and how it ties with the girls’ self worth, how Judiasm makes Tovah feel connected to her heritage but Adina feels constrained, and more poignantly, the tough road of both girls finding a way to embrace the future and each other.

See You Yesterday is a Groundhog-day esque romance where Barnett’s thrill with going to college is quashed but an awful first day. Her high school ex-friend is her roommate, she meets the most infruriating boy who humilates her in physics and then she accidentally burns down a frat house.

She just wants to forget it ever happened but she doesn’t forget. Everyone else seems to, but that’s because it’s September 21st all over again. After a few days in the time loop and wrapping her head around that she’s in a time loop, Barnett finds out the annoying physics boy-Miles-yeah, he’s been stuck in this time loop for months.

While the physics went over my head like it did Barnett’s, it’s clear that they have to do something to fix this. Ony nothing works-not good deeds, or improving themselves, or revenge, or facing personal demons. But as two days turn into 20, Solomon creates a riveting friendship turned romance. The two take advantage of thier situation to do some fun things like fill the drained pool as a ballpit and adopt fifteen puppies, growing closer as they let go and share about their personal demons.

Barnett’s still struggling to let down her prickly armor after four years of bullying in high school and the fear that she may be too unlovable to be wanted. Miles is overcompensating for his more trouble-making brother, and struggles to let go for fear of messing up. And though the situation’s totally crazy, it works like maybe the personified universe wants them to meet and wants them to improve but then why won’t it let them go on to Thursday?

Readers will enjoy Solomon’s combination of physic theories with pop-culture time travel references but provides her own twist as Barnett operates on the idea that the universe is trying to make her change for the better but comes to realize that’s not why she’s stuck in the time loop. Nonetheless, it’s not up to the universe to change her for the better nor will being in college reset the baggage she is holding from high school. That has to come from within herself and take active steps to become the person she wants to be.

Now there is a miscommuncation issue in the middle and a third act break-up which prevented me from making it a five star rating (You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone gets all the stars) because the miscommunication was confusing with the timey-whimey shenanigans. The third-act breakup just felt unnecessary since it gets resolved in two chapters.

However, she does a brilliant job in showing how disorienting the time loop is as their memories of the days blur together and Barnett goes through the stages of feeling from disbelief to euphoria in doing whatever she wants to a breakdown of doing whatever she wants because time doesn’t matter anymore to grief.

And in all of Solomon’s books she does a wonderful job in tackling mental health and the importance of communication in finding a way to help yourself and address your problems. She also nicely adds Jewish rep which is usually secular in nature but very important to the characters as they address microaggressions. Plus she reverses the usual trope where the female protagonists are usually the sexually experienced ones (with the exception of Adina) and the males are all virgins.

I really enjoy Solomon’s books and how she hops from different subsections of the YA genre like time travel to realism to senior year hijinks. At least one of them will tickle your fancy.