The Future of Us - Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

The Future of Us

Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

2011

I was so excited to read this book. I loved Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, and I had been eying this book at the bookstore for quite a while. I ended up borrowing it from the library and I'm kind of glad I did.

The Future of Us is the story of Emma and Josh and their future. The story takes place in 1996. Emma has just received her first computer from her dad as a guilt gift. Josh shows up at her door with an AOL cd for 100 free hours of internet. She installs the program and does what she has seen her friend Kellan do many times; she goes to 'Favourite Places'. But there is a new site there called Facebook. She clicks on it, enters her email address and password and suddenly she can see 15 years into the future. Over the course of the novel she discovers that the smallest change in the present day can change her future entirely and sometimes she uses this to her advantage. Josh uses it to his advantage as well.

It was an interesting premise for a novel, and while it wasn't unenjoyable, I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped I would. I found that there really wasn't too much of a plot. I kept waiting for something truly exciting to happen. You got to know the characters really well, and they were well written and the main characters all had some dimension to them. They were believable to the reader. 

One thing that I didn't really enjoy is the fact that the chapters went from being told by Emma to being told by Josh. This kind of narration is good for a novel written by two authors, but the two characters had very similar voices and sometimes it took a while to remember who was narrating. 

I think my favourite part was that it took place in 1996. There were so many references to things from that time, such as walkmans and cassette tapes. I also really enjoyed the kind of obvious references to things nowadays (watching Glee on Netflix). 

I give this book 3.6 stars out of 5. It wasn't a fantastic read, but it was a fun summer read. It does bring up some good points regarding knowing the future, but it leaves quite a few really good plot lines unexplored.

Have you read The Future of Us? Did you enjoy it?