Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson
My rating: 4/5 cats
this is not the kind of book i would ordinarily read. i tend to stay away from contemporary YA novels, ones where real-seeming teens do real-seeming things. give me grand battles to the death, or a pandemic of some kind, zombies or even just basic wilderness survival, and i am on board. but teens who aren’t in peril in some way?? not usually gonna blip my radar.
but i read this one at the urging of a work-friend, and i gotta say, i enjoyed it. yeah, it’s just an unchallenging summer read, but it’s charming as hell. it’s an appealing book about girl friendship and loyalty with a dusting of romance and it makes a nice change from the hard-edged teenage girls i’ve sort of grown accustomed to in my readings. these girls aren’t the back-stabby predatory girls of a megan abbott novel, they’re good, wholesome girls who care about each other with a refreshing lack of all the competitiveness and jealousy that infects so many female relationships in YA novels, and it’s a sweet little lollipop of a read.
emily and sloane are the always-together kind of best friends. sloane is dynamic and charismatic, while emily is a little more reserved, shy, and content to hide out in sloane’s dramatic shadow. but sloane’s not looking for a sidekick, and she frequently encourages emily to break out of her shell, making little to-do lists in the shape of dares for emily on the occasions when she has to go away on vacation with her parents, and encouraging her to take spontaneous risks and stop being afraid. emily appreciates these efforts, but she will generally only fulfill a portion of sloane’s lists, avoiding the items she doesn’t feel comfortable attempting.
but one day, sloane vanishes without a trace, at the beginning of what was meant to be their most epic summer ever, which had already been mapped out in detailed plans and adventures. sloane doesn’t answer her phone, her house is empty, and emily has no idea what could have happened to her, until she receives an envelope from sloane in the mail, with a new thirteen-point list for emily.
bewildered, emily decides to meet every challenge on the list for once, hoping it will somehow lead her back to sloane and provide an answer to her sudden disappearance. however, this list seems to be more pointed than its predecessors, and calls out some of emily’s most ingrained fears and reservations as it encourages her to: ride a horse, kiss a stranger, and skinny dip, none of which emily would ordinarily even consider doing. but if it will bring her closer to an answer, she will do whatever it takes.
what follows is a summer of growth and change for emily, as she branches out under sloane’s indirect influence, tries new things, makes new friends and with her parents conveniently distracted all summer long, finally gets her answers.
this is a book in which there are no “heavy” problems. no one gets bullied or sexually assaulted, and it is all very lightweight suburban teenage drama, so it is perfectly safe to give to younger or more watched-over teens. i was hoping for a little twist – part of me wanted this fairytale-like set of challenges to culminate in a lesbian angle where emily found her way back to her princess sloane, but nope.
i will say that despite my (mild) sapphic-disappointment, the conclusion is reasonable and satisfying, and it really was a pleasure to see emily’s transition into something that wasn’t emily-before-sloane or emily-with-sloane, but something all her own, realistically confident and less constrained by her own fears. there is one scene in particular that i thought especially deft and subtly-written, which illustrates both her inner and outer changes.
…I texted back without a second thought that I’d be there soon. I reached for a Sloane-chosen outfit – a vintage dress from Twice that I’d worn a lot last summer. But after I put it on, I found myself pulling at the straps, tugging at the hem, not liking what I saw in the mirror. For some reason, it didn’t feel like me any longer. I took it off and changed into the denim skirt I’d bought with Dawn last week and a white eyelet tank top. Feeling more like myself, somehow, I dabbed some makeup on, and made sure to get Frank’s present before grabbing my flip-flops and heading back to the car.
before this, it would have taken her paragraphs to decide whether or not to go to the place she is going, and she would have dressed herself as an accessory to sloane, but in this scene towards the end of her summer, she is finally all herself, and very comfortable in her own skin.
looks like emily isn’t the only one who has grown this summer – i learned that it is possible for me to appreciate books even when teens aren’t getting slaughtered by zombies or bears. and that’s progress!
