Review: The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily (Dash & Lily #2)
By Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
Publisher: Ember
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased

To Sum It Up: It’s Lily’s absolute favorite time of the year, but the Christmas season just isn’t the same with all of the changes happening in her family. As much as Dash has tried to be there for her, Lily worries that things just aren’t right between them. Now it’s up to Dash, not exactly the biggest Christmas fan, to try and revive Lily’s holiday spirit.

Review: It’s been a hot minute since I read a YA book. It’s been an even hotter minute since I wrote a book review. And just to belabor the point, I last read a Christmas book in 2018.

So what prompted 2023’s sudden burst of motivation to do all the things? A strong possibility is the steady diet of self-help and business books I’ve been reading all year. It was time to switch gears, and what better way to do so AND get into the holiday spirit by catching up with some familiar fictional characters?

I loved Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares and felt a bit dismayed when I saw meh reviews for the follow-up, The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily. But it’s been such a strange year that I summoned some optimism and dove in.

First, let me say how wonderful it was, indeed, to read about these two characters again. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed Dash’s snark and Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s gift for capturing New York City’s incomparable character, especially during the holiday season.

I get why some readers viewed the book with mixed feelings. We quickly learn that Lily’s beloved grandfather has suffered a heart attack and is still undergoing a challenging recovery, with Lily insisting upon being his primary caregiver. All the time she’s been spending with her grandfather has not only meant seeing less of Dash, but it’s also put a huge damper on Lily’s normally indomitable Christmas spirit. Dash is trying to support his girlfriend as best he can, but sometimes Lily longs for more from him, especially with expressing his feelings.

I admit that at first, Lily wishing that Dash fit the perfect boyfriend mold prompted a small eyebrow raise from me because it came across kind of petulant in a, “Why can’t Dash just do X?” “Why can’t Dash be more Y?” way. But Lily learns from some older and wiser adults in her life that Dash can’t read her mind. That’s when I also called myself out for also being guilty of the same expectation. So then I applauded Lily’s character growth for its realism.

While Lily is understandably not the ebullient Lily from the first book, that’s not to say there’s not lots to love about this sequel, like anatomically correct gingerbread men, glitter-related injuries, the logic (or lack thereof) of Dash’s friend, Boomer, and the sage observations of Lily’s great-aunt, Mrs. Basil E. If you enjoyed Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, go ahead and give this one a read.

All in All: Just what Santa ordered in a Christmas read.

Review: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist
By Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased

To Sum It Up: Bass player Nick has just had his heart broken by his now ex-girlfriend, Tris, and his worst nightmare becomes reality when she turns up at the same club—with another guy. So Nick asks random face in the crowd Norah to pretend she’s his girlfriend for the next five minutes. Norah is going through some breakup issues of her own and happens to know Nick’s ex—and they’re not exactly fond of each other. Norah doesn’t want to catch Tris’s attention, either, and so for five minutes, Nick has a girlfriend. But as the night slowly becomes a new day in New York City, Nick and Norah realize that this very temporary relationship might have a lot more potential than that.

Review: Having loved another Rachel Cohn/David Levithan co-write, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, I’d wanted to read Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist for quite some time. Once again, I was impressed with the structure of the authors’ narrative; like Dash & Lily, Nick & Norah is told from the alternating viewpoints of the title characters. Also like Dash & Lily, Nick & Norah rocks this format. Cohn and Levithan are brilliant at making it work and making the transitions between perspectives seamless.

Sometimes the writing in a book just suits me perfectly, like if it were a person, we’d be best friends, and that’s the case here. I loved the prose; it’s smart, sharp, and full of wit. It also made all the difference in my opinion of the book. Contemporaries almost always have to work a little harder to grab my attention, and this one did thanks to the engaging writing. I don’t know if I would have found the novel, which essentially follows Nick and Norah’s adventures through New York City on a single, very eventful night, half as interesting. Fortunately, the pair are both highly entertaining narrators. While I’m going on about the writing, now would probably be a good time to mention that there’s a liberal amount of swearing, including frequent use of a certain word that starts with “f.” I personally didn’t mind at all, but for anyone who may not be so enthused to see this type of language, here’s a heads-up.

If Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares is a love letter to NYC at Christmas, then I’d consider Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist a love letter to NYC’s music scene. Nick and Norah actually hail from New Jersey, but it’s New York City that stars as the book's setting. I could not have been happier about that, and I love Cohn and Levithan for writing these two valentines to a place that will forever reside in my heart.

If I was at all worried that Nick & Norah would too closely resemble Dash & Lily (and really, I wasn’t), there was no need to do so. This is an entirely different, unique story that stands out on its own. Now I’m really curious about the movie adaptation and must check it out. I truly hope it captures the novel’s snappy dialogue and overall awesomeness.

All in All: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist featured several elements that are dear to my heart: a New York setting, Dirty Dancing references, and tons of sarcasm. There was plenty here to keep my interest occupied, but I’m not sure what a reader who doesn’t find any of the above as appealing as I do would think of this novel. The plot boils down to whether or not Nick and Norah will stay together for longer than five minutes; if you’re sold on that premise, then you should be fine reading this.

Review: Every Day by David Levithan

Every Day
By David Levithan
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

To Sum It Up:

For A, a new day means life in a new body. He never knows who he’ll be next; he could wake up as someone of any ethnicity, male or female. A has always tried to avoid interfering in the lives of his hosts, but that’s before he meets Rhiannon. While in the body of her boyfriend, Justin, A falls for her, and soon he’s risking exposing what he is to be with her. Someone already knows that A isn’t who he appears to be, though, and just might reveal A’s secret first.

Review:

I can’t think of any novel I’ve previously read that even comes close to the premise of Every Day. I love how it’s a fairly straightforward concept, yet there’s a multitude of directions to take it in. And David Levithan most definitely makes the most out of it.

The novel dives straight into the story without any preamble about why A changes bodies every day. It’s just a fact that has to be taken as is. Although I couldn’t help being curious about whether A was an alien or something of that sort, I found that I was okay with not having the details of A’s origins. Credit Levithan with pulling off this idea as though it’s a commonplace thing and could happen to anyone. Normally I would have taken issue with the lack of A’s background history, but my attention was too engaged in the stories of the people whose lives A experiences for a day to really notice.

We get to meet several characters through A’s eyes, characters who are given quite a lot of depth considering how short-lived A’s time is as each person. Never knowing who his next host will be, A is thrown into a variety of scenarios. The most heartbreaking for me was when he found himself in the life of a young woman named Kelsea who was planning to commit suicide. This presents one of the biggest challenges to A’s policy of minimizing his interference in the hosts’ lives. On the whole, I thought A was a principled character (I’ll get to the part where I felt he went astray in a bit.). In Kelsea’s case, A truly wants to help her, and he does what he can for her.

A enters a much grayer ethical zone where Rhiannon is concerned. During the time he spends as her boyfriend, Justin, A falls in love with her. Yup, it’s Insta-Love, but if you’re already rolling with the idea of A’s daily form shift, then you might as well go with this, too. That’s how I viewed the situation, anyway. So not only did Every Day get me to look past the protagonist’s missing backstory, but the book also convinced me to turn a mostly blind eye to Insta-Love. The novel was this good, at least to me.

Once A realizes how much Rhiannon means to him, seeing her again starts taking more and more priority over leaving a host’s life in the same order he first encountered it. I’d stop short of calling A reckless, but this certainly isn’t the same A from the book’s early chapters. I couldn’t really fault him for some of his actions, though, because the nature of his life makes it so hard to form relationships, especially long-term ones. That’s not even counting the gigantic hurdle of having to explain to someone what the dawn of a new day means for A. I did feel that this part of the novel, where A tries to stay connected with Rhiannon as much as possible, put the most strain on my suspension of disbelief. A just so happens to inhabit a succession of hosts who live within a reasonable distance of Rhiannon’s location. A brief mention is made of how A has to go on a long journey if that’s what the host does, but that did nothing to enlighten me about how A manages to remain fairly close to Rhiannon in the geographical sense. Considering everything about the novel that I did accept at face value, I feel like I’m nitpicking here. And I probably am.

