Not going to lie, when I read the description and saw time travel I was skeptical if I would enjoy Stealing Time. Time travel has always made my head hurt but thankfully Stealing Time has so much more to offer. The time travel speak gave me minimal head spinning and I absolutely loved Tori teaming up with her 80s version of her dad to stop a heist.

As a child of the 90s I was able to appreciate most of the references from traveling back in time and obviously some of the ridiculous things in 2020 (looking at you toilet paper hoarders!).

This was such a great read and I would like to give a huge thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of Stealing Time to read and review!

This is a fun time caper. In March 2020, as the world is shutting down, Tori’s parents have decided to separate, and Tori is packing up to move to Boston with her mom, while her father will stay in New York City. In the midst of this a news reporter calls to speak to her father about an event from 40 years ago. While looking up what he was talking about, she somehow ends up going back in time to 1980. I really enjoyed this fresh take on time travel.

Life isn’t looking too rosy for Tori. It’s the early days of the pandemic and she and her mom are about to move from New York City to Boston, to shelter with her aunt. Her parents are separating and Tori is saying goodbye to her dad. Not that she’s probably going to miss him a bunch: he’s always been grumpy.

Just as she and her mom are about to leave the apartment Tori has always known as home, she finds out that her dad’s late father was jailed years before for being involved in a jewelry heist.

As she’s ruminating on her discovery, Tori suddenly finds herself somewhere different — actually somewhen different. She’s still in her apartment; some things are the same and some things are different. And there’s a boy about her age living in HER room!

It just takes a short time to figure out that Bobby, the 15-year-old stranger, is actually her dad back in 1980. And the jewelry heist hasn’t happened yet.

They both figure out that they need to stop Bobby’s dad from getting involved in the theft. Of course, that’s easier said than done for two teenagers. But they’ve got to try.

Stealing Time is a time-travel book, sure, but that’s just a part of the plot. The heist (or the two kids’ attempts to stop it, or at least stop their dad/granddad from being blamed for it) is a bigger part. But the biggest part of the story is the relationship Tori gets to develop with her dad before he was her dad and he was just a nerdy kid. I love time travel and I love heists, and this scratched those itches OK, but I did like the sweetness of the family story the most.

This is definitely a book aimed at young adults, and the style and tone feels a bit more like it skews toward the younger part of that bracket. So the profanity seemed jarring to me; it didn’t fit with the overall feel of the book and the likely audience. It would have made much more sense for there to be no strong language and a lot less of the moderate profanity too.

Stealing Time doesn’t focus on an elaborate and gripping heist; neither is it a complicated, scientific time-travel tale. But it’s a cute story about family. Just don’t expect to hand it to younger readers because of its content.

Tori, a teenager living in New York during the pandemic of 2020, is transported back in time. She finds herself in her own bedroom, but now it belongs to Bobby, a teenaged boy in 1980. As the story progresses, we find out that Bobby is Tori’s dad, and that Tori seems to have been sent back to prevent Bobby’s dad Victor (her grandpa) for taking the blame for stealing an extremely valuable gem called the Desert Sun from the museum that he works at as Chief Gemologist.

The best part about this book was how well the authors captured the aura of 1980. It makes me realize all the things that have changed over 40 years. Having been born in the 1980s, nearly everything mentioned in the book was familiar to me, although there were a couple references that skimmed just over my head. No biggie, although this may affect a younger audience a bit more.

Overall, this book made for a sweet and light-hearted read. A little bit of swearing, but the story mostly centers around the strengthening of a father-daughter relationship, as they get to know each other outside of their traditional roles. I’d actually really like to see more books in the same vein, only with different time periods, since the authors wrote that so well.

