Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares
by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn
Dash and Lily, 16, find themselves on their own in Manhattan at Christmas. Dash is alone by choice –he’s told each of his divorced parents that he’s spending the holiday with the other, leaving them both to take vacations out of town.
Lily’s parents are taking the honeymoon they couldn’t afford when they got married. They think that Lily is in the capable hands of her older brother, but he’s less interested in her than in his new boyfriend, and then he gets sick and spends most of the holiday in bed.
He does, however, start in motion the activity that is central to the story. It involves a red Moleskine notebook with a list of literary clues that Lily leaves in the stacks at the Strand bookstore. Bookish and erudite Dash finds it and is intrigued enough to follow Lily’s lead and leave some clues of his own. The dares in the book’s title refer to innocent things such as going to various crowded places like Macy’s and FAO Schwartz to pick up messages. As the dares go on, the teens reveal more and more about themselves in the pages of the notebook, until they finally meet under the worst possible circumstances.
No Comments