Common Sense Media Review
By Mary Eisenhart
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Lots of heart, silly time travel in divorce-themed tale.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 14+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Read
Parent and Kid Reviews
What's the Story?
Back in elementary school, Tamara Caldwell started going by Mari because she was already sick of her classmates going "See you tomorrow, Tamara." As the title SHINE UNTIL TOMORROW (taken from the Beatles' 1968 song "Let It Be") suggests, the narrative riffing on Tamara/Tomorrow is about to kick into high gear, as it's now 2007 and 17-year-old Mari, rummaging uninvited through her mom's closet, discovers a 45 rpm single of a song called "Tamara Moonlight," which, it turns out, was "our song" for her now-divorced parents, the song she was named for and that became her infant lullaby. In the wake of the epic argument with her mom that follows, she storms out the door of her suburban Marin County, California, home, jumps on her bike, and hits the road -- only to crash into a tree avoiding an oncoming car, be knocked unconscious, and wake up in 1967.
Is It Any Good?
The time-travel plot is implausibly packed with convenient coincidence, but there's a lot of heart and relatable emotion in Carla Malden's tale of a 2007 teen plopped into the Summer of Love. Skeptical readers of Shine Until Tomorrow will wonder, for example, why nobody in 1967 seems to notice that they're getting currency from 2007, and why the city fathers of tony Kentfield in Marin County have ignored the presence of a wrecked hippie van by the side of the road for 40 years. But there's a lot of emotional insight, and the lively narrative captures quite a bit of the sheer overload of being a sheltered suburban teen landing on the corner of Haight and Ashbury in the spring of 1967.
And there are some great moments, as here, when narrator Mari expresses what it feels like to be a kid of divorce as she listens to the weasely answering machine message in which her dad is making it clear he doesn't want to see her because he'd rather hang with his much-younger girlfriend: "Between work and the new girlfriend, a good-sized crack has opened up in my dad's life -- turns out it's just the right size for me to fall into. That's the thing about divorce that parents don't get. Once they get together with a new significant other, you're just a satellite orbiting their shiny new planet. Doesn't mean they don't want to have you touch down every now and then, but if the timing doesn't work out just right for a link-up, there's always the next rotation."
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about time-travel aspect in Shine Until Tomorrow. Why are stories about a character who goes to another time, has adventures, and is transformed in some way so popular? What other time-travel stories do you like?
If, like Mari, you found yourself 40 years in the past, what would you find most difficult to deal with? What might be really great?
Do you have any older friends and family members who remember the Summer of Love? Have they told you any stories? Are they like the events in Shine Until Tomorrow, or completely different?
Book Details
- Author :
- Genre : Coming of Age
- Topics : Fantasy ( Magic ) , Friendship , History
- Book type : Fiction
- Publisher : Rare Bird
- Publication date : January 12, 2021
- Publisher's recommended age(s) : 14 - 18
- Number of pages : 304
- Available on : Nook, Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, Apple Books, Kindle
- Last updated : September 29, 2025
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