Tell Me Three Things

This is one of my daughter's favorite books. In fact, it might just be her single favorite book. She gave it to me to read years ago and I set it on my bedside table, reading everything except it. I don't read a lot of YA no matter how cute the premise is. But I decided this year that I wanted to read the few books I have that others have loaned me from time to time and get them back to their rightful owners, starting with this one. And I'm sorry it took me so long to read it. Obviously I am nowhere near the age of the main character but I did my fair share of moving when I was younger, facing a new school, having no friends, and feeling uncomfortable in an unfamiliar place so I could easily relate to this sweet YA romance.

Jessie's life show more has been completely upended in the past few years. Her father has remarried and uprooted her from Chicago, her best friend, and the comfortable, middle class home that holds all of the memories of life with her mother, who died of cancer two years before the story opens. Now she and her dad live in a mansion with her stepmom and stepbrother, who is also a junior in high school but seems about as thrilled to have her there as she is to be there. She attends an elite private school where everyone looks like California stereotypes to her and she doesn't have any idea how to navigate this new place, home or school, especially without friends. What she does have is someone from school emailing her anonymously, calling themselves Somebody Nobody (SN), and offering to help her figure out school and the people in it. Initially wary of the emails, sure they are going to be a cruel joke, Jessie comes to rely on them, exchanging personal information, including the grief she feels about the loss of her mom and that she doesn't feel she can share with her dad anymore now that he's remarried as well as the smaller grief of having to move and forge a new life, another thing she can't or won't share with her dad. She goes about her daily life, tentatively making friends, developing a crush, and getting a job, while still being homesick for Chicago, desperately missing best friend Scarlett, and pushing more and more for Somebody Nobody to reveal their identity.

Buxbaum has done a fantastic job capturing so many different feelings in this novel. She herself lost her mother at an early age so she knows personally the grief that her main character carries. She's also managed to bring out incredibly real feelings that so many teenagers who have moved feel in their new place. Jessie focuses on the ways in which her new home and school are different from what she loved (and didn't love, but she won't acknowledge that) before, unable or unwilling to see the good or even acknowledge things that are similar to Chicago. She stereotypes the kids around her, lumping them all into what she expects from a very wealthy California school, definitely confirming the frequency illusion when she claims the girls are all thin and blond, which she is not. In addition to the grief of losing her mother and the anger and unhappiness of moving, Buxbaum also lets Jessie experience regular teenage girl emotions as well. Jessie's blindness to who SN clearly is, at least clear to many readers despite the three options Jessie comes up with, is a perfect sign of how regular a kid Jessie is, so wrapped up in the other strong feelings that she can't see for sure what the rest of us can. The emails between SN and Jessie are funny, honest, and emotionally open, especially once they start telling each other three things about themselves in the body of the emails, and their subject lines are fantastic. The ending and reveal are completely predictable but hew so closely to what the reader wants that the predictability is welcomed rather than disappointing. This is a novel with heart, one that tackles hard subjects (bullying, reciprocity in relationships, grief and loss) with grace and compassion but still leaves the reader smiling after the last page is turned. show less

Jessie Holmes, 16, has just moved from Chicago to California and started as a junior at an exclusive high school school. It has been 733 days since her mom died, 45 days since her dad eloped with a stranger he met on the Internet, and 30 days since they then moved to California and into the home of her new stepfamily. Jessie feels lost and confused and alone, and misses her BFF Scarlett from Chicago. Her new stepbrother Theo is her age, but seems to resent her as much as she resents him.

Everything changes when Jessie gets an anonymous email from ”Somebody Nobody” who tells Jessie she intrigues him because she seems different from the “wasteland of mostly blond, vacant-eyed Barbies and Kens” at the high school. He writes: “you show more make me want to know what goes on in that head of yours.” He also offers his “expertise” as a “virtual spirit guide” in “navigating the wilds of Wood Valley High School.”

Jessie is both beguiled and gratified because, as she admits to S/N: “You’re right. This place is a war zone, and I could use some help. So I’m going against my gut here, and just hoping I can trust you.” She starts communicating regularly with “S/N.” Their correspondence is shown in text format. They begin each day by telling each other three things, and in this way get to “know” each other. Jessie learns that S/N had a loss too, 196 days ago - and they relate to each other’s feelings about the catastrophic effect on their lives.

