The Future Of Us – Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Review: While this book got high ratings, The Future Of Us has undergone major criticisms from readers and reviewers alike. The common complaint has been that it does not touch enough on love. It doesn’t make you want the main characters to fall in love and get together. And yes, that’s true. But I think that those people are missing the point. It’s not a sappy romance. It’s real. My view on the book is this: it isn’t a LOVE STORY, it’s a love story. And the sad fact is, that the LOVE STORIES we love to hate are the very love stories that have driven so many people to dislike this book.

You could read this to grandma or little sis without much trouble. (teen drinking, very minor sexual elements, language)We can moan on and on again about how a shirtless pirate rescuing a maiden in disgrace is cliche and boring, but those are the love stories we like to hear, because everyone wants to believe it’s that easy. But this story is real; the romance is accurate, and true to emotion, and it portrays a very accurate view of how foolish and self-centered Facebook would look, if the nineties could see it. In fact, that is how we ourselves would see Facebook, if we took a step back.

Both of the writers have written fantastic books in the past, and I think that the concept is well developed and interesting. But Jay Asher wrote Thirteen Reasons Why, which topped the bestseller list, inspired remarkable and much-needed controversy, and remained in hardcover far more than a year after the customary paperback release date. Carolyn Mackler’s The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things was on 2006′s “most challenged books” list, was banned,  won the Michael L. Printz award for honor books, and is an ALA best book for young adults.

The credentials of the authors alone recommend the book. Authors don’t write without a purpose. They write insightfully, having put great detail and thought behind their words, and I think The Future Of Us has a lot to offer.

I enjoyed The Future Of Us. I would give it to my sister, my friends, my aunt, my mother, my grandmother, my brother, nephew, uncle or son. The material was not controversial, and there were almost no elements that could be considered disturbing.

Summary:

Emma and Josh have been next door neighbors for a long time. So when Emma gets a computer, Josh brings her an AOL (America Online CD-ROM) that his family wasn’t going to use.

Emma logs on and hooks up the internet. It’s 1996, but somehow, when she gets on the internet, she’s connected to her Facebook page… 15 years later. Emma thinks, at first, that the page is a practical joke from some not-so-funny guy trying to freak Emma out about her (not-so-perfect) future. But she soon discovers that this is not a joke, and even the slightest change in her daily life affects the one she lives in the future.

Emma tells Josh and they discover that Josh has a Facebook too: he winds up married to the hottest girl in school, Sydney Mills.

The Josh and Emma of the past would have teamed together to change Emma’s future and stay Josh’s, but Josh is in love with Emma. And Emma knows it, but isn’t sure how she feels about Josh, except afraid of losing him. So while Josh makes semi-frantic attempts to “meet” Sydney, Emma panics about her future, trying to change it, and Josh panics about Emma’s changes affecting his future.

Emma and Josh, and their friends Tyson and Kellan go to a bonfire on the beach, where Josh hangs out with Sydney. Emma leaves early and goes home. She hears Josh arriving home, and, realizing that she misses him, does nothing. But Kellan comes roaring up a minute later with Tyson, and plans of kidnapping Emma and Josh for a fun night out on the town, where Emma and Josh discover that they may have feelings for each other after all.

Where She Went – Gayle Forman

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Review:                  Where She Went is about more than finding yourself. It is about the fundamental idea that other people are the ones who make you. In the end, who you want to be is who you’re becoming, and other people are helping you to do that every minute of every day. Where She Went is a poignant reminder of how little time we have. To wonder, to think, to love, to live. Where She Went is a blend of all those things, a potent mixture of future, present, and past, and how irrevocably linked they are.

Summary:

Three years after the tragic accident that killed his girlfriend Mia’s parents and little brother and nearly killed Mia, Adam Wilde is a rock star. But his music is slowly killing him, because it is one of the many things that Mia made impossible to love, to care about.

Mia and Adam had been the perfect couple in high school. “Groovy and the Geek”, as dubbed by Mia’s friend Kim. They both loved music, and each other, and while they were as different as oil and vinegar, salt and pepper, chicken and broccoli, they still managed to fit more perfectly than any literary couple ever invented.

But after Mia’s accident, they both change. Mia drops Adam after she leaves for college, devastating him in the process. Adam goes on with his band, Shooting Star, and Mia goes on to become Julliard’s rising star.

But the rift running through Adam’s band is strong, and deep, so when he discovers that they are scheduled to go on tour on Friday the thirteenth, he latches onto it as an excuse to go a day after the rest of his band.

On his night alone in New York, Adam discovers that Mia is playing a show, and decides to go see her play.

She finds out he’s there, and asks that he be brought backstage. She tells him she’ll give him a tour of her city, which will double as a farewell tour to her own city because she’s leaving soon, to go on a tour of her own.

Through the course of the night, Adam and Mia relive the months of their breakup. They discover things about each other they never knew, and they discover things about themselves that weren’t there before.

If You Liked: If I Stay, Before I Fall, Thirteen Reasons Why, The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer,    The Future of Us, Hate List

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares – Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

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Review:

Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares is one of those that makes you long for romance, and wish you had someone with whom you could pass back and forth a red moleskine notebook. Honestly, it makes everyone wish for something different, which is truly special.  Some people might wish for someone who knows what the word “philatelist” means. Some people might wish for someone who loves to think, or to read. Some people might wish for someone who would choose lebkuchen over rice krispies.

But in the end, what really matters, is that it makes you wish. Makes you ponder and think, and draws you in so completely that when it’s over you wish there was more. You wish that you could follow Lily and Dash through their lives, wish to be as daring, as kind, as brave. But in the end, what it shows you is that, inevitably, wishing just doesn’t measure up.

