The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Title: The Future of Us
Author: Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
Publisher: Razorbill
Release Date: Novemeber 21st, 2011 
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I checked out this book from my Overdrive library and listened to the audio version. The story is told in dual perspectives between our two MCs, Josh and Emma, who are high school students in the year 1996. The basic gist of the novel is that Josh gets a free AOL CD in his mail (oh my gosh, do you remember those? And how they’d have free hours at movie theatres and stuff?) and gives it to Emma so she can create a free AOL account and have some free internet hours. Only when Emma creates her account, something unexpected appears: Facebook. Not just Facebook, but HER specific Facebook page, and with that Emma gets glimpses into her future.

I really enjoyed this story and thought the dual perspectives worked. I liked both Josh and Emma and was rooting for them to be together in the end. Emma is the type of character who doesn’t believe in love and has many misadventures with finding a connection with anyone, while Josh is more of the “I want a meaningful relationship for life or it’s a waste of time” type of guy. It was refreshing, because usually these personalities are flipped in YA books for the guy/girl.

I also liked the plot and pacing of the novel. Even though it was never explained WHY Facebook suddenly showed up on Emma’s browser, I never felt like I had to know. I thought it was both clever and unique that both Josh and Emma could change their futures based on the decisions and life lessons they made in high school. So even though this is contemporary, it has a bit of magical realism to it.

One of my favorite parts about this novel was the on key points when it came to the 90s. It gave me a sense of nostalgia remembering things like instant messenger (AIM!), disk mans, cassettes, music selection (Emma listens to WONDERWALL and I was like oooh snap!), dial up (OMG remember having your parents yell at you because they needed the phone line?) and video stores that sold VHS (BLOCKBUSTER HOLLA).

Overall, I really liked this book and plan on reading more novels by these two authors. It was quirky, fun, cute, and unputdownable.