The year is 1996, and Emma just got a new computer from her dad. While she's getting it set up, her neighbor Josh stops in with an AOL CD with 100 free hours of Internet. With a new computer, a phone line and 100 hours for Internet, Emma is ready to set up her new e-mail address and see what is out there.
When Emma sets up her e-mail, things get weird. There's this site, that has a girl named Emma, but she's like 30 something, and she's writing random things about her life on the Internet. Is this Emma famous or something? Thinking this is a joke that Josh is playing on her, both are faced with the truth: This Facebook is somehow showing future lives, and every decision they make in the present is slightly changing the future.
Faced with their ever changing future, Emma and Josh both start making different choices in the present. Some choices, like changing colleges, create big changes, while some choices, standing up for the popular girl, make small changes (they have boy twins now instead of girl twins). Of course all of this would be easier if Josh had not ruined their friendship last November, by trying to kiss Emma.
For anyone who has ever spent too much time on Facebook, or even just surfing the web this book is for you. Emma and Josh have different reactions to knowing their possible futures, and the power that comes from knowing what might happen. The Future of Us will make you think, and definitely make you wonder what if about the future.
Fans of Sarah Mlynowski's Gimme a Call will enjoy the future changing aspects, and fans of Rachel Cohel and David Levithan's books will enjoy the dual narrators. Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler give us a great story that will appeal to realistic fiction fans, even if part of the story is science fiction!
I'll see you @ the library!
Katie (Getting ready for Winter Reading Bingo!)