I really liked this book and wasn’t expecting to. It was a dollar and I can’t resist a bargain, but I was pretty underwhelmed by The Fault in Our Stars – didn’t hate it but didn’t understand why it was a blockbuster. It’s kind of a recurring problem with teen romances – teenage romances don’t last (well, typically. I met my husband at 18. We were children. Our being together makes little to no sense) – so you know they’re not gonna live happier ever after. When both of them have cancer, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how they don’t end up together. (Maybe I need to write a book where two people have a terminal illness and just break up for other reasons.)
This book was miles better. Five out of five turtles.
We follow Aza, who has fairly severe anxiety, and her best friend Daisy (a Star Wars fanfic writer) as the latter convinces the former to try to solve the mystery of what happened to the father of a former friend of Aza’s (Davis), a millionaire who disappeared before he could be arrested. This sounds very Nancy Drew; it isn’t. Daisy is a force and is more than a little motivated by the 100K reward for information leading to capture, though both girls are realistic about the unlikelihood of getting the money.
What happens is much more surprising, so I don’t want to spoil anything except to say that Green’s conclusion is positively elegiac – it pays true respect to flawed friendships and the depths of the connections we make in our youth, even if they aren’t forever. I loved this book, it might be my favorite young adult book that I’ve read in adulthood.
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