The Here and Now

by Ann Brashares

Seventeen-year-old Prenna James emigrated to New York when she was twelve. But Prenna didn't come from a different country, she came from a different time - a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.

Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they're from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she's told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth and take the lives of her younger brothers. But everything changes when she falls for Ethan.

She might be able to save the world ... if she lets go of the one thing she's found to hold on to.

• ISBN10: 0385736800
• ISBN13: 9780385736800
• Publish Date: 8 April 2014 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 242
• Language: English

Reviews

[Joséphine]

Audiobook rating: 2 stars
Book rating: 1.5 stars

Initial thoughts: Well, that was a disappointment. You'd think time travel could give rise to more ideas besides playing cards and lustful thoughts, both of which mattered way too much to The Here and Now. I had a great deal of expectations because The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants fills me with such fond memories. I didn't expect to be so severely let down by the same author. The science in this science fiction was rather lacklustre and gave way to a lot of mundane details.

There were some half-hearted discussions on the danger of meddling with the past and the impact of it on the future, as well as how the human immune system might hold up differently across time. Sadly, these concerns faded to the background while the flirtations between Preena and Ethan too centre-stage. On a scale of romantic to creepy, it tipped more towards creepy for me as Ethan, who was fully aware that intimacy with Preena could kill him through unknown diseases didn't care, as long as it meant he could sleep with her. Just, no.

At least the narrator was good. Listening to the audiobook is probably the only reason I managed to finish this one.

[lindsey]

I received a copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was torn right down the middle when it came to rating this book. On the one hand, it was a very interesting premise. On the other, however, it was just sort of bland. I've seen a lot of negative reviews for this book, but I don't think it was that bad. It had the potential to be a very good book, but it just never reached that point, unfortunately.

This was a very quick read, and also highly predictable. The plot is pretty familiar: female teen, who happens to be a time-traveler, saves the world along with her perfect love interest. The stakes, however, never really seem that high. They have time for card games, shopping, and beach visits on their way to change the future, so it's hard to take it seriously.

I think teen readers who are interested in light reading may enjoy this, but it is definitely not an "epic" book.

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

The Here and Now first reminded me of Lois Lowry's The Giver. We begin at a ceremony to basically scare the shit out off youngsters with extreme rules and the creation of sameness. Hm, I vaguely questioned whether Ann Brashares was jumping off the stir for The Giver movie but eventually moved on. The Here and Now is not at all like The Giver, but I'm not sure which way it should be taken.

Brashares' novel was hectic and a little discombobulated. As a time travel novel it jumped around, and not necessarily in a good way. I actually found it a little confusing and for a time questioned which realm they were in. I'm not trying to say it was a bad plot because even though the "save the world" premise has been done before The Here and Now's sense of sameness and cure/cause for the west-nile-like break out was interesting.

The big flaw, was the community. Yes they are bad but when you got into it I thought most of the community members were in the periphery and Prenna's advisers flipped in and out of the story so frequently I almost forgot they were there. Occasionally, they made an appearance to remind the reader how big, bad and scary they were but instead just made me yawn.

As for the romance between Prenna and Ethan, that was my favorite part. I usually don't fall for the cheesy teen romance and didn't for this one either. It was the outcome of the relationship that caught my eye as they usually end in a gushy kiss. This one not so much. In the world of teen romance the outcome was sad but thought it rounded out the novel.

I think a fan of the futureistic genre would enjoy The Here and Now as it had all the elements but the stars did not aline for me on this one.

[Angie]

I received an ARC through NetGalley.

The Here is Now was such a pleasant surprise! It's not mind-blowingly amazing, or anything, but it was a fun and interesting read. I love time travel and really liked the way it was handled, but I do wish there were a bit more details about how it worked. Prenna, her mother, and many others from 2098 travel to 2010 after a plague has swept through their time. Four years later, the world is on the brink of something, but Prenna doesn't know what. At least until a seemingly crazy homeless man gives her some clues and tells her to team up with her friend Ethan. From there, the two teenagers discover the fork in time and try to prevent Prenna's awful future from coming true.

The first part of The Here is Now was quite boring. I was worried that I wasn't going to like it, but eventually it does pick up, and I ended up really enjoying it. I can't even tell you what it was about the beginning that I didn't like, since nothing happened so I don't remember! However, the turning point was after Prenna does something super stupid. Of course, she knows too much so her leaders are after her. She decides that she wants to go home and shower before disappearing, because they're probably not looking for her at home. What?! The middle and ending are pretty great though, since Prenna seems to use her brain more after that severe lapse in judgement.

Like I said before, I did want to know more about the time travel aspect. We learn a lot about the future that Prenna came from, but nothing about how she came from it. All we know is that scientists discovered how to do it, and that it was easier to time travel than to inhabit the moon or Mars. Okay...but, how does it work? Time machine? A wormhole? What?! I guess in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much how they arrived, just that they did. But really, if you're going to use time travel as a plot device, at least tell us quickly how it's done!

The Here is Now was good. I liked it a lot, especially when environmental issues came into play. I find Prenna's future highly possible and terrifying. It may be where we're headed if we're not careful. There's nothing whacky or outlandish about that future. It's very set in reality, and will probably make you more wary of mosquitoes.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[Ashley]

Nose Graze — Book reviews & blogging tips

The world may end. We're at the pivot point that will determine the future of humanity. This moment in time will doom us or save us. All we have to do is prevent one murder from happening, and we can save millions of lives...

But all Prenna and Ethan can think about is whether or not they should have sex.

Ethan is a freaking horny bastard. He may die by having sex with Prenna, or contract some creepy futuristic virus.. but he doesn't care! He's still determined to get into Prenna's pants. That's all this guy thinks about.

