Holy shit, have I found my newfound, deep love for Emma Mills’ writing. And for Emma Mills herself. And really just anything and everything Emma Mills has ever done and ever will do. In the course of the last ten days, I have read all three of her Young Adult books, and I am honestly jealous of anyone who has the pleasure of experiencing them for the first time, because I will never have that opportunity again (though there is always the second and third times) (the thought of that brings tears to my eyes). So instead of doing three separate posts, I figured I would compile them into one giant post for the sake of convenience (as well as for the carpal tunnel in my wrists).
First & Then
Emma’s first novel, appropriately titled First & Then, centers around high school senior Devon Tennyson, a not-so-secretly judgmental—but fiercely loyal—who so badly tries to ignore her lack of a plan for the future and her absence of any real passion and motivation to want better for herself and for her life. After his father dies and his mother emotionally neglects him, Devon’s parents take in her younger cousin, Foster, a rising high school freshman. At first, Devon, an only child for seventeen years, is not thrilled about the change. She resents Foster’s social ineptitude and refuses to call him her brother, even when he calls her his sister. But as the novel progresses, we see a shift in their relationship and a shift in Devon’s attitude toward Foster.
Without revealing too much, I will say that, for much of the story, Devon is hopelessly in love with her best friend, Cas (though it goes unrequited). For the first three years of high school, it is basically Devon and Cas against the world, which comes at the expense of forming significant relationships with anyone else. When she lands in the same gym class as Foster and the only other senior, captain of the football team, Ezra, Devon believes she will have a lousy final year of high school. But after the discovery of a surprise skill, Foster and Ezra develop a close relationship, and Devon is forced to get to know the person she had once judged to be rude, full-of-himself, and annoying.
When you love something, you can’t be happy all the time, can you? Like, that’s why you love it. It makes you feel all kinds of things, not just happy. It can hurt, it can make you fucking mad, but… it makes you feel something, you know?
While I, for the most part, really enjoyed this storyline, I would have liked to see more of the relationship between Devon and Ezra. Emma expands on Devon’s relationships with Foster and Cas so well that I feel there is a lack of that with Ezra in specific. For a person as quiet and withdrawn as Ezra, it was difficult to know what he was thinking—to no fault of the writer, since it was not in his perspective—but it would have been nice to see him open up more than he did. Otherwise, I think this was a cute and sweet debut.
Spoiler alert: this one is my favorite of the three (and one of my favorites of all time). And I’ll be honest, this one made me cry. Not just a few silent tears, but full-on sobs. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so in love with and attached to a set of characters quite like these. While reading other books, I thought I connected well to those characters, but thanks to Emma Mills, I now have a new standard to measure future novels against (for better or for worse, as I may never find as much enjoyment or emotion again—that is, until winter 2019 when her next book comes out!).
When the novel opens, Sloane and her family have just moved from New York to Florida, turning their once-vacation spot into their permanent residence. Early on, we are given the impression that Sloane has a fairly low emotional intelligence, but a high logical/practical intelligence, since she almost brags that she had no friends to leave behind in New York. That is, until she meets twins Vera and Gabe at a party one night and is immediately sucked into their inner circle. We then see how Sloane adapts to suddenly having friends—which sometimes had me screaming at her through my Kindle.
We should all find something to be weirdly passionate about, don’t you think?
There are two LGBT characters in this—one main and the other minor, but it was surprising and oddly refreshing to see it mentioned so casually and not be questioned. I like how natural it was for one of the girl characters to, right away, say something along the lines of, “That’s my girlfriend” and get the same reactions as she would have had she said, “That’s my boyfriend.” Even though the word “gay” (or bisexual/pansexual/queer/etc.) is never used, I didn’t have a problem with it. I almost preferred the lack of emphasis on sexual orientation, especially as this was not a “coming out” book, or a book focused on a character finding acceptance within themselves (/himself/herself) and their queer identity. We definitely do not have a shortage of those kinds of stories (and I’m sure there are plenty more to come), so this was a necessary change of pace. I liked that there was no question of, “You’re gay?” after this character mentions her girlfriend. It was treated as something that was normal, and that’s how it should be. We can help move the rest of society along with the words we write, so if we don’t treat queer identities as deviations from the norm in our novels, perhaps reality will follow suit.
Maybe grief was like a chronic illness, something that could hide dormant in your system but activate at any time.
As the title implies, this book involves adventure, when Sloane takes on the burden of finding a specific painting of Vera and Gabe’s late mother. It also deals with grief and how different people react in different ways to their grief.
