Yes, I probably could have found a great picture of of the book cover, but instead here's one with my adorable dog. Because why not? #zoramgerrard
Also the book title constantly made me think of this Taylor Swift song:
And also, I forgot about this music video. It's kind of funny and awesome.
SYNOPSIS:
Alright so I'm just going to pull this directly from the inside book cover because it's what immediately drew me in. Listen to how cool this sounds:
"It's 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They've been best friends almost as long—at least, up until last November, when Josh did something that changed everything. Things have been weird between them ever since, but when Josh's family gets a free AOL CD in the mail, his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they're automatically logged onto their Facebook pages. But Facebook hasn't been invented yet. And they're looking at themselves fifteen years in the future.
By refreshing their pages, they learn that making different decisions now will affect the outcome of their lives later. And as they grapple with the ups and downs of what their futures hold, they're forced to confront what they're doing right—and wrong—in the present."
(Taken from GoodReads)
Doesn't that sound awesome? Doesn't that make you want to read this? Doesn't that make you jealous you didn't think of it first?
RANDOM THOUGHTS:
While the idea behind the synopsis is awesome, if you look back at it the writing in the beginning part is very choppy, boring, and a little too direct. That's how the majority of this book was. Sometimes I worry when I critique these books and say the writing is bad that you may think that I consider myself some amazing writer. I'm not, by the way. I do my best at writing, but I do sometimes go back and find choppy sentences. However, I like to pretend I would never publish a book that way.
There comes a point where reading this style of writing just gets too boring. When you're constantly being told everything so directly, it leaves nothing to the imagination. One of the points of reading is that you get to escape from the real world and imagine a different one, but in this book I didn't feel that way. I felt like I was reading a news story. Being given facts directly. Personally, I'm just not a fan of this style of writing.
Back to the synopsis, it is undeniably and awesome idea. Teenagers who get to see their futures? And then make changes in their futures by what they do in the present? It's such a cool idea and I was so excited for it... but I just felt let down. I feel like there were so many possibilities in which this could have been taken, but they took the easy, boring, simple route. There wasn't much of a plot or story and then it just ended. It was just... strange... the way this book was plotted out.
CHARACTERS:
Emma and Josh are our main characters. Emma is crazy. Josh is pretty cool, he's fairly redeemable in this book, but Emma...
If you don't want anything spoiled, maybe stop reading and skip over to "My Review", though this isn't a terrible spoiler.
So there's a point where Emma sees who she is married to in the future and sees that they are getting a divorce. Emma, being the crazy teenager she is, finds the guy's number, talks to him, and changes her college plans strictly so that she will never meet this guy and never be married to him. After doing so, her future Facebook page shows her married to someone else.
Okay, so, this is crazy. Emma is so concerned with her future happiness that she makes very bold decisions that change her life in the future. This is the first instance, and probably the biggest, but she does quite a few other things to change her future. It was almost terrifying the kind of power she had.
Now I think that if this book had been done differently, the fact that Emma can change her future by a simple thought would have been super cool. But because of the way this was written, she just came off as crazy.
I did not like Emma. She also had a boyfriend that she hated and it really kept irritating me that she kept dragging him along for no reason. She then dumped him partially because he shaved his head, which was so petty I hated it.
FAVORITE SCENE:
In the beginning it was really fun to have all the 90's references, but it got a little excessive.
I thought it was really fun for Josh knowing who his future wife was and trying to get her to notice him and school. He wasn't nearly as drastic as Emma and it was cute just seeing how he did subtle things to get her to notice him. Josh was cool. The more I think about this book, Josh was cool.
MY REVIEW:
I am torn on this book. Part of me wants others to read it because it is such a cool idea. But the writing is just not good and it ends so abruptly and without much resolve, I still have a few questions.
But overall I was disappointed by this book. Such a cool idea and I just felt let down by how it all turned out. Take that as you want. Read it if you want, I won't really do much to convince you either way, because I'm personally torn.
Have you read The Future of Us? What are your thoughts on this book? Let me know in the comment section below!
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