“What To Say Next” – Julie Buxbaum

KIT: I don’t know why I decide not to sit with Annie and Violet at lunch. It feels like no one here gets what I’m going through. How could they?  I don’t even understand.
 
DAVID: In the 622 days I’ve attended Mapleview High, Kit Lowell is the first person to sit at my lunch table. I mean, I’ve never once sat with someone until now. “So your dad is dead,” I say to Kit, because this is a fact I’ve recently learned about her.

When an unlikely friendship is sparked between relatively popular Kit Lowell and socially isolated David Drucker, everyone is surprised, most of all Kit and David.  Kit appreciates David’s blunt honesty—in fact, she finds it bizarrely refreshing. David welcomes Kit’s attention and her inquisitive nature. When she asks for his help figuring out the how and why of her dad’s tragic car accident, David is all in. But neither of them can predict what they’ll find. Can their friendship survive the truth?

I really loved this book. I love that there is a book with Autism representation. This book deals with death in a really unique way. It was very dramatic as well and the story weaved itself in a really unique way.

It was an interesting loner/popular cliche troupe but it was executed in a really unique way. I have read a couple of Julie Buxbaum’s books (you can check out “Tell Me Three Things” here) and I really enjoy her writing style. Looking forward to finding and reading more of her work.

Happy Reading.

“Tell Me Three Things” – Julie Buxbaum

When tragedy strikes Jessie’s life it doesn’t just turn her world upside down, it completely dismantles it and changes galaxies. After the death of her mother her father remarries and she has to leave Chicago to move to Los Angeles, away from her friends and everything she’s ever known; her childhood home sold and her life gone. Her new Stepmother’s home is a mansion made of elegance and beauty but it’s cold and lifeless. Her step brother Theo is a grade A asshat and everyone at her new school can tell she doesn’t fit in – and she doesn’t want to anyway. Then she receives a mysterious email from “Somebody Nobody” claiming that he wants to help her navigate the new terrain. Trusting these emails means being vulnerable to this stranger… and what if it’s all a trap?

This book was everything I wanted in a book. It was herald as “Three Things will appeal to fans of Rainbow Rowell, Jennifer Niven, and E. Lockhart” and since Rainbow Rowell is my actually hero and I’d been devouring Lockhart’s books lately (still need to get on the Niven train) I decided that was praise enough for me. And boy was it. I loved this book. I was in the car listening on my way to work at one point and I SHOUTED at the audiobook. In my car. In morning traffic. Raving at my stereo like a lunatic. I was invested. It was a lot more tragic than I anticipated originally (I didn’t realize somehow that the death of the mother would take place so heavily in the book) and the strong undercurrent of sadness pulled the book into a deeper level of reality which was beautiful and heartbreaking. I loved the characters from the evil Gem to the clueless Caleb. Everyone was flawed and everyone was perfect. To learn that Buxbaum also lost her own mother explained how the writing of the pain was so pure and honest and my condolences go out to her.

I think this book is really important for youths and if you’re a little lot older like me it’s important to have that kind of youthful point of view and that innocence you can’t quite muster in adulthood no matter how hard you try.

All in all I really enjoyed this book and I hope you do too.

Happy reading.