Stuffed Animal Saturday: Infinite in Between - Carolyn Mackler

Stuffed Animal Saturday is a meme that we post here at We Live and Breathe Books to showcase the book we're currently reading with one of our favorite stuffed animals and discuss our stuffed animal's opinion (well, it's really our opinion, but that's besides the point). We hope you enjoy our quirky feature as much as we enjoy writing it!

I know you're all going to judge me for this, especially Kiersten, but I still have boxes I haven't unpacked in the garage, which include my stuffed animals, so in lieu of Stuffed Animal Saturday, here's Framed Picture of Noor and Her Brother with Matching Haircuts Saturday? We'll work on the name. Anyway, I'm reading Infinite in Between by Carolyn Mackler, who I met when I got a signed ARC of this book at BEA!

So far: Little Noor and Current Noor have slighly different perspectives on this book, as it chronicles the four years of high school of five students who aren't friends and don't quite interact (not at the point we're at anyway) but Little Noor hasn't quite grasped what teenage life is like the way Current Noor has and Current Noor doesn't have the same fresh young perspective of Little Noor. We can both agree that the book is intriguing and we like the different voices of the five characters. Personally, I like Mia the best, but Little Noor is really feeling Zoe.

Sneak peek: One of the parts I actually really like the best is the prologue:

In the beginning the five of them made a promise. It was the day before the first day of high school. They wrote those letters to their future selves, hid them in a secret place, and vowed to unearth them at graduation. 

From the noisy, crowded gym at freshman orientation (day 1) to the noisy, crowded gym at graduation (day 1,387), four years of high school seemed infinite.  

On that first day they had no clue that one of them would experience the worst of losses (day 691) and another would watch her family break apart (day 38) and another would fall deeply and dangerously in love without buckling up for the ride (day 1,045). There would be a fatal car accident (day 123), a supreme betrayal (day 489), a kiss with the most unlikely person at a waterfall in the woods (day 943), and a walk along the Seine in Paris (day 352), where a long-held secret is definitely not discussed.  

And then there would be that night (day 1,386) when it all unraveled.  

But back to day one. The beginning. 

The actual narration from the points-of-view of the characters is more straightforward, and when the characters are fourteen year old freshmen, they truly sound like fourteen-year-olds speaking, so this was just a different tone and I really liked it (not that I don't like the one of the rest of the book, or at least of what I've read!). If you're interested, stay tuned for a review soon and if you really want to read it, it hits the shelves September 15th!

- Noor

Are you and your stuffed animal reading anything interesting? 

Let us know in your own Stuffed Animal Saturday!