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Romance. Young Adult Fiction. Young Adult Literature. HTML:A New York Times Bestseller What if the person you need the most is someone you�??ve never met? Funny and romantic, this tug-at-your-heartstrings contemporary YA debut is perfect for readers of Rainbow Rowell, Jennifer Niven, and E. Lockhart. Everything about Jessie is wrong. At least, that�??s what it feels like during her first week as a junior at her new ultra-intimidating prep school in Los Angeles. It�??s been barely two years since her mother�??s death, and because her father eloped with a woman he met online, Jessie has been forced to move across the country to live with her stepmonster and her pretentious teenage son. Just when she�??s thinking about hightailing it back to Chicago, she gets an email from a person calling themselves Somebody/Nobody (SN for short), offering to help her navigate the wilds of Wood Valley High School. Is it an elaborate hoax? Or can she rely on SN for some much-needed help? In a leap of faith�??or an act of complete desperation�??Jessie begins to rely on SN, and SN quickly becomes her lifeline and closest ally. Jessie can�??t help wanting to meet SN in person. But are some mysteries better left unsolved? �??Three Things about this novel: (1) I loved it. (2) No, really, I LOVED it. (3) I wish I could tell every teen to read it. Buxbaum�??s book sounds, reads, breathes, worries, and soars like real adolescents do.�?� �??Jodi Picoult, New York Times bestselling author of Leaving T… (more)
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And yet? Peel away the cliche and you'll find a soft, warm, melty, gooey center. Jessie,
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.
With wit, lots of heart, and soul ---and a little help from her new anonymous
• 733 days after mother died (Cancer)
• 45 days after her dad eloped with a stranger on the internet (wealthy)
• 30 days after they move from Chicago to Los Angeles (New stepmom & stepbrother)
• 7 days after starting as a junior at a new prep school (Public to private-knows no one)
To: Jessie A. Holmes ([email protected])
From: Somebody Nobody ([email protected])
Subject: Your Wood Valley H.S. Spirit Guide
Tell Me Three Things
An email arrives. An anonymous letter pops up in Jessie’s inbox with a bizarre alias. She is sixteen and her world has just been uprooted like overnight. Someone appears to be there to help her survive Wood Valley High. A guardian angel. For real?
The mom she loved dearly, and her special waffles, is no longer there. Their intimate talks, her support, guidance, and friend. Her dad is distracted, centered on his new wife, and she has an annoying stepbrother, Theo to contend with.
With a cast of supporting characters, Jessie continues to communicate with SN, attempting to guess his identity. She is loving the supportive, funny, and online friend, and comes to depend on him. When she begins making friends, she is still always wondering. Talking with fingertips. It is safe. When will they meet? What is he really like?
A job at the bookstore. Power through the grief. Emotional truths. Naked and unprotected, face to face with life’s fears, battles, and steep mountains to climb. Learning, accepting, desperately trying to fit in.
Juggling guy and girlfriends, crushes, relationships, school, peer pressure, work, family, loves, pain, loss and the ongoing fear and excitement of meeting SN—add in dealing with the normal other teen emotional highs, lows, and frustrations. First times. Trials and failures. Wins and Losses. A desperate need to be accepted and loved. Starting over.
Who does Jessie want SN to be? She continues to analyze everyone she meets to determine if there is a connection to SN – the mystery man. Ethan, Liam, Caleb, or someone else? She will not let go of the crush. The talking, the sharing. The unveiling . . . Possibly, romance, a kiss. poetry, a relationship?
Buxbaum skillfully maneuvers the daily thoughts of Jessie, in her banter with precision, using contemporary subjects, and dialogue, in an entertaining format. Authentic, relatable teen characters, with a nice usage of social media- without being overbearing. Keeping readers glued to
the pages to learn SN's identity.
A fantastic and innovative story for young adults, teens, and even parents and grandparents. (hey, we all have to keep up). We forget too quickly what is was like being a teen. Most of us despised our own teen years; not a time we wish to relive. Junior high and high school are difficult times even for the average teen. A constant state of confusion.
I liked Jessie in so many ways. She was never whinny, selfish, or a drama queen. She took everything in, sometimes without reaction. After all, she did have her faithful SN to confide in.
On a serious note: I loved the commentary from the author at the end. Her heartfelt personal story of the loss of her own mom, at age fourteen. Painful times, delving into those feelings with a powerful story to tell. The beauty of first love, and she tells it with compassion and raw human emotion! The author's first YA debut--Highly relatable, to teens in such a way to balance the loss, grief, with wit and humor.
I listened to the audiobook version (highly recommend) narrated by Jorjeana Marie—a perfect voice for Julie. Priceless. What a great tribute to a mom…Someone is smiling. For fans of YA Contemporary Rainbow Rowell, Veronica Roth, John Green, Jodi Picoult, and Sarah Dessen. Highly recommend!
My three favorite things:
> The Author
> The Characters (SN & Jessie)
> The Narrato
3 Things I Love About This Book
1) Believable characters – 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.
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 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.
Jessie has had a really rough time, her mother is dead and her father moved them from Chicago to LA. She just doesn’t fit in
Meanwhile in school Jessie is paired with a moody boy named Ethan for an English project. She really likes him but can’t figure him out. To make matters even weirder one of Ethan’s friends from the band they are in decides that Jessie is a “breath of fresh air” and wants to ask her out. Jessie is trying to solve the mystery of who SN is and match SN to one of these boys at her school.
I thought the mystery was pretty predictable. However, this was still a quick and fun read. I liked the “tell me three things” where Jessie and SN got to know each other by telling each other three true things about themselves.
Overall this is a cute and fast-paced contemporary fiction set in a high school setting. The main driver behind the story is the mystery around who SN is. The story was a bit predictable, but it is well written and a quick, fun read.
SN was by far the best of the characters in Tell Me Three Things but he deserved a better plot line. Theo, Jessie's new step-brother was another character I quite warmed to, but none of the girls won me over. I liked Jessie's online interactions with SN but found her uninteresting the rest of the time. A disappointing read.
Incredibly predictable and tropy, but it was written with heart. You could get a sense of the author's own personal grief coming out in the story.
Jessie's life 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.
I loved this book. There is so much going on: grief, moving to a new place, new friendships, changing friendships, homesickness, new step-sibling, step-mother, personal growth, bullying, and body image. I feel like Ms. Buxham did a great job of capturing so many things that teens feel. Her author note in the back was also very revealing. This will be one of my summer favorites.
This is a wonderful story of learning to accept what can't be changed but standing up for yourself and changing what you can. Jessie's voice is easily identifiable as she navigates through life in an unfamiliar house and school, gets to know her stepmother and stepbrother, and finds her own way. I really liked this story but I would suggest reading it with some tissues handy.
I read this for a Reading Group Book Discussion. I haven't been enjoying Romance or YA genres lately so had a bit of trepidation when starting this book. But it is so well-written and the way the author had characters dealing with grief was so real that made the book enjoyable. The Author's Note at the end just made the book that much better.