Overall, Every Day was a unique, absorbing read with a very unconventional romance. The book sends a strong message about the importance of loving each other based on what’s inside our hearts and regardless of however we appear on the outside, a message that is resonant without sounding preachy or cheesy. I tend to read a lot of series; it was refreshing to read a standalone for a change, and an excellent standalone at that.

All in All:

Every Day could almost pass for a contemporary novel—A’s extra special circumstances aside. I’d wanted to read this for quite some time, and when I finally borrowed it from the library, I was not disappointed with it.

Review: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares
By Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers

To Sum It Up:

Dash and Lily are complete strangers to each other, but they’re about to meet in a most unusual way. Right before Christmas, Dash finds a red Moleskine notebook on a shelf in the Strand Book Store in Manhattan that contains a quest. On a whim, he accepts the mystery author’s challenge, kicking off a back and forth game of dares with the notebook’s owner, Lily. The two are sent on tasks all over the city, and with every exchange of the notebook, they seem to become a little better acquainted. Pouring your heart out to a stranger on paper is one thing, though; meeting in person is another thing entirely, with no guarantee that the person from the red Moleskine notebook is the same person outside of its pages. Both Dash and Lily realize this and wonder if it would be best to continue just knowing each other through the notebook.

Review:

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares was such a fun read, and it’s simply perfect for Christmas. I grew up in New York City and have many fond memories of past holidays there, so the setting alone was enough to make me fall in love with this book. Rachel Cohn and David Levithan do a magnificent job of bringing the city at Christmas time to life, from the crowds at Macy’s Herald Square and FAO Schwarz to the decorated houses of Brooklyn’s Dyker Heights neighborhood. For anyone who’s never visited New York during the holiday season, reading this book is probably the next best thing to being there.

I loved the novel’s original premise and its rich cast of quirky characters. The two narrators, Dash and Lily, are brought together by a red notebook containing a dare. The scheme was concocted by Lily’s older brother, Langston, in an attempt to help push his little sister out into the world more. It’s Dash who finds the notebook on a shelf in the Strand Book Store and decides to play along. The tasks themselves are quite funny from the outset; in order to decipher the first set of clues, Dash has to find some rather eyebrow-raising titles among the Strand’s stacks. Later on, there’s a Cinderella-esque incident involving a majorette boot getting left behind that still makes me smile just thinking about it. I found this book hilarious; it perfectly suited my sense of humor. Dash’s frequent use of sarcasm was very welcome.

Lily is such a sweet, bubbly character. She exudes an optimism that is very endearing and that I would love to have. Dash, who takes a more cynical view of the world, is the perfect foil for her. Whereas Lily is sheltered by her extremely protective, extended family, Dash’s divorced parents haven’t spoken to each other in years. This story could have gone the trite, opposites attract route, but fortunately, it doesn’t. Cohn and Levithan keep the narrative fresh with an ideal balance between poignancy and lightheartedness.

I’m not big on holiday movies where at the end, everyone is standing in front of a fireplace wearing matching sweaters and huge grins while holding mugs of hot chocolate. I definitely have more of a Dash-like outlook on life, but this book really made me feel, well, happy, after reading it. There’s no need to worry that Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares is all syrup, though; there’s enough snark, especially from Dash, to prevent it from becoming schmaltzy. The novel puts you in a festive mood without giving you the sensation that you’ve indulged in eating too many holiday sweets.

All in All:

I borrowed this from the library but need to buy my own copy so that I can start a new holiday tradition of reading it every December.

Favorite Quotes:

“For me, danger might be getting out from under the protective cloak of my family and venturing into the world more on my own, even though I don’t know what—or who—awaits me.”

—Lily, Chapter 12

“‘If you tell me, I will leave you alone,’ I said. ‘And if you don’t tell me, I am going to grab the nearest ghostwritten James Patterson romance novel and I am going to follow you through this store reading it out loud until you relent. Would you prefer me to read from Daphne’s Three Tender Months with Harold or Cindy and John’s House of Everlasting Love? I guarantee, your sanity and your indie street cred won’t last a chapter. And they are very, very short chapters.’”

—Dash, Chapter 11