The Future of Us by Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler **Review**

The Future of Us
by Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler
Series: None
Pages: 356
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release date: 5th January 2012
Buy: Book Depository | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Waterstones

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Goodreads synopsis:
It's 1996 and very few high school students have ever used the internet. Facebook will not be invented until several years in the future. Emma just got a computer and an America Online CD. She and her best friend Josh power it up and log on - and discover themselves on Facebook in 2011. Everybody wonders what they'll be like fifteen years in the future. Josh and Emma are about to find out.

When this book arrived, I was ridiculously excited. I was really in the mood for a fun, Young Adult, contemporary fiction read, and with this, I got all three! Plus, I'd heard so many good things about it, that I was confident I'd really enjoy it. Despite this, I hadn't planned on reading it as soon as it arrived - but that's exactly what happened. I have this habit, when I get a new book, to flick through it a bit - maybe even read the opening chapter - and that's what I did with this. Except I didn't just stop at the first chapter, and before I knew it, I was a third of the way through. This should be enough evidence to show you just how gripping this book is!

The premise of the novel is also really interesting - yes, it could be seen as a bit cheesy - but it is actually really entertaining. The story is set in 1996, and follows Josh and Emma; next-door neighbours, and school friends. When Emma gets a computer and AOL internet for the first time, they immediately log on, and the first thing they discover is their facebook profiles, 15 years in the future. They soon realise that, even the smallest thing they change in the present, can have a dramatic effect on their futures. It was really interesting to see how just a small action, like splashing a vase of dirty water on the carpet, could alter the characters' futures so much. Although, the wisdom of doing this becomes questionable, because they don't know whether they're changing the future for the better, or making it worse.
So like I said, maybe a bit cheesy, but definitely entertaining.

Josh and Emma were really great protagonists for the novel. They were quite different from one another in some ways, but similar enough, so that when the chapters switched from Josh's perspective, to Emma's (I love a good perspective switch!), it felt really natural, and flowed really well all the way through. I think that's also part of what makes it such an easy and light read.
I think, out of the two of them, I liked Josh the best. This is mostly because he was a really kind and caring person, but also because I did end up wishing that Emma would make up her mind quite a lot. She was really indecisive when it came to her feelings about Josh, and she was the only one that was really trying to change her future, being convinced that she was unhappy in the future, and she needed to change it now. She just seemed a lot less mature than Josh, and I wanted her to realise that she was going about everything in the wrong way, much, much sooner.
I loved them together though - they just seemed like the perfect couple, and I was really hoping that they would realise this.

There were a couple of tiny, little things that did annoy me about this book. They're not major, but I am going to mention them, because they did irritate/confuse me.
The first point is the one that confused and irritated me, and that is the mention of cell phones. So the story is set in 1996, and cell phones did exist, but obviously they're nothing like the phones we have today.
At one point in the story, when Emma is reading some of the status updates on Facebook, one of them says something along the lines of 'I got your text', and Emma then says "I have no idea what a text is".
Now, perhaps this wouldn't cause a reaction in some readers, but it did with me. One of the other characters, Sydney, has a cell phone, so I know that Emma would have come across one at some point, so I decided that I was going to research cell phones from 1996, and I discovered that a lot of them did have an SMS function. So surely she'd have known what a text was, even if she'd never actually sent one? Was I confused? Yes.

The other point that irritated me a little, was a stereotypical view of the British. And I'm British. I've noticed that a lot of Americans have a fairly idealised and stereotypical view of us English - and when an American author attempts to portray the British, it's often completely off the mark, and can irritate me quite a lot. And yeah, this happened in this book.
It was with Emma again, and again she was reading her future Facebook status updates. One of them starts off with "I can't stand how people in England say "Good day" all the time". Now, I'm English, and I don't believe I've ever said 'Good day' to someone as a greeting (except perhaps in the sentence "Have you had a good day?"), nor has anyone ever said it to me. We say 'Hello', or 'Hi', or 'Hey' - some of us even say 'alright?' - but not 'Good day'. And we didn't say it in 1996 either. We're not stuck in the Victorian era, you know.
Anyway, that's my rant over. Other than these minor irritations, I really did enjoy the book, but I just needed to set the record straight - particularly on that last point.

Overall, the book is a really enjoyable one, as long as you don't try to take it too seriously. It's meant as a bit of fun, and that's exactly what it is. It's a light-hearted, fun and amusing romantic comedy, and I loved pretty much every moment. I definitely recommend picking it up!