Gimme a Call by Sarah Mlynowski Ages 12+ 320 pages Delacorte April 2010 Hardcover     Ever wished you could travel back in time and tell your younger self to take a different path so your current self would have a better life? That’s exactly the opportunity that presents itself to 17-year-old Devi when her water-soaked cell phone stops working – except to make calls to her 14-year-old self. Reeling after her boyfriend, Bryan, decides to go to college in another country, Devi faces the prospect of attending senior prom without a date. For that matter, she’s without friends, too, because her entire high school life has revolved around Bryan. Without him, she’s got nothing. Once she connects to younger Devi, her first instruction to herself is to stay the heck away from Bryan so that he never becomes her boyfriend in the first place. The trouble with her plan is that every change she makes in the past has an immediate effect on the future (her present), and some things are actually worse than being dumped by a guy. Through trial and error, older Devi stumbles her way through the maze of possibilities, trying to find just the right changes to make her heart stop breaking for Bryan. Giving her younger self the winning lottery numbers seems like a great idea (and honestly, isn’t that what we’d all do?) but living in a mansion comes with a price. Persuading her younger self to study harder gets them into a better college, but it isn’t just about the Devis – her actions impact her friends and family, as well, and not always in a good way. Gimme a Call is a clever take on the time-travel tale, and Mlynowski handles the ever-shifting reality deftly. The two ages of Devi are particularly well done, with each girl drawn as a unique and independent character yet clearly the same in all the ways that matter. There is certainly a lesson to be learned from the back-and-forth, here-and-there nature of Devi’s life, but it’s a shadowy theme nicely concealed in the background of this wacky and wonderful tale. Gimme a Call is just rollicking good fun for any age group, and certainly one of my favorite books of the year.     web reviews   Deborah Adams/2010 for curled up with a good kid's book   For grown-up fiction, nonfiction and speculative fiction book reviews, visit our sister site Curled Up With a Good Book (www.curledup.com)