Author: Jay Ahser & Carolyn Mackler

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Childrens Books (5th January 2012)

Pages: 356

ISBN: 978-0857076076

From Amazon
It’s 1996 and very few high school students have ever used the internet. Facebook will not be invented until several years in the future. Emma just got a computer and an America Online CD. She and her best friend Josh power it up and log on – and discover themselves on Facebook in 2011. Everybody wonders what they’ll be like fifteen years in the future. Josh and Emma are about to find out.

Review
Now how cool does that sound? Being able to see what the future you is up to 15 years from now via Facebook. Of course the year is 1996 and Facebook hasn’t exactly been invented yet which kind of makes it all the more fun.

I really enjoyed this book, it’s set in 1996 so (groan) we get to relive the dreaded AOL CD, or as I used to like to call them – fancy coasters

The book brought back memories of the dial up squeaks and whistles which sound every time you connect and the horribly slow speeds but I digress, the core theme of this story is how the little actions that we do today ripple out and affect our future.

I mean what would you do if one day you discovered that you could find out how every little action you did today would affect your life in 15 years time, would you be hooked and try and take control of your future no matter how obsessed you got. Or would you rather not know – let your life take on it’s own course.

In The Future Of Us we meet two characters Emma and Josh, they discover a website which tells them what their future is like 15 years in the future. Each handles this discovery very differently and I loved how the way each of them behaved exposed a deeper sense of the character.

Each chapter alternates between these two characters showing how they interpreted each others actions and how they viewed what each other was doing. I love this way of telling stories as nothing is hidden away from view and when it’s done well like this some of the plot twists are still unpredictable

I would agree with a number of reviews that say it’s a nostalgic look back and like them – I don’t think all teens will get some of the references – I mean, I loved it but I remember AOL dial up internet *shudders*. I’m not saying teens wouldn’t like it – I think they would, but I think older readers might get more out of it!

Overall, The Future Of Us was a fun read and a really interesting idea , I mean like I said at the start, what would you do?

Thanks to Emma at Book Angel Booktopia for sending me a copy