Charlotte and Frankie are 15 and they read a lot of YA literature. They are very familiar with all the clichés of the genre, and often point out the difference between their lives and what would happen in a YA novel. Because in their lives, nothing happens. This gives Charlotte the idea of writing an account of their lives, which she will call Nothing. So this YA novel  by Annie Barrows is an attempt to buck the trend of YA lit and capture the ordinary details of everyday life. Indeed, not much happens. There’s a story about a coffee pot that got broken, and there’s a road trip. There’s a hint of romance and there’s a lot of thinking about romance. There’s a lot of stream of consciousness which is entertaining enough — it helps to listen to the unabridged audiobook performed engagingly by Arielle DeLisle. It is only about 5 hours long, but that’s enough. The strength of the novel is that the characterization is a bit better than in a standard YA story, and in its effort to capture the smaller details of teen life, it succeeds well enough, but not much better than a lot of other YA novels where more happens.

© 2018 Christian Perring

Christian Perring teaches in NYC.