The Infinite Moment of Us

Wren Gray is an only child and the quintessential Good Girl: she gets good grades, dresses modestly, earned early acceptance to a pre-med program at Emory, where her mother works. Wren has always pleased her parents, but recently she has become more and more aware that her own interests and desires might lie in a different direction. Secretly, she has applied to Project Unity, a nonprofit organization, and has been accepted: at the end of the summer, she's going to Guatemala, not Emory. However, she hasn't told her parents yet...

Charlie Parker (yes, like the musician) has bounced from foster home to foster home until he landed with Pam and Chris, who feel like real parents. He has watched Wren from afar for years, and knows that now, on show more the eve of high school graduation, he has to make his move or lose his chance to connect with her.

The Infinite Moment of Us is part coming-of-age, part summer of love. It's a story of love and friendship that takes place in the transitional time between high school and whatever comes next. Wren and Charlie are the main characters (chapters alternate between them, in third person), but Wren's best friend Tessa, Tessa's new boyfriend P.G., and Charlie's ex-girlfriend, Starrla, also play significant roles.

Myracle does an excellent job depicting first love, highlighting the importance of friendships, and showing that people are not what they appear to be on the surface. She treats hot-button topics like teen drinking and sex in a realistic and straightforward manner; parts of Infinite Moment reminded me of Judy Blume's Forever.

Quotes:

What did home really mean, especially if a person chose, on purpose, to leave it? (56)

Just by saying something, just by throwing out an expectation, her father and mother both had an amazing ability to make Wren shift around her own expectations. (77)

She was the mystery and the explanation, both. (118)

"I didn't say it was dumb," Tess said. "It's what you feel, and guess what? Feelings are like three-year-olds. They're not rational. They're just there." (163) show less

This was so ridiculous it was almost sublime. It's a YA romance that lets you know right away that this is Serious Business. By page 9, there was more earnestness going on than in all the other books I've read this year combined.

This book also made me realize I have the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy.

So we've got two teenagers -- Wren, an only child whose parents are overly involved in her life, and Charlie, a foster kid who had a Tough Start in Life. This is very Important so I capitalized it. They fall in love, apparently instantly and from a distance, and then proceed to have an Extremely Earnest Relationship the summer after high school graduation. They go on very earnest dates and have very earnest conversations. You get the show more idea early on that these are two people who Feel More Deeply about things than other people.

Weirdly, a lot of what's supposed to be the big contrast, Wren's smothering/controlling parents vs. Charlie's sad childhood, happens in the far, far background. For someone who's big issue is smothering and controlling parents, they pretty much leave her to her own devices all summer. Charlie's backstory is much more legitimately sad (and I have to admit it's told in a very compelling way), but once it's out there, that's pretty much it.

What IS happening front and center is what I can only image is the author's Very Serious commitment to making sure teens know that one's sexual identity and expression is a normal and healthy part of life ... which is not a bad message, but again, the presentation is so earnest and sincere and heartfelt that it reads more like a joke. Several times, while on a very sincere date earnestly talking about things like "do you think trees have souls?" the narration, out of the clear blue, lets us know that Charlie becomes hard. (That's the exact phrase used.) It's sporadic enough that I never got to the point where I was expecting it, but by about the third time, it made me laugh so hard I was snorting on the train during my commute. Then I started to insert "earnestly" into the text at random, so Charlie could get earnestly hard. For real, I was guffawing in public.

Taken as an individual scene, a lot of this stuff would work as solid writing about intimacy and specialness, but my problem with it is that it's relentless. You're never, ever, able to lose sight of just how specially in lurrrve these two are.

On the plus side, I was happy with, and even more interested in, some of the secondary characters. And the end raced to this Teen Soap Opera Ending, which set things up so that you'd think it was going in one Teen Soap Opera direction, and then it completely turned it around and went in a different Teen Soap Opera ending, and that was actually impressive. I was leaning more toward two stars, but realized the book did keep me fairly well engaged all the way up to the end. show less

"The rest of July was hot and sweaty and so were Charlie and Wren."

I really tried to think of this book as first love. Sweet and all encompassing - making you jealous of stupid things, get mad and selfish and possessive. I really did.

But I just....couldn't. This book felt so inappropriate for the age range that can get their hands on it. My 17 year old would roll eyes at the first half and have dropped it for the 2nd half grossness. The description and details - just yuck.

My 11 year old 7th grade middle school child is ALSO pushed into the teen section by the library - after Elementary school that's where they are expected to grab their reading material. I shudder to think what would happen if SHE had gotten her hands on this.

"We're show more like bunnies," Wren said."

Ugh. The romanticized unprotected sex. The blow jobs, the finger play and just UGH! And the worst part is, that it could have been just a "and the they get into bed" and then scene fades to black and we got to the next moment - all that gross stuff could have been left out and this book STILL would have held the turmoil and confusion of first love and immature romance (because it was).

This really edges into New Adult range - closer to adult. LUCKILY, my library is amazing and took suggestions to heart.