The one minor, minor, MINOR complaint I have—and at this point I’m just nitpicking—is that we never see Sloane opening herself up to Gabe. We see Gabe be emotionally vulnerable in front of Sloane, but aside from one time—that she labels as purely “professional” vulnerability (I won’t give away what this is)—Sloane does not do the same in front of Gabe. Now, this could just be part of Sloane’s character—as I said earlier, she is not used to having close relationships outside of her family—but I would have liked to see her try (and I think it would have meant a lot if she had). She tells Gabe that we all have something that makes it hard to sleep at night, but when he asks her what her something is, she is not willing to say. In that moment, I think it would be out of character for her to have done so, but it would have been really powerful if, once they formed their own connection, she gave him a little of herself in return (instead of just saving all her emotional baggage for Vera).
But I still loooooved this novel and couldn’t take away even a quarter of a jewel from my rating. It was just too good and made me feel too much.
Foolish Hearts
This is a cute and fast read—one that I finished in less than 24 hours—that is as heartwarming as it is funny. Even though this is Emma’s most recent novel, it was the first one I read (I went completely out-of-order with them) (which is okay since none of them are connected to each other so you can feel free to exercise your literary autonomy and read them in any order that you want!).
After Claudia overhears the breakup between her school’s it-couple Iris and Paige, she becomes victim to Iris’ wrath. And when the two are forced to be partners in their English class and join the play after an uncharacteristically low paper grade, they start to spend a lot of time together. At first unwillingly, and then, to Claudia’s surprise, willingly.
The play is where she meets Gideon, someone Claudia also would never have expected to become close to. Like the other two protagonists, Devon and Sloane, Claudia’s only real friends in the beginning are her siblings and Zoe, someone she has known since early childhood (but goes to the public school while Claudia goes to the private school her dad works at). By establishing her main characters as sort-of-loners, Emma Mills truly makes the development of any new relationships touching and special.
Like This Adventure Ends, there are two LGBT characters in this novel—one, Iris, more prominent than the other, Paige, though Paige still has a secondary role. I fell in love with Claudia and Iris’ budding friendship, and I thought their dynamic was so unique.
“It just feels like…” Her voice is small. “Sometimes it just feels like I’m faking.”
“Maybe everyone feels that way.”
One thing, however, that particularly bothered me was the lack of physical descriptions of certain characters. I went the entirety novel not knowing how to picture our protagonist, Claudia, which constantly worried me that I would not find out until much too late that I had been imagining her looks wrong the whole time. Of course, this is a quite surface-level criticism, because it, overall, did not genuinely affect my enjoyment of the plot and characters.
I really liked this book, and initially would have rated it five jewels, but in comparison to This Adventure Ends, I had to make sure there was some differentiation.
In each of Emma’s characters—Devon, Sloane, and Claudia, and even secondary characters like Foster, Vera and Gabe, and Iris—I have recognized different pieces of myself. Emma’s writing has the ability to reach out and touch everyone (my inner 2012 Tumblr is showing, with the #relatable). And that’s the thing, I think, that sucked me in (at least, the thing that sucked me in the most). The common thread between my appreciation of all three of these novels. I think the reason I preferred This Adventure Ends over the other two was because I related so much to Sloane. I’m maybe not as socially inexperienced as she was, as I have always had a solid group of friends (even if they were not the same group of friends year to year) and pride myself on my ability to read people. But boy oh boy do I relate to resorting to jokes or witty comments when uncomfortable and favoring being alone over being with one or more people. I believe that is exactly where I started crying the most, when Sloane talks about loneliness. To be cliché, it just hit so close to home, and I wasn’t ready for it (but I liked that it made me feel this way and to this degree!). It made me wonder if I would ever find a person that would make me, the most introverted person I know, enjoy being around them more than being alone.
This post turned out much longer than expected, but once I started typing about these novels, I just couldn’t get myself to stop! If you want to invest in self-care for 2018, do yourself a favor and buy all three of Emma Mills’ books and see what you think (I have a feeling you’ll agree with me). Although I breezed through each, the experiences I had reading them were therapeutic and incredible. So thank you, Emma, for writing these. I can only hope that one day my own books will be as good as yours. And I’m looking forward to number four.
If you’ve read any or all of the mentioned books, tell me what you think in the comments! I’d love to know your thoughts. And if you haven’t read them, first of all, get your life together, and second, let me know instead what books have, for lack of a better term, ‘hit you right in the feels.’ Thanks for reading!
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