Review: "Right Where We Belong" by Farrah Penn

Right Where We Belong by Farrah Penn
Published October 2025 via Viking Books for Young Readers
★★★

A girl, a boy, and a...time-travelling other boy? Okay then.

I read this because it's set at a boarding school, and I am predictable; also, the cover is pretty, and I am shallow. As a rule, I have limited interest in romance in YA books (romance is all good and well, but I want more friendship books, not more "teenagers have fallen in love and their love is pure so it must be forever") and also in speculative fiction, but you know? Sometimes a time-travelling lord spices things up a bit. This ends up having some fairly heavy themes as well: Delaney, our heroine, is grieving the loss of her father earlier in the year, her uppity boarding school is on the verge of being closed down, and over the course of the book she goes through some friendship changes. (Yay friendship material!)

Things I loved: The friendship stuff. I'd wondered whether there'd be a mean-girl angle, but no—instead, Delaney spends some time finding her place among different people when her circumstances change, and she gradually realizes that two things (or two friendships) can be true at once. The grief material is also powerful; I wasn't expecting it and honestly wasn't ready for it, but I appreciate that the shape of Delaney's grief gradually changes over time.

What I loved less: The romance is really obvious. I mean...it's YA, which basically means that unless specified otherwise it's a romance novel for teenagers, so what did I expect. I also wanted more from the time travel—the logic was a little questionable, but more than that the idea that a bunch of teenagers can band together over a few weeks to solve a physics problem that would normally take the top minds in physics years...or decades...or centuries to figure out. Now, admittedly, I don't speak physics, so I don't know whether literally any of the science in this book makes sense, but I'd be curious to hear from those who do speak physics.

So—fun but improbable. But then I suppose that's what speculative fiction is all about...