Your Life Has Been Delayed is a quick, sweet read about adjusting to life when you get off a plane 25 into the future. Manifest vibes to a T.

It’s a little juvenile, but it truly does fit within the YA bracket. I found it easy to put down but once I got into the swing of it, I flew through the book.

It was a little jarring sharing the same first name as the MC, and I was getting so agitated by the cotton wool everyone was pulling over her eyes about what was going on. So many things could’ve been avoided if they’d just been honest with Jenny.

The romance was sweet. I didn’t know how to feel about it at first, it did kind of sit odd with me (iykyk) but I ended up really like the full circle notion of it.

The concept of this book, along with the writing was strong, and I personally didn’t feel there was any lapse in plot. So much of this book is about Jenny’s adjustment and it really does highlight how much technology has changed, and the consequences of that.

I loved the pop culture references, and I’d definitely recommend this book if you just want to read an easy, awkward coming off age 25 years after she was supposed to story.

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for giving me an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

While the premise for this book was extremely strong, it felt like it faltered somewhere in execution. I thought Jenny was an excellent protagonist and her involvement with the newspaper was a fascinating aspect because of how much news and the consumption of news has changed over the years. I think that Jenny herself and her personality and passions worked very well here. What I didn’t feel worked was some of the other plot aspects ESPECIALLY the romance.

The jump from 1995 to 2020 represents a huge shift in technology and just the landscape of life in general. There are so many interesting things to be explored. What is it like to move from dial-up to hi-speed wifi? What is it like to go from huge bulky computers to travelling with incredibly advanced tech in your pocket? Fashion has changed. Pop culture has changes. There were plenty of avenues to explore here and the book does touch on all of these but mostly in very surface ways. Apart from the various changes the news industry went under Jenny doesn’t seem too concerned with changes. She stops curling her bangs, but otherwise she doesn’t adapt to trends of the era simply saying she doesn’t like them. She wants to learn what she missed in pop culture and somehow the thing high schoolers are fixated on is…The Hunger Games? There’s no mention of Harry Potter or A Game of Thrones. No mention of any huge series that are currently popular.

The 1990s are a beacon of nostalgic pop culture and we don’t really hear about any of it outside of 90210. Likewise the pop culture of 2020 is mostly glossed over outside of The Hunger Games which isn’t as relevant as represented here. It felt like a lot of the fun points of the premise were missed in favour of the main plots of the story. The first plot is about the negative reactions people have to the return of Flight 237. How people thought it was a hoax and how the passengers are struggling dealing with family and friends after they returned from a 25 year absence. This is ultimately an excellent plot though the ending is slapdash and ridiculous. It is the other main plot thread that I feel wastes times.

The romance in this book is incredibly awkward and left a bad taste in my mouth. I cannot explain why without spoiling so this is a warning for spoilers ahead! Jenny falls for her best friend and boyfriend’s son – who looks a great deal like her boyfriend from 1995. There’s nothing WRONG with this exactly but it’s uncomfortable. The relationship Jenny tries to have with Angie also feels uncomfortable. I understand they were best friends 25 years ago but I don’t feel like, as an adult, I’d be able to have a valuable relationship with my best friend if she was still 17 and I’m only 27. What makes it worse is that there are PLENTY of other characters if there needed to be a romance and the choice to make her fall for her boyfriend’s son is just extremely weird.

I felt like the romance detracted from the story, and I would have much preferred a focus on the relationship between Jennifer and her best friends DAUGHTER JoJo. However, the younger female characters are either complete bitches or Jenny’s best friends with no in between. There was an attempt to tie up JoJo’s storyline nice and neat at the end but it felt a little ridiculous. Everything about the ending sort of felt rushed and silly if I’m being honest. The closer I got to the end of the book the more and more I wondered how they would possibly end things.

Ultimately this is a really fun premise for a story but I feel like it focused on all the wrong things. I would have loved more detail on Jenny adapting to the world and less on her finding a boyfriend. Jenny adapting to 2020 is largely her seeing advancements/new things, learning slightly about them and then deciding she doesn’t really care for them and continuing to live her life the way she used to which doesn’t really make for an exciting narrative.

