Story for the Week
I always said that I wanted my kid(s) to be smarter than I am. I only had one kid, and she is definitely smarter than I am…at least in math. Don’t get me wrong. I did well in math, but English and language arts were definitely my forte.
When Corinne was young, she loved when my dad quizzed her with math after school. By the time she reached second grade, he was writing out triple-digit addition and subtraction problems for her. She thought it was fun. 🙄 She’s also very good at doing math in her head. That comes from her dad and her grandfather, clearly. I can do math in my head, but I can’t do it very quickly and not always very well. I definitely prefer a calculator.
Recently, I was creating some PowerPoint slides for work, and several of the slides had tables full of numbers. We weren’t using links to Excel tables. We keyed in each number, which leaves openings for typos. So as we updated numbers, I added up each column and row to make sure they totaled correctly.
One afternoon, Corinne called me after class. I answered but asked her to hold for a minute. She waited as I mumbled the numbers out loud. When I finished, I remembered I had just been telling someone about Corinne’s experience with math. I told her I had a quiz for her. I wanted to see how well she could add the column of numbers in her head. She couldn’t add them as fast as I had read them off, but she was definitely up for the challenge.
87, ok, 26, ok, 4, ok, 23, ok, 3, ok, 2, ok, 16, ok, 39, ok, 35, ok, 17, ok, 2, ok, 3, 257, you suck. I mean, she literally didn’t hesitate. And no, I don’t think she pulled out her calculator because she actually takes a lot of pride in showing me up with her math brain. 🤣🤣🤣
She took Honors Algebra I the summer before her freshman year of high school. She finished off her senior year in AP calculus. In fact, when we rewatched the 2024 musical Mean Girls recently, she said it kind of freaked her out a little bit that she understood what they showed in the AP calculus class. So after five high school math classes (when she required three to graduate) and having fulfilled her math requirement for college before starting, did she choose to study mathematics? Engineering? Physics?
If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know the answer to that question. No, she did not choose any of those to study. She says she wants to play dress-up for a living, which is why she’s studying musical theater. She really wants to be a performer, and I completely support her in that endeavor. Since that’s a tough field to break into, she’s double majoring in digital media. While the digital media piece isn’t her dream job, she enjoys it and could easily make a career of it.
The main character in the book reviewed below plans to be pre-med in college with the ultimate goal of orthodontia. Orthodontia is definitely not her dream job. It’s not something she’s remotely interested in, but it would be a nice, stable career for someone good at science. Definitely not playing dress-up for a living. 🤷🏼♀️
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐
3 Stars for Right Where We Belong by Farrah Penn
432 pages
Publisher: Penguin Group | Viking Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: October 28, 2025
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Penguin Group.
Publisher’s Description
Delaney Carmichael’s final year of boarding school at Ivernia is not off to a great start. Losing her father has left her feeling completely unmoored—both emotionally and in terms of what she wants to do with her future. So when Delaney discovers that Ivernia—the one stable place in her life—is on the brink of shuttering its doors, it feels like the last straw. If life is measured in what she has to lose, then does anything matter?
Desperate for a solution, Delaney makes a wish—for a way to save Ivernia. The universe’s response? Enter Lord William Cromwell of Dunbry, a tall, handsome, and woefully out-of-place-boy from nineteenth-century London. At first, Delaney thinks this charming English heartthrob might somehow be the answer to her problems, but when disastrous consequences begin to unfold at an alarming rate, she realizes that if she can’t return William to where and when he belongs, the present could unravel completely.
Much to Delaney’s dismay, the only person capable of helping her is her brother’s infuriating best friend, Sumner, a boy who seems dead-set on getting under her skin. With time quickly running out, can the two set things straight before the past begins messing with the present in irreversible ways?
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Main Characters:
- Delaney Carmichael – a senior on scholarship at Ivernia, a boarding school in Lake Placid, NY; plans to go to UPenn to study dentistry and eventually go into orthodontia; still grieving the loss of her father over the summer; quit writing for the school newspaper for her last year
- Sumner Winchel – also a senior on scholarship at Ivernia, was Delaney’s brother’s best friend until he graduated, spent the summer at the Carmichael’s because things were difficult for him at home
- Lord William Alexander Cromwell – literally runs into Delaney on Wish Night, from the small rural town of Dunbry outside London, Delaney assumes he is Sumner’s international roommate until she mistakes his journal for her father’s and sees entries dated 1859
- Sabine and Inessa – also seniors at Ivernia, not Delaney’s usual crowd, very active in the year-long game of Capture the Flag traditionally played between the senior boys and girls
- Analiese – also a senior at Ivernia, Delaney’s best friend, parents are multi-millionaires, extremely serious about finding a groundbreaking story this year for the newspaper to help her get into NYU
- Lionel – another senior at Ivernia who spends most of his time in what students call the Forgotten Lounge playing games on his Switch
Delaney Carmichael grew up on the Ivernia boarding school campus where her father taught astronomy for many years. After the family moved to her mother’s hometown in Pennsylvania, Delaney and her older brother Jared received scholarships to attend Ivernia. Delaney’s upcoming graduation feels to her like coming full circle since her father’s death.
When she overhears the Headmistress talking about the possibility of the school closing by the beginning of December, she panics. Not only would she not graduate from Ivernia, but it would no longer be the home it was for her family.
For Ivernia’s annual Wish Night tradition, when students make a wish and throw a penny into the school fountain, Delaney decides she needs to make a wish for her dad. “Give me what I need to make this place his again.” Enter Lord William Alexander Cromwell, who doesn’t realize at first that he has been transported 160 years into the future and who Delaney mistakes for Sumner’s delayed international roommate Enzo.
This story reminds me of Back to the Future in reverse. The characters have to right something to prevent serious consequences for space and time. But they also have to correct the past to fix the present. Using Delaney’s father’s journals and Sumner’s knowledge of physics, they have to figure out how to send William back to his time before too many things change in the present…all without telling William some of the more significant pieces so they don’t also influence the past.
I enjoy Penn’s writing. There’s obviously a little bit of magic woven in here, which is great for young adult novels. I enjoyed the way she wrote William’s excitement learning about all things 20th century—especially cell phones and the Internet. It’s clear he’s smitten with Delaney, but Delaney and Sumner understand why he has to go back to his time.
One of the things I love about this story is Delaney’s desire to stay so connected to her dad and their memories. It seems like she has always had a special relationship with him, but she experiences a lot of growth over the course of the book. She is clearly still grieving her dad, and she feels pressure to follow the path he and her mom seem to have planned out for her.
As she struggles to make sense of what’s happening with William, she is also challenged by her feelings about Sumner. They’re at odds as the story begins, but there’s definitely the undercurrent of attraction. And once William comes on scene, the tension amps up. There’s clearly some jealousy on Sumner’s part.
While I really enjoyed the story itself, there is a lot going on, and I think it over-complicates things. I understand that this is a growth journey for Delaney, but there are elements that strike me as ineffective and unnecessary. Delaney mentions how her cramps have become worse over the years, which I assume is a way to show how things change with Sumner. And honestly, I think the whole book could have been written without the romance piece of it.
Delaney struck me as a classic middle child, trying to figure out where she fits between her siblings. That said, I feel like her younger sister is kind of irrelevant to the story. She chose not to attend Ivernia, and most of the references to her are about how she prefers to text and not talk on the phone. She also struck me as sounding more mature than Delaney even though she’s younger.
The book drags a bit for me at 400+ pages, but overall it was an decent read. Young adult books are usually great palette cleansers, and while it could have been shorter, this one definitely qualifies.
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