Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

In the spirit of Christmas (although I am a Buddhist), will you all forgive me if I did a review of the book that was released two years ago?

It’s one of my favorite books as well- “Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares”. You might want to put it in the Young Adult category but hey, if a book is good, it doesn’t matter what genre; you just gotta respect it.

This book is co-authored by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan. -“What? Co-authored?” –“Yes, co-authored”.  I think it made the story much more interesting. I’d like to add “more realistic” here but then if you’ve already read it, you’ll tell me, “What’s realistic about two teenagers leaving hints for each other before having met?”, which is why I’m not adding it. I’d also like to say co-authoring made the plots more natural but I won’t do this either for the same reason.

This book of dares is witty, funny, romantic, sweet, young, and fresh. It’s everything you want to find in a Young Adult book and a Holiday book. Taking place in the Christmas holidays in New York, the story originates with Dave, calm but daring, challenging and snarly boy who uses all the big words. His biggest Christmas wish? Twenty volumes of unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. On the other hand, Lily is the sweetest girl in the world. She loves pets too much, she loves caroling, and she loves her grandpa. She is wonderfully weird.  

It all started with a red note book. Dash saw the hints that Lily left in writing as he figured out all of them. The point of the book is that Lily’s big brother wanted her to find a good boy she can spend time with. And the boy crazy enough to follow all the clues in the book must be the perfect boy! What kind of clues did Dash leave back for Lily? Who else got involved in this book exchange? How did they do it without really seeing each other?

Honestly, I read though the whole book with a happy feeling. I loved Lily and Dave. You will find that this book is not of a cheesy kind at all. It’s actually worth my time every now and then I want some happy reading.

When writing this book, David Levithan wrote a chapter for Dave and then sent it to Rachel Cohn, who wrote a chapter for Lily. They kept exchanging e-mails to finish this book, just like Dave and Lily, who kept exchanging the red notebook to know more about each other.

I hope this book will be worth your holiday time as well. Happy reading! And happy holidays!