Story for the Week
Ross and Rachel—an iconic, albeit fictional, relationship if there ever was one. Millions of viewers tuned in every week to watch the antics of the six Friends, but by the time the series ended, the investment in Ross and Rachel’s relationship was palpable. In recent years, a whole new generation of viewers tuned in on Netflix and met Ross and Rachel for the first time while others enjoyed watching the series again, sometimes with their own kids like I did with my daughter who became just as big a fan.
I think what I loved about them was the “will they or won’t they?” when we all pretty much knew that they would. They had too, right? But Ross and Rachel were grown-ups (kind of 😉). We saw a glimpse of Rachel in high school in a handful of episodes, but how would they have been had they met as high school freshmen, making their way through the everyday drama of those years that feel like nothing will ever be as important as right this minute?
I think they would have been a lot like Lulu and Alex.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for Four Days of You and Me by Miranda Kenneally
356 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication Date: May 5, 2020
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire.
Publisher’s Description
Are they meant to be, or better apart?
Every May 7th, the students at Coffee County High School take a class trip. And every year, Lulu’s relationship with Alex Rouvelis gets a little more complicated. Freshman year they went from sworn enemies to more than friends after a close encounter in an escape room. It’s been hard for Lulu to quit Alex ever since.
Through break-ups, make-ups, and dating other people, each year’s class trip brings the pair back together and forces them to confront their undeniable connection. From the science museum to Six Flags; New York City to London, Lulu learns one thing is for sure: love is the biggest trip of all.
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Main Characters:
- Lulu – vegan, advocates for recycling and an on-campus garden, antagonist of the high school baseball team, doesn’t fit in with the popular crowd.
- Alex – part of the popular crowd, star of the high school baseball team, his family owns the best Italian place in town.
- Max – Lulu’s best friend, desperately seeking a boyfriend, photographer for the yearbook.
- Grace – Lulu’s cousin, part of the popular crowd, only freshman on the dance team.
Miranda Kenneally’s Four Days of You and Me is a sweet high school romance in the vein of Ross and Rachel on Friends. We see more of their stories apart than we do together, but somehow you just know they’re meant for each other. The voices of the characters are realistic for high school. It’s been a long time since I was a high school freshman, but the teenage drama in this brought it all back.
The key theme of the book is May 7 of every year that Lulu and Alex are in high school—the day of the class trip. Each day focuses on the developments (or the regression) in Lulu and Alex’s relationship, and the following chapters draw the picture of what happens leading up to the class trip. The sweet gestures, the arguments, the friendship, the animosity. We as readers feel all of it along with Lulu, Alex, and their friends. I love that tie-in. It’s a great way to time-box each part of Lulu and Alex’s relationship and their movement between enemies, friendship, and high school sweethearts.
I also appreciate that Kenneally deals with the fallout to Lulu and Alex’s friend group when things go sideways. Teenagers tend to have a group of people they hang with, and when a relationship gets rocky, it’s just like when adults get divorced. Being together but not together is awkward, and everyone is uncomfortable.
All in all, this is a nice YA read. I knocked it down to 4 stars because the timeline of the chapters in the beginning is VERY confusing and choppy until you figure out the pattern. Even once I figured it out, it still felt choppy. The other thing (and this is kind of huge) is the glaring math error in the first chapter. The chapter is a single sentence in which Lulu tells us that their first kiss was exactly four years ago today. I know the book covers all four years of high school, but May 7 of freshman year to May 7 of senior year is actually only three years, not four.
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