Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
Release Date: January 5th 2012
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Books
Add it: Goodreads
Overall: ♥♥♥♥

What would you do if you had your future at your fingertips? What would you have done if you stumbled upon Facebook 8 years before it was invented and you saw how your living in the future?

Josh and Emma have been best friends almost their entire lives until things get a little awkward... Josh gets a free AOL CD in the mail and gives it to Emma to install on her new computer. The pair then stumbles upon a website called Facebook and it's a little bit weird... Who would write about what their having for dinner or what colour they want to dye their hair? They have no idea how they came across Facebook when it hadn't even been invented yet or why their posting such personal things for everybody to see!

Whist I wasn't a teenager in the 90's, I still consider myself a 90's kid (is that something I should be proud of?). All the little bits and pieces mentioned such as scrunchies, dial up, Windows 95 (I refused to have any screensaver but the brick maze) and the fact that a COLOUR monitor was pretty freaking cool made me feel all giddy inside and I constantly found myself going "OOOOH I REMEMBER THAT!". Then there are the mentions of things we didn't have any idea about back then... For example,
'I flinch. "What the hell happens to Pluto?"'
or
'"It doesn't matter," Tyson says, biting off more sandwich. "My dad thinks Ellen DeGeneres is gay, and we love Ellen!"
"Are you kidding? She's not gay," Kellan says.'
and finally
'I don't know what Harry Potter or The Help are...

This is set before Harry Potter was a phenomenon (there was such a time? Must have blocked it out :P). The 90's nostalgia was great :)

This was written in dual narrative and I thought both character's had very distinctive voices and I really loved seeing them mature and grow throughout the novel. We still witness the freakouts either has over something they've seen on Facebook, but I found that the two of them handled situations very differently. I'm not entirely sure whether I liked Emma or not. I liked her, however she was never happy with what her future offered her and jumped to conclusions very easily. If it was implied that she had a bad week on Facebook, she would go to drastic measures to manipulate her future. She did this several times and whilst Josh understandably freaked out about a few things, he didn't do anything too drastic in attempt to change his future. Josh thought more rationally than Emma did and was a little more accepting. He didn't intentionally do anything to change his future, although he did "accidently" due to the simple fact he knew what would happen to him in 15 years.

Although the ending and the story in general fairly predictable, it was still a delightful, fun read and is a thought-provoking novel with just enough 90's nostalgia tossed in (which obviously, I really enjoyed!). Also, the ending is super-duper cute :)

Ohh yeahhh!

 

Also, did anyone else used to play Chip's Challenge? Or was that just me? :)