Tell Me Three Things

Synopsis : 

Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that’s what it feels like during her first week of junior year at her new ultra-intimidating prep school in Los Angeles. Just when she’s thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School. Is it an elaborate hoax? Or can she rely on SN for some much-needed help?

It’s been barely two years since her mother’s death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son.

In a leap of faith—or an act of complete desperation—Jessie begins to rely on SN, and SN quickly becomes her lifeline and closest ally. Jessie can’t help wanting to meet SN in person. But are some mysteries better left unsolved?

Julie Buxbaum mixes comedy and tragedy, love and loss, pain and elation, in her debut YA novel filled with characters who will come to feel like friends.

Source: Goodreads

Julie Buxbaum's Tell Me Three Things is wonderfully written about death, pain, loss and finding yourself once again. With her characters Jessie and Ethan, both of them are trapped and lost from the person they dearly loved. 

Leaving their usual life in Chicago, Jessie was forced to shift her life to cope up with her new step mother and step brother and especially, moving with a big house with a talented cook is something that Jessie did not expect. Adjusting from another environment is terribly hard. Worst is meeting people and knowing how to communicate without any bitches around. But unfortunately, it crashed into Jessie's life. She's matured enough to understand her father's feeling of moving on, falling in love and getting married to someone else. It was all new and yet Jessie accepted it without any restraint.

I loved Jessie's thoughts about the life of rich and spoiled kids in her school and taking advantage of anything they want. She was honest about everything she sees but she still managed to find the good things in Los Angeles, like her part-time job at a bookstore. It was a risk to take given the fact that she is still new and still in the middle of adjusting to new things. 

With SN/Ethan's character, I ultimately loved the mysterious card he laid out. From quoting The Waste Land into his keen observation on typing punctuation marks and new words, he totally made himself interesting and it feels natural looking at him like that. He was naturally a swoon-worthy kind of guy. *Ethan is Ethan is Ethan* 

But facing the reality other than just IM'ing is more than a risk to take. It shows how to trust someone even without seeing each other personally. Both Jessie and Ethan gradually realized how their feelings developed in the same way they feel the pain, loss and being alone in spite of being surrounded with people. They both know how to fill up each other holes when they wanted to spill out what their heart wanted to say, which always starts on them on telling three things about themselves. And slowly, the reality of meeting each other kicks in and it was an eventful setting to read. I feel surprised and relieved how Jessie and Ethan accepted each other and talked about when they felt lonely and when they looked at each other, they already know where they belong.

Tell Me Three Things is definitely a surprising YA book! I wasn't expecting myself to feel giddy and excited about how and when SN/Ethan do his next move. But mainly, this book gave me the feeling of finding and accepting the inevitable loss of being apart with someone we love and to love once again.