The biggest source of angst for high school upperclassmen is, of course, college. Many rites of passage are associated with this big stage in life, including the path of choosing which college you're even going to go to. Those who have gone through this process have experienced fights with parents, fights with friends, and even fights with significant others before committing to the (daunting) beginning of the rest of their lives. Emery Lord doesn't shy away from anything about this experience: the fights, the excitement, the anxiety. The candor with which Lord uses to address the sheer enormity of the college decision and the rest of your life, when you feel like you've only just gotten started, is achingly real and validates all experiences of all high schoolers, no matter how big or small.
Emery Lord is a YA contemporary fiction author who writes books about teenage girls, all different and relatable. Her books include Open Road Summer, The Start of Me and You, When We Collided, The Names They Gave Us and The Map From Here to There. Her books are powerful in their ability to bring difficult situations to the page, with simple yet heart-wrenching prose. Her books have been published in 10 different languages, and have been featured on YALSA and state book lists. You can find Emery Lord at emerylord.com. You can find more of my reviews of Lord's work here.
It's senior year, and Paige Hancock is finally living her best life. She has a fun summer job, great friends, and a super charming boyfriend who truly gets her. But senior year also means big decisions. Weighing "the rest of her life," Paige feels her anxiety pervading each decision she makes. Everything is exactly how she always wanted it to be--how can she leave it all behind next year? In her head, she knows there is so much more to experience after high school. But in her heart, is it really that terrible to want things to stay the same forever? Emery Lord's award-winning storytelling shines in this heartfelt exploration of life's most important questions.
Paige remains one of the best characters in contemporary young adult fiction, and is a beautiful, growing, flawed, and hilarious character. Despite the four year gap between the publication dates of The Map from Here to There and The Start of Me and You, readers are instantly pulled back into her life, as if there was never a gap in publication dates or in the story itself. A testament to Lord's writing, surely, as well as the way in which Paige's struggles remain relevant to any high schooler. Her strengths are highlighted as much as her flaws; Lord never tries to make Paige seem more perfect than she seems (which is actually something she struggles with -- perception vs. reality). I enjoy how Lord depicts everything Paige struggles with: friends, resumes, boyfriend, family, financial situations, distances. Nothing gets a backseat, as everything in Paige's life demands her attention, meaning that we truly get to experience Paige's senior year with her. Paige's anxiety gets reignited in the novel, and I appreciate Lord's acknowledgement of mental health struggles along with the physical demands of the world (resume building, relationships, etc.). Lord often examines the mental aspects of high school and growing up, as seen not only in this duology but also The Names They Gave Us.
Paige's best friends also take up more space in this novel, in an incredibly important way. Lord expands on each of Kayleigh's, Tessa's, and Morgan's struggles during senior year, that range everywhere from relationships to health complications to future aspirations. Paige's friends have struggles that parallel hers, which shows her that she's never truly alone. I almost wish that we could have seen Paige's friends' struggles expanded on more, because there was something in each of their struggles that readers could continue to relate to. It would have created more relatable aspects for readers, if they were unable to relate as closely to Paige as I was able to. Lord's focus on Paige and her specific struggles was strong, but at the expense of being able to further explore all the complexities of these struggles, and the other interesting avenues the story could have taken if we could have seen these girls' struggles further in depth. Either way, Lord's decision to open up further with Kayleigh, Tessa, and Morgan allowed her to follow new avenues of the high school experience, and represent all kinds of girls.
The college decision is one not to be taken lightly, and has become highly contested in recent years. Lord, true to form, is connected with current processes and concerns related to the college decision, from the high financial burden, incredible anxiety, and the way it can create stress fractures in all kinds of relationships. No part of one's life is unaffected when considering college, and I appreciated Lord's ability to reflect that as Paige and her friends move throughout senior year. It is always on Paige's mind, and through her eyes we see how she interprets everything with the college decision constantly on her mind. Lord also has some beautiful description and lines related to the college decision, rejection, and acceptance that ring true for this situation, and so many others in life. Sure, some lines can be cheesy, but if you've experienced anything like the moments the lines are used in, you know it's a cheesy experience that warrants a cheesy line. Reality is tough, though, and Lord doesn't shy away from that either. For every cheerful moment Paige experiences, there's also a tough downfall she has to face, and she grows from all of those experiences.
One of my favorite, and definitely the most heartbreaking, aspects of the book is how it relates to Max. In The Start of Me and You, there's a lot of buildup to Max and Paige finally getting together, and then they spend the whole summer apart. (If you've read the emails, you know exactly how cute they were long-distance, though, and what a happy ending that was for them.) But, when Lord decided to expand on the story, that ending was reopened as a beginning, and one that was almost problematic for the pair. Their entire relationship during this novel was a struggle, which at times was confusing, poignant, and all around heartbreaking. For sure, I had tears in my eyes at some moments and was questioning, How will this end? The paths and twists in the road for this pair were eyeopening for Paige as she learned about herself, and even taught the reader more about Max's character and behaviors. I enjoyed Lord's emphasis, throughout the entire struggle, on Paige's need to make a college decision for herself, and how her anxiety affected how she thought about everything with Max. This was truly the most complicated and beautiful contemporary young adult fiction relationships I've read thus far, in a way that's relatable despite its specificity. Lord brought their romance to life, and highlighted the good with the bad. Overall, I think both Max and Paige got the best ending they could have asked for -- even if we don't exactly know what that each means for them.
Lastly, I wanted to mention two scenes I particularly loved. First, Paige's car accident was harrowing and beautifully written. Something about that scene took me right back to the scene of my own high school senior year car accident, and the ways it can change the course of someone's life. Second, homecoming was a particularly heartbreaking and awkward scene, and I just really enjoyed what happened: it was real, and it wasn't perfect. Sometimes, authors or storytellers will choose the outcome that makes their characters happy, even if it isn't the outcome the characters would have arrived at. Lord always stays true to her characters, even if it means imperfect situations and outcomes, and that decision for the homecoming scene made later scenes in the book even more tender, and even more perfect.
I can't wait for more books by Lord, and if you consider yourself a fan of contemporary young adult fiction, she is definitely an author to look out for!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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