The Future of Us

Recently I started reading the Future of Us by Jay Asher, deciding to since I really enjoyed reading Thirteen Reasons Why over the summer.

First off let me start by saying if you read Thirteen Reasons Why and liked it, that doesn't necessarily mean you should read the Future of Us. While the former book deals with the topic of suicide and the motives for a girl who committed it, so far the Future of Us has been light hearted and honestly not as grabbing as I would of expected.

This book is set in 1996, and Emma has just gotten an aol disk for her computer. However, when she opens it up it automatically logs her onto Facebook, which of course hasn't been invented yet. The premise is that Emma and her friends are able to see some 30 years into their futures, and because of this are starting to base their actions off of things they've seen that they don't want to happen.

While interesting at first, honestly I don't think that this is enough of an idea to base a book around. Yes, it's exciting that they can do this, but some 200 pages of it? I honestly don't want to hear about how Emma used to eat macaroni as comfort food but then because she was feeling bad that night when her dad made it for her she no longer eats it in the future. There's no real imminent danger, nothing interesting happening.

I can probably guess what happens in the rest of the book from having read about 70 pages in so far. I'm going to say that Emma and her friends end up trying too hard to change their futures and get into some sort of trouble, but then they all sort it out eventually and resolve their problems by no longer having access to Facebook. They go about the rest of their lives having learned to live in the moment, and not look so far ahead into the future that they can't see what's going on now.

I don't think I'm going to be finishing this book.