January 7th 2020 | Bloomsbury YA
Source: Library
Acclaimed author Emery Lord crafts a gorgeous story of friendship and identity, daring to ask: What happens after happily ever after?If you didn’t already know, I really love The Start of Me and You, the first book in this series. It’s an unexpected favorite and I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I was hesitant to start this one. The Map From Here to There, it turned out, was a wonderful continuation of the story Emery Lord began in The Start of Me and You. It was obvious to me that Emery Lord has learned a lot since the first book was published and has become a better writer as well.
It's senior year, and Paige Hancock is finally living her best life. She has a fun summer job, great friends, and a super charming boyfriend who totally gets her. But senior year also means big decisions. Weighing "the rest of her life," Paige feels her anxiety begin to pervade every decision she makes. Everything is exactly how she always wanted it to be--how can she leave it all behind next year? In her head, she knows there is so much more to experience after high school. But in her heart, is it so terrible to want everything to stay the same forever?
Emery Lord's award-winning storytelling shines with lovable characters and heartfelt exploration of life's most important questions.
For one thing, The Map From Here to There was a lot more diverse in terms of sexulaities and had more characters of color. I appreciated that certain characters had come out as queer and showed that sexuality could be fluid. Even more so, Emery Lord learned from the criticisms that a lot of her books focused mainly on white characters. I think that having characters of color shouldn’t be a box an author checks off, but I do appreciate when an author takes valid criticisms and works to fix it. This was one the criticisms I had when I re-read the first book and I was happy to see that she’d worked through that.
There are certain events that happen in this book that I was surprised by. I thought that these events and the actions the characters took were actually very mature and a big part of being in a relationship. A lot of people I know who dated people in high school had to handle the process of going away to college. There’s so much pressure put on teenagers in terms of college already. I appreciated how Max and Paige dealt with this pressure and I was so happy with where Emery Lord left them. While I didn’t date in high school, the constant back and forth was something I observed a lot of my friends go through. As a friend who watched other friends do the back and forth dance, I fully understand how certain characters felt about this story.
As I mentioned above, there is a lot of pressure on teenagers who are seniors in high school to have their next two to four years figured out. From extracurriculars to the college essays to interviews and campus visits, there’s so much they have to consider. Lord did a really good job with discussing the pressures Pagie and her friends went through. I will admit that there isn’t a lot of economic diversity--none of the characters are poor and have some familial help--among the characters so that should be taken into account. Not all of the characters are well off, and I don’t think any of them are first generation college students. (Obviously, these are American teenagers so I’m speaking specifically about the United States system for college. I fully understand that other countries have different processes.)
I do want to point out that I think Emery Lord could’ve gone a little further in certain aspects. I felt like she brought up some very important issues that there characters had to face but instead of doing a deep dive into these topics, Lord brushed them off. There would be some conflict rooted in a concept such as money and paying for college, the characters would have their argument and talk surface level about that topic, and then it would be resolved. While this feels like a very nit-picky thing to point out, it did leave me annoyed at times. I wish authors would go the distance and take the deep dive. There’s only so much surface conversation I can take.
Overall, I really liked The Map From Here to There. While The Start of Me and You is still my favorite of the two, I can see the merits of this book. I like a lot of the topics Lord explored in this book. I think it’s timely and worth discussing.
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