What To Say Next

Synopsis

Sometimes a new perspective is all that is needed to make sense of the world.

KIT: I don t know why I decide not to sit with Annie and Violet at lunch. It feels like no one here gets what I m going through. How could they? I don t even understand.

DAVID: In the 622 days I've attended Mapleview High, Kit Lowell is the first person to sit at my lunch table. I mean, I ve never once sat with someone until now. So your dad is dead, I say to Kit, because this is a fact I've recently learned about her.

When an unlikely friendship is sparked between relatively popular Kit Lowell and socially isolated David Drucker, everyone is surprised, most of all Kit and David. Kit appreciates David s blunt honesty in fact, she finds it bizarrely refreshing. David welcomes Kit s attention and her inquisitive nature. When she asks for his help figuring out the how and why of her dad s tragic car accident, David is all in. But neither of them can predict what they ll find. Can their friendship survive the truth?"

Source: Goodreads

Can love be so powerful a force that it can skew the space-time continuum?

I liked David's mind to be honest. From the start of the book, digging into his mind and reading every detail or even a tidbit of information entertained me a lot. I don't know much about the depths of science or even the art of reading pi and how it calms him down, but I loved the idea how numbers brings him in a state of bliss. It was a unique feeling and experience how David made me feel like I wanted to know him more beyond those words in his head.

With Kit's thoughts, it was pretty hard getting to see her at first. She was on guard with her feelings and almost felt like she just shut down everything else when her father died. The regret and pain of losing her father is something that sets her out on the core. I liked how Julie Buxbaum showed the notion of facing the stages of losing someone very important to our lives. It wasn't pretentious, everything felt so real. The words resounded as I expected it to be. It was full of loss and hunger for forgiveness. It drove the plot seamlessly.

As Kit and David gradually falls for each other, I felt their connection slowly getting close. It was entertaining for me to see how David manages to compose himself on falling in love with Kit. It felt like that was one of the things that he didn't calculated much, like the percent of the possibilities of him and Kit to be with each other. 

Another part that I insanely love is the brother-sister love attachment of David and Lauren. It always catches my attention the way Lauren handles her brother with all her heart, with the way she protects him and alternatively saying to David about the facts of a high school life that he needs to deal with.

I recommend What To Say Next for the contemporary readers who have loved Jennifer Niven, Stephanie Perkins and as well as Jennifer Smith. What To Say Next is undeniably a great novel of dealing with high school life, love, pain and loss of losing someone and most importantly, how understanding another persons perspective can move your life into something even science cannot fully explain.

About the Author

Julie Buxbaum is the New York Times best selling author of Tell Me Three Things, her young adult debut, and the critically acclaimed novels The Opposite of Love and After You. Her work has been translated into twenty-five languages. Julie’s writing has appeared in various publications, including The New York Times. She is a former lawyer and graduate of Harvard Law School and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two young children, and an immortal goldfish. 

Visit Julie online at www.juliebuxbaum.com and follow @juliebux on Twitter.