THIS book is in their adult section - where it should be. show less

Another YA book that I'm conflicted about as a librarian. I liked the story, more or less, and it was in many ways a sweet tale of first love. However, given that YA is so often read by late elementary school and early middle school aged kids, and that Lauren Myracle tends to have a younger following due to the success of her children's books, I thought the level of sexual explicitness was a bit beyond the pale. I've seen the Infinite Moment of Us compared to Forever, but I recently re-read Forever, and Judy Blume doesn't come even remotely close to using the kind of language Myracle uses here. So, The Infinite Moment of Us is a YA story that has Adult cross-over appeal, but it's also one that makes me think it's time for libraries and show more bookstores to embrace the New Adult category and give it its own section. Books like this one are fine, but they need a new place to call home, where 10- and 11-year-olds are less likely to find them. show less

I really liked this book until the ending. It was a sweet romance with an emphasis on following oneself...and then the ending.

Normally I don't let my feelings about an ending affect the rest of my opinion of the book. But this ending was completely contrary to everything else the book advocated for. I feel like there had been some values built up and then they just got crushed. But to spare spoilers, I'll leave that there.

I thought the first part of the book was really sweet, and I really enjoyed reading about Charlie and Wren as they slowly fell in love. However, after this part, there wasn't much that really set this book apart from another typical romance.

Their love went from very sweet and cute to co-dependent and, in my opinion, show more unhealthy. I didn't enjoy how they seemed to abandon other friends and previously important relationships for each other, and how Wren was overly jealous. There was no trust between them.

I related a lot to Wren in feeling guilty about having had a good life, but this was probably about as deep as it got. Her dependence on her parents wasn't ultimately really resolved.

I did enjoy reading this, but there were too many things that irked me and that felt unhealthy about Wren and Charlie's relationship for me to really advocate for it. show less

Review first published on fefferbooks.com

I liked this book, and I kind of really didn’t. I loved the characters–they’re beautifully written. I really enjoy Myracle’s voice. I totally get why she’s an acclaimed and bestselling author.

At the same time…why on earth are we marketing this as a young adult novel? It’s really really explicit. Recently, there’s been a big hubbub in my area about removing a certain YA novel from the reading list at public schools. I read that book, myself, a couple of years ago, and while there were a couple of parts I didn’t love, and I would definitely suggest my child read one of the other four books offered, I didn’t feel the need to jump on the banning bandwagon. (And let me just say, show more I’m not much for book banning in general. I’m more about parent involvement and screening.) This book? WAY MORE EXPLICIT. The stuff that’s happening in the book that’s causing a stir is so not anything compared to what’s going on here. If I thought The Color Purple made me blush…uh, this is worse.

Anyway. I just thought that should be out there. I kept reading, partly out of curiosity re: where things were going to go, plot-wise, and partly to see how crazy this book was going to get, sexually. It doesn’t get “crazy,” per se, but it’s a lot of detail that I didn't feel like necessarily needed to be in print. It’s marketed to 13-18 year-olds, and I certainly don’t need my 13-year-olds reading it, I can tell you that. Being who we are, my 18-year-olds don’t need to, either. I’d be much happier if this had been tagged as New Adult, instead.

Anyway. The Infinite Moment is well-written, certainly, but I don’t think that redeems it. (It wraps really abruptly, though, which was just strange.) A bit of strong language, as well. Two stars. show less

The dual narrative worked out well, although it took me quite a bit to get used to the third person point of view. I wish that I could've been 1st person, so I felt even more connected and in their heads. I still got a good impression of who Wren and Charlie were and what they were thinking and feelings as well as their motivations, and eventually it became flowing and flawless so that I didn't notice it wasn't in 1st.
At its roots, The Infinite Moment of Us is a story about acceptance, and it has an awesome romance, and friendships featured as well. I like Wren and Tessa together, they are different enough but share enough of the similarities that their friendship feels authentic.
The story is multi-layered because Wren is finally show more figuring out what she wants to do with her life and who she is outside of her parent's expectations and high pressure for her to follow the plan they think is best for her. It is a dysfunctional relationship, and I went through the story hoping they would open their eyes to the strong and brave young woman that Wren turned out to be.
Charlie is so well written and being in his head was a joy. Although he has a really rough past, he is now in a supportive and loving foster home with a foster brother that feels closer than blood could be. I love his protectiveness and gentle but teasing nature with his brother Dev, and it was a high spot of the story for me.
Speaking of high spots, the chemistry between Charlie and Wren is awesome, and it was great watching their souls collide and getting closer to each other while discovering with the other's help just who they are inside and how they should be valued and viewed. There is sex in the story, but it isn't there just to be there, it has a deeper purpose, bringing them intimately together and it shows they are realistic teenagers in love, and driven by raging hormones.
I think though that it addresses something that I don't come across more often, having heart to heart conversations about hurt feelings and when silence hurts.
The ending is perfect, wrapping things up and leaving things just open enough that I can picture their future--they are on the edge of something huge and I think that knowing the exact path they took would have taken away from things for me.

Bottom Line: Well written and addictive love story. show less