S/N recommends that Jessie befriend Adrianna (“Dri”) Sanchez: ‘I don’t know why, but I feel like you two could be good friends.” And indeed, the two girls become close, and Dri helps Jessie forget her problems. When they go to a party:

“We all pile into her mom’s car and turn up the radio. I feel like a normal teenage girl headed to a normal party on a normal Saturday night. I might have, for a least a little while, taken off my top-secret grief backpack and left it behind.”

Meanwhile, Jessie is also getting something of a crush on a very cute and quiet iconoclast, Ethan Marks, who is in some of her classes. They get paired up for a project and spend more and more time together. Ethan tells her he is sorry she lost her mom, and they talk about how death makes everything awkward. As Ethan points out, people just like to pretend it didn’t happen because it’s uncomfortable and scary and they don’t know what to say.

But Jessie also feels closer to S/N and wants to meet him. He writes her: “you know that piece of hair that always falls into your eyes - the not-quite-a-bang piece? I want to be able to tuck it behind you ear. I want to be able to do that. I want to meet you when I feel comfortable enough with you to do that.”

Meanwhile, Liam, a boy Jessie meets at her part-time job at “Book Out Below” starts talking more to Jessie, and she strongly suspects he is S/N. She texts her theories to Scarlett, her best friend back in Chicago, but Scarlett is upset with her for reasons Jessie doesn’t understand at first. All of the sudden, there are all these new complications in her life.

Still, the loss of her mom looms large in the background. She misses the fact that “there is no longer a person in the world who is interested in everything I have to say just by virtue of the fact that it comes out of my mouth.” It will never be okay, she knows, that her mom won’t be present at all the big moments in her life. But she vows to herself that she will power through it. Moving back to Chicago won’t help, she realizes: " . . . the truth is I don’t want to be anywhere at all, because wherever I go, I still come with me. I’m stuck in this brain, in tis body, in this ugly swamp of humanness.”

She only gives in to her grief when she can't help it anymore: “Tears are kind of like urine. There is only so long you can hold them in.”

But first love can offer some healing power and a cure for loneliness, and it looks like a new love is about to work its magic on Jessie, if she can just figure out which one of the boys in her life is the one she wants.

Evaluation: This book is absolutely delightful. The author, who endured the loss of her own mother as a young teen, knows her subject, and she also retained an excellent memory for how teens think and talk and act. I enjoyed this thoroughly. show less

Cara De Agostini, non so con quale criterio tu scelga i titoli da portarci, ma ti prego: continua così!
Sì, questa recensione è dedicata alla De Agostini, casa editrice che quest'anno si sta dando un gran da fare con la sua collana Young Adult e dall'inizio del 2016 non ne ha ancora sbagliata una! Perché? Beh, ma è semplice: tutti i libri che ho letto editi da loro da gennaio sono sulla lista dei libri da comprare anche cartacei! E indovinate un po'? Sì, anche "Dimmi tre segreti" è sulla lista e quando finalmente troverà il suo posto nella libreria, per un po' ne sarà il protagonista!

Ho divorato questo libro in una notte, iniziato e finito senza sentire il peso delle ore che passavano, dopo giorni che non riuscivo a leggere più show more di una pagina perché crollavo collassata.
Ma veniamo al libro... amore, amore, amore. Come esprimere meglio il concetto?
Io di mio adoro le storie in cui ci sono in mezzo email, chat, sms... perché sono quel tipo di persona che - proprio come la protagonista - comunica al meglio per iscritto. Quei pochi secondi che ho in più per elaborare un pensiero tirano fuori la parte migliore di me.
La cosa che ho più apprezzato di questa storia è che Jessie - la protagonista - resta sempre fedele alla realtà dall'inizio alla fine. Nonostante l'infatuazione per PS (il ragazzo misterioso con cui chatta) si rende conto che, per quanto bello, finché il loro rapporto resterà solo digitale non potrà farci affidamento perché non sarà mai completamente reale.
Mi sono ritrovata moltissimo in Jessie - un po' perché condividiamo (più o meno) il nome, un po' per la questione dello scrivere, un po' perché anche io ho conosciuto tantissime persone online (no, non appuntamenti!) - e penso che come personaggio sia uno di quelli da prendere ad esempio. Jessie è forte perché affronta ogni situazione senza tirarsi indietro, ma è anche debole perché si sente abbandonata dal padre; prova paura, come tutti, ma questo non fa altro che tirare fuori il suo coraggio anziché fermarla. Inoltre lei è una ragazza normale: porta jeans e tshirt, ha i brufoli e usa gli elastici per legare i capelli (non capirò mai cosa ci sia di male - e ho studiato moda), additata come diversa perché non omologata alla massa.
Contemporaneamente a PS, però, nel cuore della nostra eroina si fa a poco a poco spazio Batman/Ethan... continua a leggere su http://theinkspell.blogspot.it show less

