After talking Lila into letting her borrow a daguerreotype of Robert Cornelius, the man she is researching, Saskia makes a startling discovery.

Lila works at the library in a nearby university, and when one of Saskia’s assignments leads her to research daguerreotypes, Lila offers to sneak her into the library’s closed collection room. So she is surprised when she and Lila become fast friends. Saskia doesn’t expect to make many friends at her new school–at least not quickly. Sixteen-year-old Saskia Brown has just moved to a new town with her dad after discovering her mother has been sleeping with a much younger teacher at her school. Mercury Boys is a story of family, friendship, and love, but not a traditional story. I received an advanced egalley from Books Forward in exchange for an honest review.

date to Mercury Boys by Chandra Prasad! This book hits shelves today, August 3, 2021. The hitch: she can see him only in her dreams. She is somehow able to visit the man in the portrait: Robert Cornelius, a brilliant young inventor from the nineteenth century. One day while visiting her only friend at her part-time library job, Saskia encounters a vial of liquid mercury, then touches an old daguerreotype-the precursor of the modern-day photograph-and makes a startling discovery. After her life is upended by divorce and a cross-country move, 16-year-old Saskia Brown feels like an outsider at her new school-not only is she a transplant, she’s biracial in a population of mostly white students.