Meet seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn’t come from a different country. She came from a different time—a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.
Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they’re from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she’s told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth. But everything changes when she falls for Ethan Jarves.
Uh oh. Here we go.
You know, there really were gems of passages that I did like about this book. Little things that didn’t really occur to me at the time but now are saving THE HERE AND NOW from the original blowout explosion I was ready to give over this book when I first finished it.
The beginning to THE HERE AND NOW really was not that bad. In fact, I really enjoyed it. You know, I didn’t know that Ann Brashares was the same author that wrote The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants until about midway between the middle and the beginning of the book, and that was when I still thought I was liking the story. Finally though, when I initially thought things were about to get good–things just blew up.
Let’s talk about sex plot. The plot was extremely lacking. There were so many things that went wrong here. The characters didn’t match up with the plot. When they were under pressure, they didn’t act stressed or unhappy or anything like that. When they had to make some plans and actually do something, they went to the beach. When the romance finally came around, it was rushed and completely unbelievable. Without emotion. Instalove not quite at it’s finest, but just about there.
The world-building here was not too bad, and I enjoyed learning about Prenna’s world. One thing I was really disappointed with though was that her character didn’t grow. There were plenty of opportunities for Brashares to show a change in Prenna, but it never happened. That was something I had enjoyed in her SISTERHOOD series, so I was looking for it right off–but things just came and went, beginning to end, and she still felt like the same person to me–if not more unlikable and oblivious to things around her and the sometimes stupid decisions she makes.
Overall, THE HERE AND NOW was a disappointment for me. I was looking for something in particular and I definitely didn’t get it. There was a huge change in Brashares’s voice from her contemporary novels, and I’m not quite sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I do think it was cool to see this author in particular branch out from her usual stuff, but it wasn’t quite all that I was hoping it would be. I was skeptical of a lot of the moves the characters made, and it seemed like everything just sort of went downhill right around the middle. Despite the things I did like about, THE HERE AND NOW just didn’t work for me. 2 stars.
pg count for the ebook: 288
[contact-form][contact-field label=’Name’ type=’name’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Email’ type=’email’ required=’1’/][contact-field label=’Website’ type=’url’/][contact-field label=’Comment’ type=’textarea’ required=’1’/][/contact-form]
