Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares
by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan
★★★★☆

Last year I read and really enjoyed “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist” by the same two authors. So when everyone and their brother started reviewing this one around the blogosphere I had to check it out.

Dash is wandering around The Strand (awesome NYC bookstore) when he finds a red notebook filled with instructions. The notebook is written by Lily and though they’ve never met before, they begin corresponding and daring each other to do things.

I loved the story and the rapid-fire dialogue and snarky comments. It’s a fun, quick read and I’m officially a fan of Levithan’s writing.

There’s one particularly funny exchange between Dash and Lily’s aunt about what kind of tea is best. It was moments like those, where Levithan’s wit shines the most. Here’s Dash’s comment about green tea…

“You can’t be serious. Because you know when a cow chews grass? Well, green tea tastes like French-kissing that cow after it’s done chewing all that grass.”

I definitely enjoyed Dash’s sections more than Lily’s, because I think I just connected more with his character. Lily is much more sensitive and fragile, almost childlike in her expectations and ability to control emotion. Dash on the other hand, is cynical and pessimistic.

I did have one complaint, though it may sound petty. In one of Lily’s section (p. 77) she makes a reference to someone who is dressed like Hermione Potter. Obviously she meant to say Hermione Granger, but still it irritated me.

“I preferred to hangout with the dead, dying or desperate books – used we call them, in a way that we’d never call a person, unless we meant it cruelly.”

“I figured being a bed salesman was a job of biblically bad paradox. I mean, here he was forced to stand for 8 or 9 hours a day, and the whole time he’s surrounded by beds.”

“Children frighten me. I mean I appreciate them on a cute aesthetic level, but they’re very demanding and unreasonable creatures and often smell funny.”