Review: The Beginning of Everything

WARNING: The following blog posts contain spoilers for the novel under review, ranging from mild to heart wrenchingly major. If you have yet to read this novel and dislike being spoiled, leave now and return upon completion.

If you HAVE read this novel (or just don't give a crap about spoilers), then continue on.

But don't say I didn't warn you.

~~

YES HELLO, DEAR FRIENDS. Today we are embarking on a new journey, here on Tales of the Unpublished, in which I read and review stories written by people who are actually published. The Tales of the Published, if you will. Ideally, this would be another weekly thing, but alas I don't think I can read that many books on a regular basis. (We'll see, though.) So for now, this'll be updated every other Wednesday. (So the next review will be uploaded on March 4th, then again on March 18th, April 1st, and so on.)

This week's book is The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider.

THE PLOT-Y BIT

Ezra Faulkner was the Golden Boy. Star tennis player, AP student, boyfriend of the most popular girl in school, and dead ringer for Homecoming King. But after a random hit-and-run leaves him with a shattered knee, he's single, crippled (for lack of a better word), and sitting with the local band of misfits in the quad. His formerly perfect life now seems to lie in ruins.

But then he meets Cassidy Thorpe.

Wild and spontaneous, Ezra falls for her and all of the quirks that come with her. The two dive into a relationship filled with treasure hunts and secret movie screenings, all the while marking Ezra's shift to discovering his true identity, and finding what he is truly capable of doing.

THE REVIEW-Y BIT

The Beginning of Everything was one of those books that sets out to be the next Super Inspiring Read--a fact you can tell just by reading the synopsis. I'm always a little uneasy when it comes to books like these, because I often find that they try too hard to be something that they're not. This book was both very hyped (back during its initial release, anyway), and filled with negative reviews on Goodreads, so I was a little nervous about starting it.

But while this book probably wasn't as inspiring as it set out to be, it still succeeded in more ways than one.

First of all: Ezra's growth. Character development is something that can bump a book up from a three star to a five star rating for me, and Ezra's journey hit the nail on the head. His struggles with dealing with the expectations of his teachers, parents, and peers, paired with finding out what kind of person he really was, was a great theme that I think most people would be able to relate to. His shift was gradual, and not without setbacks, which made it realistic, as well.

My favourite part about it was his relationship with Cassidy, and how that melded together with his character growth. In so many books, a protagonist's development kick starts when they meet a new character--normally a romantic interest. A lot of people have issues with this trend, arguing that it makes it seem as though we, as people, need someone else to swoop in and "save" us, as opposed to having the capacity to save ourselves. I don't necessarily agree with that argument, because I believe that a lot of the change we experience in ourselves can be traced back to important people in our lives, romantic or not; we pick up things from the people we care about. In the end, though, I do believe that it is up to us to be willing to make the change.

That being said, I loved that Ezra's growth was independent, but in a way that we didn't realize it until the end. Like Ezra, we were almost tricked into believing that his growth and development was a direct result of his meeting Cassidy. The sequence of events that followed both his journey and their relationship was so perfectly melded together that it was easy to forget that she wasn't the thing that started it all. She did help move him along, by introducing him to things that he wouldn't have otherwise been subjected to--a fact that I would have loved to see acknowledged.

HOWEVER. While Ezra was experiencing his tragedy, Cassidy was going through her own. The death of her brother and the life-altering injury that Ezra endured were undeniably intertwined--a fact that we come to know by the end of the book. Throughout the story, Cassidy was a mystery; there was something deeper, something tragic about her past that she wasn't coming clean with, and once she finally revealed what it was, she just....disappeared. Vanished from his life, with nothing more than a desperate plea to "misremember her".

I loved that concept, of misremembering. It was such an honest and true concept, something that we do on a daily basis. But I didn't like how it applied to Cassidy and her development--or lack thereof. Right when it seemed that we were finally going to see her past, and finally going to see her go through her own development, her own journey was just ended abruptly. The entire book was so focused on Ezra's path to self discovery that they totally neglected the person who should have been growing in parallel alongside them.

The romance was quirky and filled with adventure and it was just so fun to read about. There was a definite element of romanticism, yes, but that's part of what I loved about it! We should be allowed to romanticize things, especially things as harmless as a high school romance in a YA novel. I want to be able to dream and imagine that I can have a relationship filled with as many quirks as this one.

But the way it ended was just so unsatisfying that it kind of ruined it for me. I have no problem with them breaking up; it was the way they broke up that bothered me. Ezra had placed her on a pedestal, and kept her there the whole book. But once she fell from that pedestal, but we didn't get to see the aftermath. We didn't get to see her pick herself up, to see Ezra try and help her through her self discovery the way she helped him. I understand that seeing the true results of this sort of development would be difficult from Ezra's point of view, but maybe the book would have been better off if told from alternating perspectives.

When Ezra and Cassidy met, they were both in the middle of their stories--their "tragedies", if you will. But while Ezra's story came to a neat and final conclusion, Cassidy's was cut off abruptly. We never got to see Cassidy come to terms with her tragedy the way that Ezra did, and the utter lack of conclusion with her character development made the overall pacing seem awkward.

Although the plot suffered, the writing style itself may have saved the book for me. The flashbacks were excellent. They provided excellent segues into different plot points. I was a little iffy about it at first, because the way Ezra was narrating the story didn't seem like the way a high school boy would speak. But by the end, it is revealed that he himself is writing about his experiences, while looking back on it after he's begun college. Even though I had already fallen in love with the writing style, the fact that they had some sort of realistic explanation for it made me love it all the more.

All in all, this book was excellently written--but there was definitely a lot of room for improvement.

THE RATING-Y BIT

Four and a half stars. I would have absolutely LOVED to give it five, if only Cassidy had been given the development she deserved.


Until later,

- Justyne