Friday, June 12, 2015

The Beginning of Everything

     The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider is a coming of age story about high school student Ezra Faulkner (what a great name). Ezra is a popular tennis star on track to be homecoming king and get the perfect scholarship for the perfect school. But after a party one night Ezra gets into an accident, injuring him and thereby destroying all plans for his future. 

     While trying to navigate new friend groups, Ezra starts to fall for quirky new girl Cassidy Thorpe. She pushes him to move past his tragedy; to make new, bigger goals instead of accepting a lesser fate. 



      This was a fun summer read, but the perspective is from rich families living in Florida - which is fine - but sometimes it is presented in a way that feels like every reader must be from a rich family living in Florida. Sometimes I found it hard to relate and other times I really did not know what they were talking about because my high school experiences were so different. But that could just be me. 

     One other small critique that pulled me out of the story from time to time was how similar the story and characters were to certain John Green books. I know it probably isn't fair to the author to make that comparison (especially since I had just finished Paper Towns), but at times it was a little distracting or predictable. 

     Overall I enjoyed the book - it was funny, it was cute, the characters were fleshed out well and the ending actually surprised me. I liked the struggle of people knowing the real you versus acting how you think people expect. That was portrayed very well and was a struggle many teens are familiar with. I also loved the thesis of the book - that "everyone gets a tragedy", and you are defined by what beginnings you allow to grow from it instead of finding your identity in the tragedy itself.