One of my favorite scenes in Back to the Future Part II is when Marty McFly travels back to 1955 for the second time and is able to witness his own actions from a different point of view. While not the same execution, the principle --- understanding that different events can occupy the same time and place --- is the heart of SPLIT SCREEN, Brent Hartinger's new novel.

Continuing with the characters he first established in GEOGRAPHY CLUB and revisited in THE ORDER OF THE POISON OAK, Hartinger places Russel, Min and Gunnar as extras on the set of a horror movie being shot at a local high school. The novelty of this work is that it's actually two books in one. The first one I read was ATTACK OF THE SOUL-SUCKING BRAIN ZOMBIES, the story that relays events from Russel's point of view. If you flip the book over, you get BRIDE OF THE SOUL-SUCKING BRAIN ZOMBIES and learn Min's perspective during the same time period.

In ATTACK, Russel is preparing for the Thanksgiving visit of his boyfriend (Otto, introduced in POISON OAK). Just when Russ thinks he has a handle on the long-distance relationship, Kevin --- the jock from GEOGRAPHY CLUB who prompts Russ to come out but then remains closeted --- comes back into Russ's life, looking to reconcile. To up the stakes, Kevin even announces that he's ready to come out. As if these romantic entanglements weren't enough, Russ's parents find out that their son is gay…and they DO NOT react well to the news.

In BRIDE, as Russel is dealing with his own problems, Min meets another extra on the movie set --- a girl named Leah --- and the two hit it off immediately. Min finds herself facing the prospect of having her first girlfriend. But as the large number of similarities between the two amasses, Min is thrown to learn that Leah is very much in the closet and has no immediate plans to come out. Add Leah's vocally homophobic friends to the mix, and Min is forced to take a step back and decide what she really wants…and what she can live with.

Hartinger has a talent for conveying the honesty behind these characters without wallowing in sentimentality. You feel for the dilemmas faced by both Russel and Min. Even though you as the reader may find it easy to decide what each should do, you also completely understand why they can't make up their minds. And it's great to see Min get her own voice for once. Brent, if you're reading this, she's prime spin-off material!

The book flipping gimmick is cute and it can be fun when you're reading the second story to remember what was happening concurrently in the first story, but I would have preferred a single, alternating POV narrative. That said, SPLIT SCREEN still pulls you in emotionally and stands as another successful entry in this series. By book's end, Russel is still dealing with parents who aren't comfortable with his sexuality. It would be a crime against YA books if this isn't more fully addressed in a future novel. But I suspect the author loves his characters as much as readers do and is not about to let Russ down.