Review: Throwback

Throwback by Maurene Goo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Samantha Kang has always had more in common with her grandmother (Halmoni) than with her own mother, she feels like nothing she does is ever right for her mother, Priscilla. Priscilla is a first generation Korean-American and she seems to have obliterated everything Korean from her life, they don't eat Korean food at home, she doesn't speak Korean, even to her mother, and seems to have a similarly fraught relationship with her own mother which apparently dates back to when Priscilla failed to be voted Prom Queen.

After Halmoni has a heart attack Priscilla and Samantha have a massive argument, culminating in Sam saying she hated her mother. Sam downloads and books a taxi app ,but instead of taking her home it takes her back to 1995 when her mother was at high school and running for Prom Queen. It seems that Sam has been sent back in time to help Priscilla win the vote for Prom Queen (and thereby fix the problems between Priscilla and Halmoni) and she can't return to her own time until her task has been completed.

At first Sam finds it a shock to the system, in her reality their school is a veritable melting pot of diversity and she finds it hard to negotiate the 1990s high school cliques of jocks and goths and the Asian kids etc.

If you loved Back to the Future, or Freaky Friday, or maybe Thirteen Going on Thirty like I did then I think you'll enjoy this.

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