Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares – Rachel Coln & David Levithan

 

Originally posted on my previous blog – this post has been edited for spelling mistakes/clarity

‘I’ve left some clues for you. 
If you want them, turn the page.
If you don’t, put the book back on the shelf, please.’

Whilst browsing his favourite book store, Dash comes across a red Moleskine notebook, and so begins the book of dares as Dash gets to know the girl behind the notebook. Lily places her red Moleskine notebook, waiting for the right guy to come along and find it and accept her dares. But is Dash the right guy? Will they just continually keep passing clues to places in New York City? And what will happen when they finally meet?

I love this book so much. It is a book that repeatedly reminds me of how different it is to many other books. Firstly, there are few books out there that contain dares that bring you, as a reader, to different parts of a major city, such as New York. Secondly, I hardly ever read books where at the end I’m like ‘I wish these people were real’. I wish I lived in New York and found a red Moleskine in The Strand Bookstore. I wish I knew Dash and Lily because they’re SUCH great characters.

As you can tell, I loved the characters of Lily and Dash – both I found interesting to read about, although for some unknown reason I preferred David Levithan’s (Dash) chapters more (on my reread of this recently however, I actually found Lily more interesting…). The other minor characters didn’t just fade into the background after a while either. They were all very unique and all had an original spark.. My personal favourite was Boomer, as I’m sure many people would say. I just COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING. He was absolutely hilarious. Another favourite was Boris the dog. After speaking to a work colleague about this book, we both were laughing to ourselves recalling a particular scene with Boris.

One of my only problems with this was the language, especially for David Levithan’s (Dash) chapters. Dash has a lot of knowledge and loves words and books. There were times when the richness of Dash’s section of narration stopped some of my enjoyment as the tone and use of words made this book harder to read. To put it finely, I had no idea what he was talking about half the time. Apart from this, however, the language was incredibly vivid, putting you in New York at Christmas in the middle of its chaos in Macy’s or the tranquil of The Strand.

While with many romance stories, there are times when you want them to just get together, I liked that this book wasn’t entirely about their romance, the book wouldn’t haven been as good I feel. The book not only had a light hearted feel, but, at times, takes on more serious subjects, such as viewpoints on love or previous relationships. I felt Rachel Cohn and David Levithan got their representations of teenagers spot on, making their narration incredibly relatable.

Overall, this book is wonderful. You get taken into the narrative straight away and keep this engagement with Lily and Dash. This book is incredibly original and absolutely hilarious to read. I would recommend this to anyone for the great writing, plot and characters. This is a book that will make you smile.

I give it a 4 out of 5