Infinite In Between by Carolyn Mackler

Title: Infinite In Between

Author: Carolyn Mackler

Publisher: HarperTeen

Release Date: September 1, 2015

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

Printz Honor author Carolyn Mackler returns with this striking new novel that chronicles the lives of five teenagers through the thrills, heartbreaks, and joys of their four years in high school.

Zoe, Jake, Mia, Gregor, and Whitney meet at freshman orientation. At the end of that first day, they make a promise to reunite after graduation. So much can happen in those in-between years…

Zoe feels like she will live forever in her famous mother’s shadow. Jake struggles to find the right connections in friendship and in love. Mia keeps trying on new identities, looking for one that actually fits. Gregor thought he wanted to be more than just a band geek. And Whitney seems to have it all, until it’s all falling apart around her.

Echoing aspects of John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club, Carolyn Mackler skillfully brings the stories of these five disparate teens together to create a distinct and cohesive whole—a novel about how we can all affect one another’s lives in the most unexpected and amazing ways.

Considering the amount I read, there isn’t much about contemporary books that I haven’t said before. And that can make writing some of these reviews a little tricky. So I’ll just say this, I loved Carolyn Mackler’s Infinite in Between a whole lot more than I expected to.

Zoe, Jake, Mia, Gregor and Whitney all had their own concerns and apprehensions about starting high school. When they’re put in the same group at their freshman orientation, they decide to write themselves a letter that they’ll open at the end of high school. But a lot can happen in four years. As they go through high school, each of them goes through their own share of happiness and heartbreak, coming in and out of each other’s lives without thinking too much about it. What will they all think when they meet again at the end of their four years of high school?

Fun little story about Emilie for you: to this day, I still remember the first Carolyn Mackler book I read. I was in eighth grade and I would sit in front of my locker during my lunch break and read The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. So it’s fair to say that Carolyn Mackler is one of the YA authors I’ve been reading for the longest time. And I still enjoy reading her books all these years later. As you can guess, I had a pretty good idea going in that I would really enjoy Infinite in Between. What I didn’t expect was to love it as much as I did. Infinite in Between was a story that kind of creeps up on you. At first, it’s a little tricky to follow since it quickly jumps around between five different characters. But at the same time, the story draws you in quickly. And before you know it, you’re curious about finding out more about these five people’s high school experiences and seeing how their lives intersect over the course of those four years. And by the end of the book, I was a lot more emotional than I ever thought I would be. Like I said, this story just creeped up on me in a way that I really didn’t expect.

What Infinite in Between really hit on the head is the way that people come in and out of each other’s lives in high school. How everyone always kind of seems to be on everyone’s periphery no matter how big the school is. And it really showed that no matter how much your life seems perfect from the outside, nothing is ever as it appears. And it also perfectly showed how, at the end of the day, everyone in high school is just trying to figure out who they are and where they fit in. That was more than the case for Jake, Mia, Gregor, Zoe and Whitney. Each one of them was basically trying to figure out who they were and who they wanted to be. And it wasn’t always easy, there were obstacles along the way and I was rooting for all of them throughout the book. Most of all though, I loved seeing the way their paths all crossed at different times during their high school career and how at the end of it all, they were able to come together in ways that I didn’t really expect. Reading from five different perspectives was a different experience, but it was definitely worth it in the end.

I loved reading Carolyn Mackler’s Infinite in Between in ways I didn’t expect. This story was understated in the best way possible and accurately portrayed the high school experience. This might be a quieter story, but it’s absolutely worth the read. 

The Future of Us by Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler

Title: The Future of Us

Author: Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler

Publisher: Razorbill
Release Date: November 21, 2011

Source: From Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

It's 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They've been best friends almost as long--up until last November, when everything change. Things have been awkward ever since, but when Josh's family gets an American Online CD-ROM in the mail, his mom makes him bring it over so Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they're automatically logged onto Facebook...but Facebook hasn't been invented yet. Josh and Emma are looking at their profiles fifteen years in the future. Their spouses, careers, homes, and status updates--it's all there. But it's not what they expected. And every time they refresh their pages, their futures change. As they grapple with the ups and downs of what their lives hold, they're forced to confront what they're doing right—and wrong—in the present.

As soon as I heard the premise of The Future of Us, I knew it was a book I wanted to read. I mean it's about two teenagers seeing the future through Facebook. It just sounded like it would be a really great read. If the fact that I read it all in one sitting is anything to go by, it really was as great as it promised to be.

Josh and Emma have been best friends and neighbors for as long as they both can remember. But last November something happened that caused them to grow apart. They're still friends but they just aren't as close as they one were. That's until Josh's family received an AOL CD-ROM and his mom asks him to bring it over to Emma since she just got a new computer. When Emma first logs in, everything appears to be normal, but then she it asked to enter her e-mail and password a second time and finds herself on a website called Facebook. Except that this is 1996 and Facebook hasn't been invented yet. Now Josh and Emma can see their lives fifteen years into the future. Soon they realize that every decision they make in the present affects the future and soon enough they find themselves becoming addicted to the mysterious website.

I absolutely adored this book, it was simply the perfect read. I mean how ingenuous was it to write a book where people can see their future through Facebook of all things. It was a really great concept, though at first I had my doubts as to how it would all work out. In the end it worked out perfectly, even surprising me how everything really fit together. I also really loved the writing. I've read some of Carolyn Mackler's other books in the past, but it was my first time reading something by Jay Asher. Let me just say that I loved it. The writing was flawless, I couldn't tell where one author's writing ended and the other one began. Though the best part of the book had to be all the references to 90s culture. I may have been relatively young at the time but I still remember a lot.

Emma and Josh were fantastic characters, both felt incredibly real. I found myself relating to both of them at different times and more than anything they made the story for me. But they weren't perfect and that's what I really loved about them. Emma more than Josh,  I could really relate to. Like Emma, I was a track runner, but more importantly, I could really relate to how quickly she became addicted to Facebook (not that this is something I'm necessarily proud to admit). Though I didn't like as much how obsessed she became with changing her future without really know much about it. While I didn't relate to him quite as much, I still really enjoyed getting to know Josh and at times I felt really bad about his situation with Emma. But mostly I loved the parts of the story that were told from his point of view, because there just aren't enough male narrators in YA. Mostly, I think that with characters other than Emma and Josh the story wouldn't have been the same.

The Future of Us was an absolutely fantastic read. I enjoyed every page and it really put into perspective the amount of time I spend on Facebook. On the surface it may appear to be a light read, but it's one that needs to be out there if only to help people realize how dependent we have become on technology for almost everything in our lives. This is a book that definitely deserves all the praise it has been getting.