Gimme a Call

by Sarah Mlynowski

[Leah]

17 year-old Devi Banks has been having a bit of a hard time lately, she's been dumped by her boyfriend of four years Bryan, she's lost all of her friends and the only college she's been accepted to is known as "Stupid State" to everyone who has heard of it. After Devi drops her phone into a fountain, she realises that she can talk to her 14-year-old self. She realises she can use her new found ability to warn her 14-year-old self from doing all of the things she wished she could change, including not falling in love Bryan. But changing the past isn't as easy as Devi thinks and there's a danger she might just try and change the past too much and end up worse off than when she started.

I have to admit that I decided to buy Gimme A Call on a whim. I've never read any of Sarah's previous books although I have heard about her chick lit books. However after seeing a lot of people saying they loved the sound of Gimme A Call, a teenage novel by Sarah, I looked it up and thought it sounded like a great read so I decided to pre-order it for myself. I wasn't too sure if I'd read it as soon as it arrived but I decided to try the first three pages to see if it was really a book I wanted to read and I was immediately hooked.

I've only read one other book about being able to change the lives of the characters by the means of a younger/older self and that was Alexandra Potter's book Who's That Girl?. I wasn't a huge fan of the book so I obviously approached Gimme A Call with some trepidation, wondering how Sarah Mlynowski would approach the entire concept. Sarah's version comes in the form of 17-year-old Devi being able to contact her 14-year-old self via her mobile phone, after she drops it into a fountain. I thought it was an interesting way of doing things and was very intrigued as to how it would all pan out. The book is told in alternating chapters from both 17-year-old Devi and 14-year-old Devi's point of view. To save on confusion, 17-year-old Devi becomes Ivy and 14-year-old Devi becomes Frosh which helps to tell the difference between the two and there's also a font change which also divides the two narratives from each other.

For Ivy, the chance to change her current life is a welcome one as when we first meet her she's friendless, boyfriendless and due to her low grades has only been accepted to a small college so the ability to re-do everything makes her incredibly excited. Frosh, on the other hand, doesn't believe that Ivy is indeed her older self and refuses to believe it, thinking it's some kind of stalker-girl. Ivy eventually manages to make Frosh believe that she tells the truth and Ivy, as expected, starts to tell Frosh all of the things she should avoid. Of course, changing the past isn't all it's cracked up to be and it appears that every time Ivy makes Frosh differ from the path Ivy followed herself, it immediately makes changes to Ivy's current life causing some strange results.

Both Ivy and Frosh were incredibly interesting characters. Yes, they are essentially one and the same, but they are also so different because they're obviously three years apart from each other. I think Ivy (older Devi) was a little bit neurotic when it came to ordering Frosh (younger Devi) around. I could totally understand why; after being dumped by Bryan she's obviously hurting and wants to try and make it better by telling Frosh to never date him. In turn, that makes Frosh mildly rebellious - who is Ivy to tell her what to do after all. It makes an interesting dynamic between the pair. They're the only two main characters in the book, really. Bryan, Devi's boyfriend, does make regular appearances as well as their joint friends/ex-friends. But really the book revolves solely around the older and younger Devi.

Sarah's writing is incredibly readable and I whizzed through the book at quite a pace. Because the book is told from both Ivy & Frosh's perspective it helps keep the tale moving along as each new different path Frosh decides to take changes Ivy's world, some things for the better, some things for the worse, and some things for the totally unexpected. The biggest problem I thought I might encounter throughout the book was the ending of Gimme A Call. How do you end a book like this? With a reasonable explanation and an ending that doesn't make you want to tear your hair out? Well, I think Sarah managed the ending perfectly. It didn't seem twee or forced and I thought the ending was very well done and it really worked for me.

Gimme A Call was a really good read and I would hugely recommend it to any young adult fan. It was a quick and easy read and had a wonderful premise that Sarah Mlynowski pulled off with aplomb. I will certainly be looking out for more of Sarah's books and I really hope she's working on her next young adult book because Gimme A Call was fabo (as Devi says).