"If I could make love to you right now, I wouldn't mind if I died."
—Ethan

"Bit by bit I feel [Ethan's] hands searching around my body, pushing up under my tank top."

And when Prenna asks Ethan what he'd want to do if he knew he was going to die, he replies:

"Are you sure you want me to tell you the truth?"
I nod, pressing my lips together.
He seems to gauge my tolerance for sincerity.
"Okay, well, since you insist. If I were going to die, there would be nothing to keep me from you—from all of you, from everything with you—and there's no reason you could give me why we shouldn't."

In case the lack of context isn't clear for you.. he's talking about sex. He's saying that if he knew he were going to die, the one thing he'd want to do is have sex with Prenna, and nothing could stop him. Sounds a bit rapey, don't you think?

Prenna's main argument for not wanting to have sex with him was a sound one. She's from the future. She may be carrying all kinds of diseases that may not affect someone from her time, but may have devastating consequences for someone from present day. Think like some kind of futuristic AIDS, which Prenna is immune to but Ethan wouldn't be, and is sexually transmitted. And yet, Ethan is like, "I'm not afraid. It won't hurt me." Is that what you say when you try to convince someone to have sex without a condom? "Honey, it's fine. You won't get chlamydia because we're meant to be together."

Okay, let's talk about the actual book, shall we?

I almost didn't finish The Here and Now. The beginning was so dull and insta-lovey right off the bat. Immediately she was all ga-ga for Ethan, but I didn't care about him at all. He was pretty bland, and I felt like I knew nothing about him, but Prenna was obsessed with him.

At around the 50% mark, I did start to get more interested to the point where I didn't want to constantly put the book down.. but it was still pretty ridiculous. Prenna got herself caught by making REALLY FREAKING STUPID decisions. Then in the second half, there's this big overarching feeling of "we need to save the world", but instead of doing that, she and Ethan check into a hotel, sit by the beach, eat hamburgers like 5 times, and go shopping. Oh, and talk about whether or not they should have sex... obviously. I mean, PRIORITIES GUYZ!

Then the book ended with a bit more ridiculousness. Ethan still wanted to have sex with Prenna, even after they realized that SEXUAL INTERCOURSE IS WHAT CAUSED THE VIRUS IN THE FIRST PLACE! God. Oh, and Prenna, a seventeen-year-old, got voted in as a leader of their little time traveler group. Naturally.

Ultimately, I was just left with a feeling of "meh". I never cared much about the story or any of the characters. My favourite part was hearing about what the future was like, and some of the time traveling aspects were pretty cool. But most of the time I was just bored, and floored by how badly Ethan wanted to have sex.

[Leah]

I’ve never read an Ann Brashares novel, although I do have one of her books on my TBR pile (or, at least, I did, I don’t actually know if it’s still there since I cull my books on a regular basis). I know she’s an immensely popular author, and so when I spotted The Here and Now on Netgalley, I thought it sounded like a fantastic, exciting, fast-paced read. What also really made me desperate to get started on it, was after downloading it to my Kindle and loading it up, there sat a letter from Ann Brashares editor. Now, I know editors generally have to be excited about their authors books, I think it goes without saying, but I always enjoy when an editor takes the time to physically put a letter into the book saying how fantastic this novel is, and it sort of pumps me up to read a novel, but I have to be honest, and say I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought.

The novel opens with a Prologue, introducing us to Ethan, who has decided to go fishing, and whilst there, he sees a girl somehow appear out of the sky. He can hardly believe his eyes, when he sees this girl, naked and afraid and so he gives her his shirt and tells her exactly where he thinks she needs to go. Fast forward four years, to 2014, and Prenna James, and the rest of her community live their life by a set of rules. Rules that govern what they can or can’t do, and one of the rules is: They must not fall in love with a human being. Until Prenna meets Ethan, she’s very happy to stick to the rules, but there’s something about this boy that makes her want to break them. When Prenna learns that the future she knows already may very well be able to be altered, she and Ethan try to do everything they can to stop what they know is about to occur because what it goes to the world 70 years later is horrific.

I have to be honest and say that the opening chapter of The Here and Now confused me like no other book has before. It was sort of like being dropped in the middle of the ocean and nothing seemed to make sense. I think it probably could have been better set up to see Ethan witness Prenna’s arrival at the lake where he was fishing because it was bloody confusing, let me tell you. But, after that, it did begin to make more sense. There were other parts of the novel that confused me – bits that, again, more time could have been spent over making it smoother and more obvious what was happening, and I suppose this is why I probably didn’t enjoy the novel as much as I might have because I found it super confusing. It was a relatively short novel, and there was one particular twist that I didn’t even understand until Ethan pointed it out to Prenna, and that was rather indicitive of the novel, at least from my perspective.

The idea for The Here and Now was quite interesting, but I probably would have preferred to learn more about the future time than the present, because the present wasn’t as interesting (and as I said, it was confusing). It just seemed to me as if the novel was trying to cram so much stuff into one little book (it is a very short book) and it just didn’t seem to work for me. I would also have personally changed the narrative – instead of just giving us Prenna’s perspective, I would have liked to have got Ethan’s perspective, too, because there’s a lot he does and a lot we don’t get to see that could have perhaps painted a clearer picture if it was either a dual perspective or a third-person narrative. First-person is my favourite narrative, but in a novel like this it needs more scope than first-person. I liked parts of the novel, don’t get me wrong, and it wasn’t an awful read by any means, I just think it felt a little rushed. A novel that’s trying to be as big as this one in needs just a touch more time and effort to make it all make sense, and I spent the majority of the novel sitting confused, because things just seemed to be happening all the time with no room to digest anything.