Mercury Boys, Chandra Prasad
Mercury Boys, Chandra Prasad
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Mercury Boys

Author: Chandra Prasad

Narrator: Channie Waites

Unabridged: 13 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 08/03/2021


Synopsis

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, but she’s also biracial in a population of mostly white students. 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. She is somehow able to visit the
man in the portrait: Robert Cornelius, a brilliant young inventor from the nineteenth century. The hitch: she can see him only in her dreams.

Saskia shares her revelation with some classmates, hoping to find connection and friendship among strangers. Under her guidance, the other girls steal portraits of young men from a local college’s daguerreotype collection and try the dangerous
experiment for themselves. Soon, they each form a bond with their own “Mercury Boy,” from an injured Union soldier to a charming pickpocket in New York City.

At night, the girls visit the boys in their dreams. During the day, they hold clandestine meetings of their new secret society. At first, the Mercury Boys Club is a thrilling diversion from their troubled everyday lives, but it’s not long before
jealousy, violence and secrets threaten everything the girls hold dear.

Reviews

Goodreads review by jv on May 13, 2024

Saskia is angry about her abrupt exit from Arizona. It’s where she became the content, confident and not-too-terrible teenager her parents could trust. It is also where Mom openly hooked up with the (very young) man students had dubbed “the hot substitute”. Moving with just Dad was depressing. As a......more

Goodreads review by hillary on October 31, 2021

Hello, it’s me again with another 3 star rating to give to a book I was madly anticipating :( It’s not like this wasn’t good but it was a middle-of-the-road book for me. There were times where I was really engaged, and other times (tbh most of the time) where I was passively listening to the audioboo......more

Goodreads review by Emma on March 02, 2022

I'm sorry to say this was quite an underwhelming reading experience for me. I went into this book with high expectations that weren't unfortunately met. The concept of the Mercury Boys club was interesting in theory, but in practice it didn't really work for me. The characters were just okay but I b......more

Goodreads review by akacya ❦ on October 22, 2022

more nerd girls who are so obsessed with boys from the past they poison themselves to see them pls saskia is new to town and desperate for some good friends. when she finds out she can travel to the past through the use of daguerreotypes and a drop of mercury, this seems the perfect opportunity to co......more

Goodreads review by Stacey-Lea on May 31, 2021

2.5 stars Mercury Boys is definitely a unique story, I’ll give it that. There was some promise in the premise, there’s no denying that. I can’t say I have read anything with the concept of visiting boys/a time in history through a type of photograph, known as a daguerreotype, and messing with some me......more