“But sometimes a kiss is not a kiss is not a kiss. Sometimes it’s a poetry.”

Cute, sad, and complicated. Interwoven together was a story of loss and loneliness, juxtaposed with a cute and mysterious romance. Jessie was dealing with the loss of her mother, her father re-marrying and being moved cross country when she begins receiving emails from an unknown student at her new school. Known simply as Somebody/Nobody or SN he quickly becomes one of her greatest confidants and feelings grow though she has no idea of his identity (this gave me some serious Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda vibes). It was an enjoyable book and the author found a nice balance between lighthearted and maudlin without leaning too far either way given both the show more romance and the serious subject matter.

Likes:
-Jessie and SN were quite cute
-How much I personally connected to Jessie. She was who I was during that time in my life. I felt very alone, kept my head down, was far from confrontational and felt much more comfortable in the company of books or behind words. Even though I have grown past that difficult time it still struck me to see this reflection of who I was. It made me feel seen.
-Such nice supporting female characters! I’m a sucker for good friendships and I was so glad to see those be developed just as much as the romance.

Dislikes:
-Honestly, kind of predictable. I figured out who SN was practically from the beginning.
-I did find it annoying how Jessie immediately became so certain that SN was Caleb when there was really no good reason to? Like yeah, he showed up at the book store, but he also said he was a friend of Liam’s?? If there was more evidence supporting her theory I could see it, but she was just immediately so certain of it for no good reason.
-The trope of “I’m not pretty” but am apparently beautiful trope. *sigh* I hate this trope and it occurs way too often where the main girl will think she’s not pretty but then everyone around her thinks the opposite. It’s just so annoying and cliche. There were several times other characters reference Jessie as being “hot” or “beautiful” and I swear I sighed in annoyance every. Single. Time.

Overall- Decent book, worth reading once if nothing more than for Jessie and SN. My true rating is probably more along the line of 3.5 but I was feeling generous towards it because I did enjoy it so I rated it on the higher side. show less

1. It is very well written. How easy it is to become completely immersed in this book as if one was the main character, Jessie Holmes', shadow! The characters develop thoroughly throughout this novel and the setting environment was brief, yet effective. The villain is offensive (as most villains tend to be) but this villain really got under my skin. I could feel the anger, the hurt, the embarrassment, and the desperate attempts at pride that Jessie felt. However, I could feel these emotions without having to go through paragraph after paragraph of regurgitating the same feeling, as can be the case in romances or YA fiction in general. These effectively communicated emotions are balanced with humor and symbolic themes. The most show more pronounced theme throughout the book was the number 3, which ended up being deeply rooted to Jessie Holmes' family. She was an only child, so it was just the three of them: Jessie and her parents. When she ends up having to move from Chicago to Los Angeles, she eventually forms a new group of friends and the group size is 3: Dri, Agnes, and Jessie. The third example (see what I did there?) of the value of 3 in this book is when Jessie has to choose between three (sort of) love interests.

