The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

The Future of Us 

by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

In the book, “The Future of Us” the main characters Josh and Emma are neighbors and former best friends. They didn’t speak to each other for months until Josh brought over an AOL CD-ROM. When they logged onto AOL they were also logged into Facebook. The book takes place in the year 1996, when Facebook didn’t exist. They were looking into their futures 15 years away.

The theme of this book is to not dwell on your future and focus on what is happening in the present. When Emma saw her life 15 years away, she was unhappy with it and figured out how every action can affect the future. Emma became obsessed with leading a happy life, so she started changing everything about herself. This shows how Emma was crazy about doing everything right in the future that she lost control of the present; and suddenly her life, future and present, was ruined.

When Josh saw his life 15 years away, he was happy with whom he married and where he worked. But slowly, he began to wonder how he got the girl and started overthinking every move he made. He also became obsessed with his future and how he got to be the man he was 15 years later. This shows how Josh was hooked on how he became who he is and he started freaking out about everything he said or did.

Josh and Emma were obsessed with their future, knowing that whenever they refreshed the website page, something else could happen to them, good or bad. With every post their future selves wrote they got more and more paranoid. In the end, they lost access to Facebook and realized that knowing were they would end up was not as fun as the journey there.

In conclusion, “The Future of Us” was a great book that had a great moral: focus on where you are now, not where you will end up. Josh and Emma learned how their life was going to be worth living, and the readers learned that the journey is the best part.