The future according to Asher & Mackler

When you consider the fact that I didn’t start a series book that I had been waiting to arrive for six years (A Dance With Dragons) because I was in the middle of an Advance Reader’s Copy of The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler, that tells you something about what Asher and Mackler have accomplished.

I won’t go so far as to say this is one of the best books I’ve read, but it’s set up and follow through are so compelling that it is incredibly hard to put it down once you start.  It’s 1996 and Emma installs a new America Online disc from her neighbor and former best friend Josh.  Yet, instead of finding AOL in all it’s 90s glory, they stumble upon Emma’s facebook profile from 2011!  As the teens search and dig for information on their future lives, they begin to question the decisions they are making in the present and contemplate who they really are and who they want to be.  While Josh is pleasantly surprised by his future self, Emma is disheartened to learn that she is not happy.  She sets out to change her future and finds that she is able to alter it by her actions in the present.  And yet she doesn’t appear to get any happier, if anything, things get worse.  Alternately, Josh’s knowledge of the future gives him more confidence in the present and leads him to bolder choices now.  And while their future selves alter who they are in the present, their already fragile friendship begins to unravel.

While there are several plot points that don’t make a lot of sense (Emma is a better name for a main character in 2011, not 1996) and some that don’t come to a satisfying conclusion (or any conclusion at all), Asher and Mackler make the interesting choice of allowing Emma to be a little self-centered and unlikable, especially in comparison to Josh.  Her flaws are irritating, but they make the character believable in a way that Josh might not be, even though I like him a lot.  Those flaws in 1996 are undoubtedly what lead to her unhappiness in 2011.  While the end of the book is satisfying, there is no indication that Emma has realized where her future unhappiness stems from.  It would be interesting to explore whether happiness stems from single choices in a person’s life or hard earned character traits established over years of mistakes and bad choices.  Learning her future allows Emma to make an end run around potentially valuable learning.  Does she now need to make new mistakes or can she just be happy?  There is certainly room to take these characters further if the authors choose to do so at some point.  

The book is a quick, easy read that will appeal to most teens 13 and up, particularly girls.  The romantic scenes are pretty tame, but the book is almost entirely about relationships, so it will appeal primarily to upper middle and high school readers.  It’s like a teen version of The Time Traveller’s Wife in some ways.  I expect the book will be very successful once it is released later this year.  Movie to follow.