The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider

The Beginning of Everything is yet another young adult novel that I picked up on impulse from Barnes and Noble. I decided to give it a shot this month to help chip away at my TBR challenge. The summary on the back promised a John Green-esque adventure, so I figured I was in for a treat.

The plot centers around Ezra Faulkner, a high school student living in a wealthy suburb in California. He leads a pretty charmed life; he is a popular at school, lives in a beautiful home, is class president, and is the star of the school tennis team. He expects to head to college on a tennis scholarship when he graduates. This carefree existence, however, is turned on its head when he gets into a car accident at the end of his junior year. His knee is shattered, ending his athletic aspirations (and his hopes of a free ride to college). He has to walk with a cane, and his new lack of mobility depresses him. He also begins drifting away from his popular jock friends as they prove to be rather shallow companions without sports to tie them together. He begins his senior year under a cloud, with every aspect of his life turning out to be quite different than he was envisioning.

Things begin to turn around when he meets Cassidy Thorpe, a new student at his school. He feels an instant attraction to her quirky, free demeanor and before long, they begin to date. She helps Ezra connect with a different group of friends and begin to enjoy his life again. However, as time passes by, he realizes that some things about Cassidy don't make sense. She won't let him inside her house, he's never met her family, and there's some sort of unpleasantness surrounding the last school she was at that she won't explain. He's torn between wanting to know the truth about her and wanting to just live in the moment and enjoy his relationship. When Cassidy unexpectedly begins to pull away from him, Ezra must learn how to carry on without having her as his crutch. The Beginning of Everything is a story about growing up, falling in love, and finding your place in the universe after you go through a traumatic event.

I am struggling mightily to write this review, because The Beginning of Everything really missed the mark for me. It's not that it was bad. It was just okay. It was so okay that I don't have much to say about it. Some of that stems from my lack of connection with the main characters. Ezra is, to put it plainly, a spoiled rich kid who alternates between feeling sorry for himself and fantasizing about Cassidy. Neither of these modes was particularly intriguing to read, so I could never bring myself to feel invested in his situation. Cassidy was nothing more than your typical manic pixie dream girl with an impossibly eccentric personality. She was essentially kidnapped from a John Green novel. I think I may be reaching my limit for reading this type of character, because she started to grate on my nerves immediately.

The pacing felt off throughout the story too. Things moved very slowly. The writing was never completely terrible or boring, but there were long stretches where not much happened besides Ezra and Cassidy making out. When the ending did arrive, the revelations about the characters were too unlikely and needlessly sad, which caused me to finish my reading on a down note. I can understand how other readers might really like this novel, but I just didn't connect with it. I'm surprised at that fact, because this is generally the type of book that I love.

So unfortunately, The Beginning of Everything wasn't for me. I found it to be a rather bland serving of overused young adult lit tropes. It wasn't the worst novel I've ever read, but it was far from the best. I did, however, find its overall message to be quite compelling in the end. After sifting through all the teenage drama, Ezra eventually arrives at the realization that he is in control of his own destiny, and he was giving Cassidy too much credit for the transformation he went through during his senior year. He largely took care of himself and made his own choices. I think that theme is a good one, especially for teen readers. It's too bad I wasn't a bigger fan of the execution.


Challenge Tally
TBR Challenge (previously owned): 57/60

Total Books Read in 2017: 72