Book Review- The Returners

By Gemma Malley

Published by Bloomsbury Children's Books

Released March, 2010

Source: from Bloomsbury

4 stars- I enjoyed it and recommend picking it up

Will Hodge is miserable. His mother is dead, his father's political leanings have grown radical, and his friends barely talk to him. To make matters worse, he's having nightmares about things like concentration camps. Then Will notices he's being followed by people who claim to know him from another time in history. It turns out they are Returners-people who have been reincarnated and whose destiny is to recall the atrocities they have witnessed in the past. Will, too, is a Returner-only something about his memories is different: he wasn't just a witness to the events, he may have made them happen. Now Will must choose to confront the cruelty he's known in his past lives or be doomed to repeat it....again.

This is one of those books I picked up, not excepting to be completely lost in an amazing story, and yet I find I was hopelessly lost in the book. Returners was not what I was excepting at all. Gemma Malley wove together perfectly historical facts, with her amazing world of Returners. People who come back reincarnated over and over again. They serve a purpose, to remember the lives they have lived.

Will Hodge is a character who has many layers and one I felt a range of emotions for. I felt bad for him, sympathized with him, wanted to hug him and tell him it would be alright, got really mad at him and yet towards the end, I really rallied behind him, hoping he would make the change he wanted to make. Will is a self-loathing teen boy, who's still coping with the death of this mother who was killed a few years ago. He is caught in the middle of his father's radical ways. Set in England, in the year 2016, Will finds that he's in the middle of a movement. Not only does he have to deal with an abusive, drunken father and not having any friends but, he's started to have very vivid disturbing dreams about parts of history other's would like to forget and he's being followed.

Will witnesses something, that could change not only the accuser's life for good, but it's the center of a bigger radical movement that his father is part of. Will finds he's a key player. He's the only witness to what he thinks he saw. His father wants him to lie about it, and his old friend Claire wants him to tell the police what he saw. Will feels as though he's going crazy. The people that are following him won't leave him alone and he's having a hard time remembering things, except for flashes of memories from various points from history's past.

When Will confronts the people who are following him, he finds he's a Returner, and they've been looking for him for 50 years. Returners have existed through out time, and come back again and again. They remember the worst things that humankind does to each other and are humanity's conscience. They are the protectors's of the insanity of humankind in times of distress. When Will is told he's destined to suffer, to remember these things (like he has done times before) and to feel the desperation and agony of humankind's choices, he chooses to believe he can change his destiny. It's not going to be as easy as he thinks. He finds out he's the cause of these horrible events. If he doesn't change the course of his destiny, he's going to be the cause of an even greater catastrophe.

With the help of Claire, Will knows he can make the change, but when his father forces him into his extremist ways, Will finds his determination for change shattered. Will is running out of time to save his one time friend and accuser of a crime he may or not have committed. Telling the police what he saw is going to cost him, but it can also be part of the change Will is determined to make.

Gemma brings to light, and has done so in a very tactful way, the horrible atrocities our world's history has played out over and over again. As a teenager, Will starts to remember being apart of that history. He caused some of it and other times he stood by, not wanting to be apart of it anymore. Her underlining message in the book is that we can all change. Will finds that standing up to his father, changing the course he's destined to repeat over and over again is going to be very hard, but can he do it? Will he make the change in time? Can one person's change alter the course of history?