The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider



NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS BASICALLY ONE GIGANTIC SPOILER. I'M SORRY. I DIDN'T MEAN FOR THIS TO HAPPEN.
My Rating: 4/5 Stars
This book was fantastic. A little ridiculous at times, but it was real and it was raw and it was weirdly perfect. I could probably even just end my review now because I don't even know how to describe this book, but I guess I should maybe try or something (ughh. soo much effort).

The book is basically the rollercoaster (smart reference to the cover or what...?) relationship of crippled...um injured...brooding ex-jock Ezra and debate team superstar/part time heartbreaker Cassidy. (Did I nail those descriptions or what? Come on, you know I did.) Their romance starts out like most relationships, but like one million times cuter, and eventually becomes more and more complicated but I'll get to that later.

One of my utmost favourite aspects of this book is Ezra's fantastically "interesting" friendship with Toby (self-proclaimed future gay boy). They develop a really close friendship, which is successful until the boys decide to celebrate Toby's (7th grade?) birthday at Disneyland, which is apparently not the happiest place in the world. When a Chinese tourist kid decides to disobey Disney's safety requirements, he gets decapitated. Yes, decapitated. And Toby CATCHES HIS HEAD (in case it's not obvious, this is the ridiculous part I was talking about). At this point, Ezra ditches Toby, only to rekindle the friendship when he gets in a car accident and will never be able to play tennis again. Hah, that entire paragraph was literally a spoiler.

Yeah, so back to the romance. Ezra falls hard for Cassidy, and they have some great moments, but towards the end of the book, I began to realize that (regardless of what my heart so badly wished would happen), the relationship was pretty doomed. Like really, I was reading the last sentence and still waiting for Cassidy to come back to Ezra. In a way though, I really liked the ending. Romance is great and dandy and whatnot, but it doesn't always end up the way it does in Disney movies and that's okay. Cassidy and Ezra needed each other. They needed support, they needed love, they needed friendship and they got that but eventually they realized there were things that they needed to work out and so they went their separate ways.

I don't think I really have much more to say about this book. Just remember kids, always follow Disneyland's safety procedures. Really