The Here and Now

by: Ann Brashares
This is the story of seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn't come from different country. She came from a different time--a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.
Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they're from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she's told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth.
But everything changes when Prenna falls for Ethan Jarves.
Thrilling, exhilirating, haunting, and heartbreaking, The Here and Now is a twenty-first century take on an impossible romance. A girl from the future might be able to save us... if she lets go of the one thing she's found to hold on to. {cover copy}
I enjoyed this book more than I was expecting to. I don't know why I felt that way. I guess sometimes I buy a book, feeling excited about it, but then over time feel like it isn't going to hold up. Perhaps this happens when I impulse buy. Which is a lot of the time. Anyway, the story kept me engaged throughout. I love time travel, so that was an enjoyable aspect. Especially because it reminded me of my favorite when I was in middle school, and probably the story that made me love time travel: Both Sides of Time by Caroline B Cooney. I also really enjoyed the mystery aspect of this book-- trying to solve a crime before it's committed. There were parts of the plot that felt a bit convenient, others extraneous, and parts of the ending that I definitely saw coming, and I wasn't completely sure about the plausibility of Prenna's argument to have {SPOILERS: the "bad guys" leave her alone and not kill her}. 
The only other thing that pulled me out of the story was when Prenna talks about the future she came back from and how it came to be that way. I know she is describing what happens, and that it's based on what's possibly trending toward our current future, but it bordered on feeling like the author was preaching to the reader. For a paragraph or so I would feel uncomfortable and wonder what the author's agenda was. But then the story would continue and that thought would go away. 
Overall, it didn't blow me away, but I didn't hate it.
PS this was a total cover buy. But when I look closer, I kindof hate that there are tears coming from both sides of the girl's eye. 

His dad had to work, so Ethan had gone fishing alone. {first line}
"Already he is the drip, drip of water that carves a canyon right through the middle of me."

"And here, I realize, is a thing you can't undo. When you open yourself to somebody, when you feel the things that you feel, well, what do you do then? You can try to ignore it, maybe you can try to forget about it, but you can't undo it and you can't give it back."

"I can't think my way into the what if, because even a tiny step stings me with hope and fear and drags along behind it a feeling that is overwhelmingly sad."

"The truth is strong. Unlike a lie, it gets stronger over time, and it has the power to draw disparate feelings and ideas together in a way that a lie never can."

"I guess memory is a deep well, and you don't know what's down there until you lower the bucket and start hauling it up."

"No matter how our hearts break, we bend toward life, don't we? We bend toward hope."


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