By Jordan Sunkel
Round Table editor
Nearly everyone I know has answered the question: Truth or Dare? This popular social game is for parties and late-night sleepovers spills secrets or forces friends into doing gross or interesting dares.
When Lily’s older brother notices her boredom over the winter break, he decides to make her a book of dares. This is not a normal book of dares though; it is to find a boy to spend the holiday with.
When Dash’s strolling through the Strand, a bookstore in New York City, he notices an unfamiliar red Moleskine notebook hiding between some of his favorite books.
The front of the notebook says DO YOU DARE? Curious, he accepts the first dare and ends up getting thrown into a new adventure that completely changes his view of this Christmas.
The more they pass the notebook back and forth between each other, the more they grow to like each other. When an unexpected event occurs, Dash must find Lily, but when he does, he might not like what he finds. Their notebook-selves might get along well, but thought-out words are different from truly being with each other.
Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan follows the adventures of the two characters while they grow closer through the notebook. They travel all over New York City through dares they set up for each other, from FAO Schwartz to Madame Tussaud’s.
The coolest thing about the book in my opinion, which I didn’t learn until the end of the book, is that the two authors wrote the book with no real plan. Cohn wrote Lily’s chapters and Levithan wrote Dash’s. When one was done with their chapter, they would email it to the other, and so the story goes. Everything written, the places the two went, and the things they said were all up to chance.
As authors of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, they truly know how to write a good love story. It wasn’t overly sappy, and it was extremely realistic, Dash and Lily had to learn about themselves before they could move on into their relationship.
There are also a lot of characters in the book that lead Dash and Lily on their journey. Both struggle with their own problems and the people in their lives help them. My favorite lesser characters were Boomer and Langston, because they each taught a lesson to the main characters, one that they needed to hear.
When asked about how to get over someone, Langston tells Lily, “The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart.”
Everyone has imprints from people in their life, but how deep the imprints are, that’s what truly changes a person, and what Dash and Lily find through their journey.