Thank you to NetGalley and Linden Tree Press for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

A strange thing happened when I was reading this book. I very much liked the plot and the characters and the writing but I didn’t enjoy the actual reading of it. I felt like I was reading forever but making no progress. The only reason that I can guess is that I didn't like the chapters that were about the gang of thieves and I would zone out while reading them. I’m not sure that it was necessary to have quite so many of them and they were too long. But about the book… even though it might seem like a typical time-travel plot I felt like there was something different about this one. Tori is dragged back in time without any warning and faced with her exact circumstances but in 1980 instead of 2020. She is faced with her father as a kid her age and they have an entirely different relationship. Knowing her father (and several other characters) in two different times is a really interesting aspect of the story, and the way it is done seems new and different. I liked the buildup to the theft and the way it was done but what I really enjoyed was the last chapter, where Tori and her father talk about what knowing each other in two different eras means for the future. That point was, for me, such an important aspect of the story and I am happy that it was given the attention it deserved.
I would recommend this book to readers even though I had a hard time with parts of it. The story as a whole was worth the effort it took for me.
Thank you to the publisher for the ARC in return for a fair and unbiased review.

I loved how this one went! It had great themes and I loved how the characters were both written and developed. The storyline was interesting and I loved the entire aspect of it, the dual timelines are super interesting!!

As a fan of time-travel fiction, this book hits the mark. A great read for young adults, with just enough suspense, pathos, heart, mystery, and time-travel paradox to keep the pages turning. Great job!

Honestly, this was just a fun story. Time travel. Family drama. And of course, a diamond heist. I can’t really say too much without giving away big plot points, but it was definitely a fun read if you enjoy sci fi and pop culture references.

This YA book was a lot of fun. There was a dual timeline, but most of the book was set in the past. I’m also partial to any books that have an 80’s timeline. Loved the 80’s! The characters were well developed and the cover of the book is beautiful. Reading about how a teenager deals with not having the technology she is used to after traveling back in time was great. I liked the ending of the story which explained how things the main character did when she traveled back in time affected the present. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced reader’s copy.

15 year old Tori is experiencing the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020 Manhattan. Her parents are separating and her mother's about to take her to live in the Boston area. When she overhears a conversation her father is having, she ends up on the internet researching the theft of a rare diamond from the Museum of Natural History and the conviction and imprisonment of her grandfather for the theft. Then, all of a sudden, she's back in 1980 the same age as the boy who's going to become her father. Can she stop the theft of the diamond and get back to 2020?

This is a sweet YA time travel book with Jewish main characters and a diamond heist plot. While most of the POV is Tori's, there are a number of chapters from the POV of the gang of thieves. These read more like 1930s gangster characters than a 1980 criminal gang. Other than that issue, the rest of the book was well written, a bit more down on 1980 NYC than necessary, but on the whole a really engaging book.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

This young adult novel has it all; time travel, a heist, action, family drama and coming of age. The two main characters are likeable and well-developed characters. It was fun to see the difference in technology and eras between two teenagers 40 years apart. Watching a contemporary teenager navigate the 1980’s was fun but watching Tori struggle to explain 2020 to Bobby was even better. The setting of gritty 1980’s NYC to the same apartment in pandemic era NYC was a great addition to the story. The details of the differences in the apartment, down to what was on the walls, were well done. The plot was fast moving with an unexpected twist and a great ending. This was a real gem!

I always like a good time travel story and this was a pretty fun one. I liked the relationship between Bobby and Tori. The jewelry heist added a lot to the mystery of why Tori time traveled and how would she get back. I also liked the family aspect of the story. I thought it was a quick read that had me turning the page wanting to find out how it ends.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book. I’m a Gen Xer, so this hit home with the 80s vibes. I like how the parents trust their son and didn’t just instantly make her call home, even though after a bit they didn’t believe Tori’s story.

I DNF’d this book. The biggest issues for me was 1. I didn’t have a lot of time, and this book just didn’t really hook me or make me want to read it and 2. The writing style. I just couldn’t handle the main character’s tone. It drive me crazy, and the book just felt a little info-dump-y in its world building and exposition. It could very well get better later on in the book, but I just didn’t have time to keep reading and see.

I love the cover of this book; it's unassuming and perfectly represents the story. I enjoyed that the narrative is set during the pandemic, which adds a contemporary, relatable feel, making it seem like it could happen in real life. Although the time travel trope has been explored before, this story presented a fresh and unique spin.

