Saturday, May 24, 2014

Better Off Friends

Better Off Friends
Elizabeth Eulberg
Scholastic Inc., 2014. 276 pages. Young adult fiction.

Macallan and Levi were best friends from the first day they met at the beginning of seventh grade. But they could never understand why their inseparable friendship made dating other people hard. Is it possible for a boy and a girl to be just friends?

This book was adorable! The thing I liked the most was that the story was told from both perspectives, with Macallan and Levi trading off chapters (they each had their own unique font) and creating extra dialogue between the chapters. (It's not often that you see a book where separate narrators will take a time out from the story to talk to each other!) Beyond the writing though, Eulberg tells a compelling story and creates engaging characters that you want to keep reading about. And you hope, while the two struggle to figure out what their relationship is going to look like as high school begins to take its toll, that they'll be able to maintain what is obviously a very special friendship for a very long time.

JH

1 comment:

AJ said...

This book asks the age-old question, can guys and girls really be just friends? Levi meets Macallan after moving from California to Wisconsin in 7th grade. They instantly bond over their favorite British TV show and spend the next five years trying to figure out school, fitting in, and why other relationships are so hard.

Told in alternating chapters so you get both Levi and Macallan’s points of view, this book missed the mark a bit for me. It is a fun, light romantic read, but there just wasn’t enough emotional connection to the characters to draw me in so I could enjoy their predictable discovery that they have romantic feelings towards each other. I have no problem with predictable endings as long as the journey there is worth the effort. I think there are better “best friends who fall in love” books out there.