In 1996 Josh and Emma are in high school. They used to be best friends, but everything changed between them when Josh tried to kiss Emma.
Now he tries to fix things by bringing over an AOL CD, which has 100 free hours of internet on it, something that Emma needs after her dad sent her his old computer. When she logs on, she stumbles onto a website she’s never heard of it: Facebook.
Suddenly she can see everyone’s future, told through status updates, relationship updates, posts, friends, etc. Josh can’t understand how or why they can access this future website, but they both begin to try to change things in the present, so that they change the future that they see on Facebook. They become so invested in the future, so that they stop living in the present.
The Future of Us was an interesting book. It wasn’t really an action-packed or deep plot, but was a story of Josh and Emma fiddling with things, little things and big things, in the present and refreshing Emma’s Facebook to see how their changes had impacted them fifteen years in the future. The story didn’t just focus on their Facebook interactions, but also told the story of what happened between Josh and Emma, and how their relationship begins to repair itself.
Who didn’t love the nineties? I definitely did! But unlike Josh and Emma, I was in elementary school and not high school, so there was a bit of a disjoint between what I remembered from the nineties and what apparently happened. Asher and Mackler seemed to try a bit too hard to make the setting authentic; every other word (at least in the beginning) was filled with references to the nineties. Many I didn’t get, because I was too young to remember, but even then they felt forced.
Other than that, the relationship between Josh and Emma was cute and fun to read about. Like I mentioned, the plot wasn’t terribly exciting and there wasn’t really much of a climax, but the misunderstandings and tension between the main characters redeemed it. Despite the low-key plot, I still really enjoyed reading about how Josh and Emma try to fix one thing, but then upset many other things in the future. And then in attempts to fix those things, screwed many other things. It was one big chain reaction.
The idea was definitely a unique one, and it got me thinking about how and where I’d like to see myself in fifteen years, so that was something the book did well.
I’m not sure what sub-genre of YA this belonged to; I originally thought it was dystopian or somewhat sci-fi, but it wasn’t really either.
So for that: 3/5.
Thanks for reading,
Ikhlas
I received a free copy of this book from Razorbill. No money or favours were exchanged.