2. Grief is used as a uniting force. Death isolated some of these characters' lives by robbing them blindly of loved ones and leaving their other loved ones damaged in it's wake. It separated them from others who had not been trespassed on by Death and suddenly family, friends, and acquaintances do not know how to comfort or even communicate with them anymore. On the other hand, those who have been branded by Death's pain can recognize it in others and empathize. It's what united not only Jessie's father and stepmother, but also Jessie and "SN". "SN" being an acronym for "Somebody/Nobody". Somebody who recognized Death's brand on Jessie because this person also had been attacked by Grief yet wanted to remain a Nobody to her and stays anonymous through most of the book. SN reaches out to Jessie in e-mail (and eventually IM) form with helpful hints about the school where Jessie is a new student. Not only has Death isolated her, but she is also isolated by being the new kid at (the very expensive, funded by her stepmother, and private) school and not many are friendly at first. In person, that is. However, with SN's guidance, she befriends Dri who then befriends her by association with Agnes and there, again, is another trifecta. This friendship and her new job at a bookstore slowly build her social life instead of only having to rely on SN and Scarlett, her best friend when she lived in Chicago.

3. When I read the last line of the book, I was giddy. Not only giddy, but eager to start the book all over again, for fun! This book had my inner high-schooler jumping for joy. Partially because of the many book references made in this book, but mostly because Julie Buxbaum captures what every high schooler went through/will go though: growing up. What every high schooler desperately wants yet genuinely fears. Some are forced into growing up through tragedies. Some through the damages caused by others. Some may never accept adulthood. But everyone is forced to attempt it at some point in high school. Jessie experiences pubescent self-consciousness, fear of her future, homesickness, fear of not knowing her place in the world, and difficulty expressing it all. She also finds out the hard way that life keeps moving on and things can never go back to the way they used to be. Pieces of her life do not fit anymore and the hardest part is figuring out what to do, if anything, about it.

These are 3, out of many, reasons why I highly recommend this book. I may just re-read it 3 more times this year (probably while eating waffles).

For those who may be offended: there is cursing, drug use, underage drinking, bullying, and very brief sexual comments.

Please note: A copy of this note was generously provided by Penguin Random House through their First In Line program. show less

Jessie’s life has been turned upside down; her mother passed away, her dad remarried so they had to move to Los Angeles to be with her rich stepmom and snobby stepbrother. To top it off, she’s the new girl in an affluent school and she’s being bullied. But just when she’s ready to give up, she receives an email from a mysterious Somebody Nobody (SN), offering to help her navigate the complexities of school and social life. Jessie was reluctant at first to accept SN’s offer, but soon their email and IM exchanges becomes her refuge. As she slowly adjusts to her new life, she learns that she is stronger than she thinks and that there is still so much more to look forward to.

3 Things I Love About This Book

1) Believable characters show more – I’ve read books wherein the characters either sound younger or older than the age they’re supposed to be. But in this book, the teenagers sound like teenagers, and the adults, well, they sound like adults. The story is told from 17-year oldJessie’s pov and I like how authentic her “voice” is. Her memories about her mom and how close they were are especially touching, it made me teary-eyed.

2) Email/IM exchanges between Jessie and SN – In the story Jessie receives an email from a person who introduces himself as Somebody Nobody (SN). I enjoyed reading their witty exchanges and how their online relationship develops as the story unfolds. The dialogues in this story are well-written, especially Jessie’s poignant internal dialogue that will surely resonate with readers. I wish I had an SN back in high school, could’ve used that type of friendship.

3) The story – Overall, this is a well-written novel with an interesting plot and sub plots that will keep readers hooked until the end. It’s a story about loss, grief, family, friendship, first love, and ultimately, finding the strength to move forward. Heartbreaking and at the same time heartwarming, Tell Me Three Things is a story that reminds us that we are all flawed, perhaps even damaged in some way by our circumstances, our experiences. That nobody leaves this world unscathed, and we are all searching for that person, that one person who may not necessarily make us whole, but make us feel less broken.

Take note that there is underage drinking, fixation of certain characters about losing the v-card and lack of bullying intervention. But there are also responsible characters, such as Jessie, SN and Dri, so I give this book 4.5 out of 5 stars. Definitely one of my favorites this year.

I received an advance reader's copy of this book from the publisher. show less

A slightly different take on my favorite ‘You’ve Got Mail’ trope (don’t know what else to call unassuming pen pals who accidentally fall in love IRL). Instead of one writer finding out sometime during the correspondence, SN knew who Jessie was from the start. And despite some questionable and problematic plot devices, I still devoured this.