Can we take a moment to give a hand clap for the relationship development between Tori and her father, Bobby? This book combines time travel, mystery, and action, all while incorporating a heartwarming element of family love.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book—it was an engaging read right from the start. I would be interested in exploring more works from these authors.

Thank you to NetGalley, Tilia Klebenov Jacobs, Norman Birnbach, and AuthorBuzz, for the e-ARC of "Stealing Time." I am providing this honest review voluntarily and without any pressure.

Time-traveling jewel heist for the win.

Much like Back to the Future did for the 1980s, this book is a powerful look at what it means to come of age - and how important it is to see your parents as people.

But more than that, this is a fun jewel heist story! If that's your thing, this is the story you've been missing!

Need a 2020 story that isn't depressing or hard to read? You need this book.

Can't tell you how much I needed this. Fun!

Thank you to AuthorBuzz and NetGalley for an electronic advanced readers copy of this novel.

Tori is about to leave New York City to stay safe during the Covid 19 pandemic of 2020. Her parents are getting divorced, so she is leaving with her mom while her dad stays in the city. She discovers that her grandfather was convicted of stealing a huge diamond at the Natural History museum where he worked. Suddenly, she finds herself going back in time to 1980, where she meets up with her dad, who is a teenager. They join forces to see if they can stop the crime.

Stealing Time by Tilia Klebenov Jacobs and Norman Birnbach is a fun YA novel about families and time travel. I really enjoy it. As someone who spent time in New York City during the 1980s, they did a good job at portraying how grimy things were back then and brought back an unwelcome memory of "bums" cleaning my dad's car windshield with dirty newspapers in hope of getting some money.

It was fun and fast read!

This was a fun YA time travel novel where the main character, Tori, has to stop a museum heist with the teenaged version of her dad when she suddenly finds herself in 1980. I really enjoyed their moments of confusion and wonder when encountering differences between the two time periods, and I also enjoyed that the author didn't spend a lot of time building tension by making Tori hide her time traveler status from the other major characters. While there are some scenes where she is coy about her situation with her grandparents, most of the plot and conflict stem from the teenaged characters stopping the heist while navigating their temporal differences.

The one thing I disliked was that the antagonists were downright goofy, like something out of a slapstick comedy. This was ameliorated a little bit by the author's note discussing the real-life event that inspired the story, but I thought that the tone of the chapters from the museum robbers' points of view were not consistent with the rest of the book.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a copy of this book.

I couldn't wait to read this book from the bery start it had me anticipating what exact was going to happen in the debut of this time traveling thriller by Tilia Jacobs and Norman Bimbach. Stealing Time, alternates between two timelines in New York in 2020 and 1980, and shows the drastic difference between the two characters and the different times they live in. Tori, lives in New York, in 2020, during the pandemic with divorcing parents and the mystery of her grandfather's past adds an urgency to her mission of understanding her family's history and trying to restore their legacy. On the other hand you have Bobby who is a carefree child of the 80's as he has a hard time believing the dilemmas that Tori is facing, However, they come together on the one mission that binds them together, to protect the mystical gemstone. This gemstone holds the key to their futures and keeping their families safe. This fast paced book with all the twist and turns will keep you on your toes. The stakes are high and the danger of the situation keeps the story moving as you immerse yourself into this mysterious world of time travel. Check out the debut novel of Tilia Jacobs and Norman Bimbach and get whisked away to a new time and place.

Stories involving time travel or a Back to the Future concept are always interesting. This one was too, with the MC traveling from 2020 to the 1980s to stop her grandfather from going down for a crime that he didn't commit. There's also a little twist that I expected and thought added more to the story. The most interesting elements of the story that I really enjoyed were the father/daughter bonding scenes, comparisons between Gen Z and X, and the way the artifact was intertwined with the time travel. I wish that last part was expounded upon and made more interesting in the book's last chapters. I didn't love the ending and the fact that the timeline had changed and the main character had to be told everything. It would've been nice if that part was longer and shown by having the character react to all of the changes. Overall, though, I felt that this was a fun book with some humorous moments.