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."


Review:

The whole reason I picked this up was because Jay Asher co-authored. The idea was cool and I personally am a Facebook addict, but Jay was the main pull for me; Thirteen Reasons Why remains one of my favorite books and it one of the only books that I've read over and over again. The Future of Us did not disappoint.

Though I didn't give this book five stars, it's still a great read. Probably closer to 5 than to 4. I couldn't put it down. Even though it's close to 400 pages I read it in one day. Because the chapters alternate between Josh and Emma's perspectives, it kept plugging along at breakneck pace and added great scenes full of character-development and awesome dialogue.

One of the things that Jay Asher does so well is write teens in a true and authentic way. He can see into the mind of a teen in a way that I've only seen a few authors do well; John Green is an example of this. But Carolyn's writing was also great, which made for a novel that was evenly paced and written; something that's hard to do sometimes when co-writing a book. This makes me want to read other books by Mackler. I'll definitely have to check her out in the future.

Also, though the premise hints at the supernatural, this book is contemporary at heart. The "future thing" that's going on is believable, or at least as close to believable as something along those lines can be. You can also tell that the authors did their research. The dialogue when relating to Facebook is always spot on and never awkward.

The only thing that knocked this book down from a five to a four was the ending. It wasn't really a bad ending, just one that was kind of predictable. I wished the ending could have been a little out of the ordinary or maybe a bit more satisfying.

In the end though, it was still a great read that I would recommend to anyone who wants to read a comtemp with a cool "new-age" spin. I can't wait to see what Jay Asher is going to do next!


--Alexis