The first few chapters of this book, and the premise itself, had me HOOKED. As an interesting take on a reverse Back-to-the-Future, it didn't take much to get me to pick up Your Life Has Been Delayed. Our story follows Jenny, who boards an airplane that takes off in 1995...and lands twenty-five years later. Jenny's entire life is suddenly history, and she is faced with the startling paths her friends have taken in her absence.
As a Gen Z-er, this book gave me an insight into what my parents' lives might have been like as a teenager--which was interesting to say the least. Jenny was thrown into a strange world of technology, a stark contrast from her old life. However, she as a protagonist was incredibly naive and, as a result, often annoying. The story was brilliant. The narrator not so much.
I enjoyed this book; it was a short, light read, mildly humorous and sprinkled with romance. But while the idea was wonderfully creative and intriguing, the execution of this book was somewhat lacking in my opinion. The plot was rushed in some places and slow in others. I needed more from it; as a YA book, I expected an overarching theme or moral, but if there was one, it was unclear. I didn't finish the book with a sense of finality and fulfillment. I put it down and said "huh" after the last sentence. Though it kept me entertained, I didn't feel that there was anything to gain from reading it, if that makes sense. So it depends on what you walk into this book wanting: I like to be intellectually stimulated, and this book, unfortunately, did not provide that. When I stepped back and thought about certain things that happened, one word came to mind: weird. In an uncomfortable way.
I'd recommend this book to the younger side of YA readers, though anyone might enjoy it. If I were to describe it simply, I would say to think of vanilla ice cream. That's what this book was. Simple and full of unrealized potential.

YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED by Michelle I. Mason is a coming of age novel where the main character has barely aged in 25 years. That's because seventeen-year- old Jenny boarded flight 237 from New York City to Saint Louis in 1995, landing in 2020. She stayed the same, but her younger brother and high school friends are now adults with busy lives and she is learning to negotiate 21st century high school (including social media) from some of their children. And that is before dealing with her overly protective parents who keep secrets and do not even let her drive. Mason provides an easy (though slow at points) read which explores how dependent we have become on our devices and online persona. YOUR LIFE HAS BEEN DELAYED is a light escape best suited to middle school and younger high school students.

I got approved for an ARC on Netgalley, and so I started this book on my phone. Then my preorder came a little early, so I finished with reading the physical copy. The book explores some fun concepts, and I definitely recommend it.

While Your Life Has Been Delayed is based around time travel, the focus of the book is definitely contemporary. Jenny is only somewhat concerned about the why of what happened. She is instead dealing with the day-to-day effects of traveling 25 years into the future, and what that means for her life. Everyone she knew is older and she's suddenly famous. The book has a lot of twists and turns, and I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't comment too much on what happens next. I will say, Michelle Mason did a great job of making me feel what Jenny was feelings. When she was felt betrayed, so did I. When Jenny was angry, I was angry on her behalf. When she was sad, I practically wanted to cry. The emotions came off really well, and they don't usually hit me that strongly.

I highly recommend Your Life Has Been Delayed, though I will say, if you are expecting it to lean in to the sci-fi elements, it really doesn't. It's contemporary as a twist, which is exactly what the story needs it to be!

This book was absolutely fantastic. I've already added it to our library collection and will recommend it to students.

This did not work for me. From the beginning the story felt a bit more middle grade than YA. I was interested in the time travel component, thinking this would be a modern day 13 Going On 30, but instead it just felt off for me.

The main character, Jenny, seems to act younger than her 17 years, and I really struggled with Jenny's motivations. She wanted to see her family and friends, totally understandable, but then was always shocked that things move on without her. I understand that she did travel through time, but I was expecting Jenny or those around her, to have her spend a bit more time coming to terms with what happened, where she is, and that things have moved on without her.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this eARC.

Michelle I. Mason tells the story of Jenny, a teenager who boards a plane in 1995 and lands 25 years later. It’s a fascinating story of how you would adapt to a future when you’re just plunked there.

I was Jenny’s age in 1995, and I hoped to have a little more nostalgia in the story - the music, the clothes, etc. 90210 does get a shout out, but I wanted more.

That said, this is a great escape from our own reality with Covid. Definitely recommending this to my patrons!

I thought this would be more like the show manifest but instead I got a fish out of water story with a romance that felt tacked on. I dont know, there was just something off about it.

Somewhat like the show "Manifest": when flight 237 lands, it is discovered that the flight from New York to St. Louis on August 2, 1995 has jumped in time 25 years. This is the story of how Jenny, a seventeen year old girl on that plane handles it once she is thrust into the future after being missing for 25 years. This book was SO GOOD and kept me thinking late into the night.

I enjoyed the authors writing style in this book more than I like the story as a whole. On a positive note, I loved the Springs and the other passengers of the flight. They were supportive and added additional angles of the changes that happened. As for the rest of the story the plot was like watching Manifest, the TV show. While it was well written the fact that it was so similar to the show does take away from it. I also did not like the romance element of it at all, it was cute but creepy and was not something I liked. While this story wasn’t my favorite I would like to see other books by this author cause the writing was enjoyable.

