A school wide disease in the form of teenage angst, sexual innuendos, and dull characters; also known as: “The Beginning of Everything.”

Going into this book, I expected it to be an unoriginal high school love story that had a Disney ending. At the end of the book, I was somewhat surprised that Ezra and Cassidy didn’t end up together.

“You’d think that when Ezra met Cassidy the story would have a classic happy ending, which was the element of hope. Given the title of the book I thought that would be the focus as “The Beginning of Everything.” Instead that ended up being the start that took me down the road of plot twists and tragedy,” said junior Miranda Wong.

I was thoroughly pleased with the character development of Ezra. By the end of the book, he no longer needed to use Cassidy as a crutch and was able to completely leave behind his “golden boy” reputation without her help.

The actual relationship between Ezra and Cassidy was pretty lack luster and had little development. Even though it was surprising that they didn’t end up together, I wasn’t disappointed or very much affected.

“I liked how the stories of the two main characters intertwined at a point,” said sophomore Joshua Camerino.

Learning that Ezra and Cassidy’s stories crossed paths before they met was a nice twist, but it had a negative effect on Cassidy’s character.

Cassidy herself always had a mysterious aura around her, but when I found out the reason for all her secrecy was her brother’s death and that he caused Ezra’s accident, her character became boring and flat.

I still have yet to read a book that has a realistic representation of the different cliques in high school, and this book is not an exception.

Although the main character’s former popularity is due to him being captain of the varsity tennis team, (because everyone knows that tennis players are at the top of the social hierarchy) readers learn that he is not actually a dumb jock but a pretty competent person.

However, his tennis, football, and pep squad friends fail to break from their cliché stereotypes and do fall under the dumb jock and clueless blonde category. The friends that Ezra makes and reconnects with are the nerds of the high school and are, of course, at the bottom of the hierarchy.

“[The book] made it look like [the school] revolved around the cool kids and that everyone wanted to be them, but in reality there aren’t even “cool kids,” just groups of people,” said junior Hana Hogan.

Overall, I didn’t expect a lot from this book and got pretty much what I expected: a generic high school love story with a small twist and forgettable characters.

2 / 5 stars