There’s noth­ing quite like an absorb­ing time-trav­el sto­ry. One can only mar­vel at the chal­lenge an author faces when con­struct­ing a tale that con­spires to con­fuse us and amuse us. In this fun yet mes­sage-laden book, two bar mitz­vah boys, Finn and Ezra, end­less­ly relive the day of their bar mitz­vahs, à la the movie Ground­hog Day. Although their par­ties were held at the same cater­ing hall, the two boys were pre­vi­ous­ly unac­quaint­ed. Nei­ther of them is able to progress to the next day. They are stuck in the same loop, no mat­ter how hard they try to move on.

The boys dif­fer in many ways, but they become friends as they try to fig­ure out what’s hap­pen­ing and devise a plan to escape the frus­trat­ing time loop. Finn is the only child of dot­ing par­ents, while Ezra feels lost with­in a sea of sib­lings. Ezra comes from a more tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish back­ground, while Finn’s fam­i­ly adheres to a more sec­u­lar lifestyle. They each stretch and grow as they learn more about each other’s life. Their mutu­al under­stand­ing and empa­thy even­tu­al­ly put a stop to the bar mitz­vah time loop.

Fun­ny and well writ­ten, this fast-paced nov­el will win over many readers.