Book Review: Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

David Levithan and Rachel Cohn have done it again: an exciting novel based in Manhattan following a romantically liberal pair of high school students as they woo each other through a series of larger than life stunts. Yes, this is the third installment in the loosely connected series beginning with Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, continuing with Ely and Naomi's No Kiss List, and, now, Dash and Lily's Book of Dares. The paired authors certainly have a talent for pulling off extremely witty, extremely romantic stories. But, this time around I couldn't help hearing the publishers calling out from each page, "if it's not broken, don't try to fix it!"

Before we get to that, here's the premise. Dash and Lily are two unrelated sixteen year old kids who have been left home alone for the holidays: Dash convinced each of his divorced parents that he was spending Christmas vacation at the others' house while Lily was abandoned by her professorial parents as they flew off to Fiji. With loneliness mounting, Lily decides to plant a notebook in one of her favorite bookstores, the Strand, with a set of off the wall instructions for anyone who should find it to follow. Lo and behold, Dash, our hero, finds the book, and the two strike up an unconventional romance as they lead each other around the city through back and forth entries into the red Moleskin.

In the midst of the two love birds' gallivanting, the story tackles a number of themes including idealism vs. realism, commercialism, what it means to be caring, and even substance abuse to a certain degree, though these topics certainly take a back seat to the story's lighthearted romantic-comedy flare. Like its predecessors, Dash and Lily holds our two wise teenagers up against a host of unique personalities ranging from vulgar to vicious while they try to make sense of their budding adulthood. In the end, the story accomplishes painting a wonderful New York City winter landscape full of twists and turns along the way.

All these great strengths aside, and believe me when I say I loved reading this book, I can't help but think that these characters are starting to become a little bit repetitive. The formula, essentially, consists of having the main characters present a compilation of artistic/literary knowledge and having the love interest meet on the common grounds of the humanities, all the while being insanely well versed for high school students. Hey, I love it and as I said above, if it's not broken, don't fix it.

However, I know that Levithan/Cohn have the ability to develop these characters further without simply finding more and more unique settings and circumstances to place them into. For high school students reading the book, having a string of similar characters probably isn't even an issue. The recurrence of these archetypical adolescent wonder children may also be indicative of the publishers' desire to stay safe on a known winner; who knows, they may also be hoping to land another movie deal, but while I was reading I couldn't help but think I was reading a second version of Nick and Norah, with the characters changing names and hobbies but otherwise being the same. In all reality, I'm just dying to see how the two authors would face a more mature character set, possibly in their early twenties.To be fair, Bruce the Second in Ely and Naomi, really began to break out of the mold, bringing in a crisis of self-identity. In fact, Ely and Naomi overall felt like Levithan/Cohn's style was evolving away from the entertaining but simple love story of Nick and Norah.

This is probably why I even bring it up at all: I thought I might get to see my desires for that no man's land of 18-30 years old on the pages of this new installation (which I fully understand would knock the novel out of the all important YA classification). Instead, what I got was a very entertaining, very endearing love story in the vein of Nick and Norah, but hey, I certainly don't think that's anything to complain about. I highly recommend this book, especially as we enter the winter holidays.