The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider

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Publication date: 2013
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Pages: 335
My rating: 3.5 stars
Ages: 17+

Tennis star, class president, prom king. This was Ezra Faulkner's life until tragedy stuck. Now he's starting senior year with a shattered knee and disillusioned about who he was before. Then he meets Cassidy, and in a blur of adventures, Ezra starts discovering the person he was meant to be.

This book kind of reminded me of John Green's Looking for Alaska, but with a somewhat happier storyline. Ezra is the normal kid, trying to live up to everyone else's expectations. Cassidy is wild and unpredictable, a whirlwind in the otherwise settled town of Eastwood.

I had a hard time deciding how to rate this book. On the one hand, the story was really interesting. I hated having to put it down, really caught up in Ezra and Cassidy. I liked the panopticon idea, that we should all be trying to escape from under the gaze of everyone else's ideas of how we should act. But then there was the overload of sexual language and situations. There wasn't anything as graphic as in Alaska, but I still found it uncomfortable for me to read. Just remember, I'm a little bit more conservative in what I read than some people.

I think there was also a little bit of language. As it is, I think that a lot of teens could probably relate to the book and enjoy it.

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