Murder of Crows discussion

Time Will Tell by Barry Lyga

Summary:
Four teens have dug up the time capsule that their parents buried in 1986 and never bothered to recover. But in addition to the expected ephemera of mixtapes, Walkmans, photographs, letters, toys, and assorted junk, Elayah, Liam, Marcie, and Jorja discover something sinister: a hunting knife stained with blood and wrapped with a note. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to kill anyone."
As the action alternates between the present day and 1986, the mystery unfolds and the sins of the past echo into today. The teens haven't just unearthed a time capsule: they've also dug up pain and secrets that someone--maybe one of their own parents--is willing to kill for.

My thoughts:
I am a huge fan of Barry Lyga. His book series I Hunt Killers is my top favorite book series and I have been on the lookout to find a book to match it. When I saw that he was releasing Time Will Tell, I was so excited that I bought it immediately. Since then, it has been sitting on my shelf because I am worried that it won't live up to his other books.

I was told before reading the book that it's hard to make the relationship connections between the past and present characters so I tried hard to make those connections from the beginning of the book. However, there were points where I lost track of who some people were to other people and I questioned if I had guessed right because there is no place where it outright says that this person is this kid’s parent (besides Elayah and Marcus of course). It all doesn't sort itself out until 370 pages in.

The plot of the story didn’t disappoint, however there were some things that I did have a problem with. The first being the interaction between the present day kids. It's like the author was never a teenager and hasn't met one in his life. The 1986 teens were a little more genuine in their dialogue so it wasn’t all bad, just a little bad. The conversations felt very staged and cheesy, just very theatrical.

Even when the parents of the present day are talking to their kids, it was still a little odd in the interactions. It bothers me when people refer to others as “brother/sister,” “my little girl,” “daughter/son,” etc. Think about your siblings, kids, and/or friends. Do you refer to them by what the relationship is between you two?

I also wasn't a fan of the flirting in the present day plot. Especially between Elayah and Liam there was a lot of “I like you but I don’t think you would like such a weirdo like me.” coming from the both of them and it was too lovey dovey and childish for my liking. I caught myself rolling my eyes a few times which I was disappointed with because the author did so well with romantic connections with previous books.

Even though in the two timelines, they were all in their senior year (so very close to the same age), it seemed like the 1986 plot characters were more mature in their relationships, behaviors, dialect, etc. Even the same characters from 1986 all grown up in the present plot were cringy to listen to with all the “Kids these days don’t know what this was. It was so popular back in my day.” “Kids these days with your phones and technology.” It was just too unnatural.

The present day timeline is where I seem to have most of my issues. It just had more of a young adult genre feel even though it is not. I don’t think the past timeline alone would’ve been good as a stand alone, I just wish the present day was written better.