Summary:

When Lily’s parents decide they are going to Fiji during Christmas, Lily is shocked and horrified. She may have said it would be okay with her… but that doesn’t mean it is! Her older brother Langston, proposes that in order to find herself a boyfriend, she go the conventional path and find the as-yet-found boyfriend through a notebook. She writes a series of Dares to the yet to be discovered boy, and supplies many dares  some of which involve the books French Pianism, the Joys of Gay Sex, and Fat Hoochie Prom Queen. She had to choose unusual titles in order to scare off any boys who wouldn’t be worth dating.

Dash (short for Dashiell, as he will tell you), takes up Lily’s challenge. His ex-girlfriend, Sophia, has recently moved to Spain and while he never really liked Sophia so much, and certainly didn’t love her, he finds himself missing Sophia more than he would’ve expected. So Dash takes Lily’s notebook, and soon enough Lily and Dash find themselves daring each other into places they never would’ve expected to go.

If You Like: The Indigo Notebook, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (book or movie), How to be Bad, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, Mean Girls (the movie)

Will Grayson, Will Grayson – John Green and David Levithan

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Review:

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is one of those rare books you find in which you become convinced throughout the course that it was written just. for. you. And the reason for this could be attributed to several different things: the fact that the book is written by two different but still fantastic authors, the idea that true love conquers all, or, if you dig a little deeper, you can look and see that Will Grayson, Will Grayson is a book about epiphanies. It’s about letting life change you. About letting other people let you. But most of all, it’s about acceptance of you and everything you are and want to be. It’s about truth. Lies. Love. Hate. Anger. Fear. Wisdom. Naivety. Trust. Doubts. It’s about the inumerable things that make you you and how every single one of them is the truth.

Summary:

Will Grayson, Will Grayson is about two teenage boys, both named Will Grayson, who cross paths through a twist of fate late one night, when both of them have plans that fall through and wind up in the same unlikely place.

In order to somewhat de-confuse this summary, I would like to give it from the point of only one of the Will’s, the one who starts the book.

Will’s best friend, Tiny, who is “not the world’s gayest person, or the world’s largest person, but possibly the largest gay person” is a very enthusiastic person, to an extreme that I can only say is remarkable. He is joyful, and exuberant, and it is around Tiny that the plot revolves.

Tiny decides to put on  a play, written by himself, entitled Tiny Dancer, which is pretty much entirely fact based. In the midst of this brilliant idea, Will Grayson goes with Tiny and his friends Jane and Gary to a show which is supposed to be from the band Neutral Milk Hotel, but instead winds up being from Ashland Avenue. Tiny proceeds to attempt to force Jane and Will together, but Will, having decided long ago that caring, in general, is a bad idea, insists that he shall not care. But when Will starts falling for Jane he agrees to go to another show with Jane and Tiny, this one from the Maybe Dead Cats. When his fake ID turns out not to work, Will tells Jane and Tiny to go on. After they leave, Will decides to show them that he can have fun by himself. He goes to a porn shop, insisting on using his new fake ID at least once that evening. There he meets the Other Will Grayson, and discovers that they have the same name, and also that OWG is gay. Will, being the good and honorable friend that he is, decides to set Tiny up with OWG, and from that point on, everything is about falling in love, falling-outs, and just plain falling, in inumerable ways.

If You Like: An abundance of Katherines, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, It’s Kind of A Funny Story, Boy meets Boy

Suite Scarlett – by Maureen Johnson

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Review:                                                         Suite Scarlett was a surprising book.The content, of course, contributed to that, but more surprising was the issues that arose from between the lines; growing up to fast, wanting things too much and getting more than you bargained for are all central themes. Scarlett is a character with a lot of empathy; even when you want to slap her across the face, you feel very sympathetic towards whatever plight is currently going on in her life. Suite Scarlett is a book worth reading.

Summary:

Fifteen year old Scarlett’s family runs the Hopewell Hotel, in New York. Having grown up in a hotel, Scarlett is not a typical teenager. When her fifteenth birthday comes, she gets a couple of things from her parents: a key to the Empire Suite (it is now her room to care for), a cell phone, and the news that the hotel is not doing well. Scarlett is going to have to work at the hotel, mostly for free. Her older sister Lola is taking a year off college to work at a boutique and help out around the hotel and with Scarlett’s irritable little sister Marlene, whose life revolves around the Powerkids, a group for cancer victims and survivors (Marlene is a survivor). Her brother, Spencer, is in the worst spot of all. Throughout the book, he wants to be an actor. His parents had given him one year to find work, but the year is up, and Spencer hasn’t found anything significant.

When an old friend of Spencer’s comes into town bearing news of a show and the need for an actor, Spencer jumps into position. It’s not on Broadway… well, technically it is, the street is names Broadway. But it’s being held in a parking garage, and a four dollar a day salary is not exactly what he was aspiring to. It’s a job though, so by stretching the truth, Spencer convinces him parents to let him do it, partially due to a new guest at the Hopewell… Mrs. Amberson.

Mrs. Amberson arrives suddenly and announces she’ll be there the whole summer. She takes the Empire Suite, and decides that she wants Scarlett to be her assistant. She’ll pay Scarlett 500 dollars a week. The best way to describe Mrs. Amberson would be nosy, which is shown by the fact that when Spencer’s theater company loses its very little funding, Mrs. Amberson steps in to be the director and to fund the show.

But when an old frenemy of Mrs. Amberson’s steps into the picture, and the frame gets even more twisted, no one knows where Mrs. Amberson will lead them.

If You Like: Lola and the Boy Next Door, Beauty Queens, Just Listen, E. Lockhart (author)