Based on other reviews of this book, I decided not to buy it for my library. That was a mistake. It was a lot of fun to read, especially since Jenny and I would be the same age had she not been sucked into some kind of timehole. Jenny was at times angsty and obnoxious which, seeing as how she is 17 years old and just lost 25 years in the blink of an eye, seems about right. Her strained relationships left me thinking more about her family and what it must be like to suddenly be raising a teenager again. Other reviewers complained that Mason took an interesting premise and made it into a love story but I don't think the love angle overpowered the rest of the story.

a quick read, exploring what losing 25 years can do to a person. jenny is a compelling narrator, and reads very much her age, as she leaves the 90s and enters 2020 in a big, unexpected way. i really enjoyed watching jenny navigate through her old relationships in new ways, while being accosted by a world that seems to see her as other. however, there’s a certain lack of something in this book—be it something more driving a conflict than conspiracy theorists or falling for your former bestie and your (ex?) boyfriend’s son—and honestly the way jenny greets her brother’s wife is just so dated. she’s seen black people before, considering the impact they’ve had in the 90s, so it just felt stupid and like a way to point out the racial difference. like she doesn’t do this her newspaper rival, who is asian, but i digress. overall, the sentiment is nice enough, but nothing to write home about honestly.

This was a really interesting and unique book! I do feel like I was expecting more of the mc figuring out how she got where she is rather than her processing what has happened to her and getting acclimated to where she is. A lot of this book focused on her emotions and what she was going through and just generally her figuring out her brand new life and her relationships with new and her old friends and family as well. While that part was great and well written and it did keep me engaged throughout the novel, I was always expecting more, I think. I wanted to know why this time travel happened, and I wanted the main character to explore that more. I think I was thinking that they would explore this more because of one of the characters introduced early in the novel, Art, who was so interested in what was going on, and seemed to be really smart and interested in figuring out problems. Throughout the book I was really trying to figure out his purpose in the book, and honestly I still can't really figure it out. Comic relief maybe? I just thought he would play a more important role. Other than that it was a really interesting book! I just think some characters were introduced for no reason or when the character is suspicious about something I feel like it wasn't explained enough when she loses that suspicion. Also the romance gave me bad vibes and the love interest made me cringe slightly with all his random pop culture references

This was a very emotional story, which led me to shed my share of tears as Jenny tries to navigate a world she was thrown into after getting onto an airplane in 1995 and landing in 2020. Her family and friends have aged, left this world, gotten married, had children who are now “her age”. Jenny tries her hardest to work her way through conspiracy theories, betrayals, and finding love in a somewhat unusual way.

I have never read 300 pages so fast, I finished this novel in about 4.5 hours devouring each page. Would recommend to fans of time travel phenomenon and the TV Show ‘Manifest’.

Rating: 3.5 stars. I thought the writing was great and I would certainly read another story by Mason but the relationship was sort of cringey and I felt Jenny was sort of shallow in a way. However, I do think her character was well developed to be that teenager full of angst.I am getting on a plane to Europe in two weeks and frankly I’m a bit nervous now tbh. Stay tuned to see if I end up time traveling as well!

🤘 Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury YA for an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I was immediately hooked by the fresh concept in Your Life Has Been Delayed and as a teen of the 90's could easily put myself in the MCs shoes. I thought the writing was well done and I loved the romantic twist as well as the tough choice the MC had to make in the end. Great debut novel!

3.5 I liked that this was a more contemporary approach to Manifest but Jenny did not seem like a 17 year old and more like a 13 year old which was a little frustrating. It was interesting to think about how much technology and everything has changed since 1995 and I liked that aspect a lot.

I thought this was an easy, enjoyable read. There wasn't anything about it that struck me as particularly unique or ground-breaking, but it was interesting enough and I read it in a single day.

An interesting story with a good plot, but overall I found it a little... Juvenile. Jenny didn't seem like she was a senior in high school, she behaved more like a middle-schooler. And I don't know why but I don't like the cover. Maybe I just don't like cartoonish book covers in general? Also, Jenny is described twice in the book as having strawberry blonde hair, and the girl on the cover is just blonde. (Pet peeve: when the cover image doesn't match the story!)

That being said, I loved how the differences between 1995 and 2020 were highlighted! A LOT did change in those 25 years! I can't imagine having to catch up. I was annoyed right along with Jenny when people kept hiding things from her "to protect her"!

Overall, interesting story. This book should probably be marketed towards middle-grade or young YA though. Maybe ages 12-14 I'd say.

Your Life Has Been Delayed had an interesting premise. Our main character Jenny boards a flight to head back home but when the plane reaches its destination they have jumped 25 years into the future. From 1995 to 2020 there were a ton of changes and understandably come with some big adjustments for Jenny. The story follows her has she navigates these changes. Unfortunately, this book turned from an interesting case of time travel to a contemporary romance that leaves one with more questions than answers.

Thank you Netgalley for an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.