If you haven’t read a book by Jasmine Warga yet, then now is the right time to do so. Warga is known for her expert storytelling and her flowing prose, especially when facing challenging topics. And The Shape of Thunder was no exception.
The Shape of Thunder follows two young girls, Cora and Quinn, who used to be best friends. They haven’t spoken to each other in almost an entire year, after Quinn’s brother Parker initiated a school shooting, killing multiple people, including himself and Cora’s sister Mabel. Now, Cora’s and Quinn’s friendship seems irreparably broken as they both try to traverse their own landscape of grief, guilt and loss. Quinn doesn’t know how to keep her brother’s past actions from her future while Cora cannot move past what happened because no one in her family really talks about it. On the day of Cora’s twelfth birthday, Quinn and Cora reunite as Quinn has an idea on how to fix what’s been broken: she is going to go back in time and prevent her brother from getting their father’s gun, setting things right. But she needs Cora’s help—and scientific mind—to do it.
These are my favourite kinds of middle-grade stories. The ones where you are inexorably changed because of how profound and terrifying the subject matter is, yet also feel the underlying pulse of hope coursing through the plot. The Shape of Thunder focused on the aftermath of a school shooting instead of including gory details about what happened. This, of course, was a perfect choice considering this story is aimed at middle-grade readers, and it also gave the narrative enough space to really flesh out Cora and Quinn as young, struggling girls who do not know how to cope with the losses they’ve both suffered. Both are unable to speak about what happened, either because their parents won’t let them discuss it or because they feel guilty for bringing it up. I couldn’t put this book down because Cora and Quinn’s attempts to set things right was just so justifiable. Both are dealing very differently with their grief, either by going to therapy or trying to come up with solutions on how to set things right, and I thought that was such an interesting portrayal, to showcase that there is no right way to get over a traumatic event and the losses you’ve suffered. Grief is something highly personal which isn’t often discussed. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for someone else and Warga explores this beautifully in The Shape of Thunder.
The grief Cora and Quinn experience is palpable, the tension and accusation between them over things left unsaid keeps you flipping the pages and even though you kind of know how the story will end, you still cross your fingers and hope against hope that these best friends find their way back to each other and maybe, just maybe, help to prevent Parker’s actions from ever happening again.
A heartbreaking tale of fraught friendships and the harrowing bond between guilt and grief, The Shape of Thunder is a profound exploration of the scars we bear after a traumatic event and how we can rebuild broken bridges instead of burning them.
The Shape of Thunder is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of May 11th 2021.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Cora hasn’t spoken to her best friend, Quinn, in a year.
Despite living next door to each other, they exist in separate worlds of grief. Cora is still grappling with the death of her beloved sister in a school shooting, and Quinn is carrying the guilt of what her brother did.
On the day of Cora’s twelfth birthday, Quinn leaves a box on her doorstep with a note. She has decided that the only way to fix things is to go back in time to the moment before her brother changed all their lives forever—and stop him.
In spite of herself, Cora wants to believe. And so the two former friends begin working together to open a wormhole in the fabric of the universe. But as they attempt to unravel the mysteries of time travel to save their siblings, they learn that the magic of their friendship may actually be the key to saving themselves.
