Book Review- Don't Stop Now

By Julie Halpern

Published by Feiwel & Friends

Released on June 7, 2011

Source: Publisher

3.5 Stars- I enjoyed this one!

Synopsis (from Macmillan): On the first day of Lillian’s summer-before-college, she gets a message on her cell from her sort-of friend, Penny. Not only has Penny faked her own kidnapping, but Lil is the only one who figures it out. She knows that Penny’s home life has been rough, and that her boyfriend may be abusive. Soon, Penny’s family, the local police, and even the FBI are grilling Lil, and she decides to head out to Oregon, where Penny has mentioned an acquaintance. And who better to road-trip across the country with than Lil’s BFF, Josh. But here’s the thing: Lil loves Josh. And Josh doesn’t want to “ruin” their amazing friendship.

Josh has a car and his dad’s credit card. Lil has her cellphone and a hunch about where Penny is hiding. There’s something else she needs to find: Are she and Josh meant to be together?

When I started reading Don’t Stop Now I thought it was just going to be a fun light-hearted read, it was actually pretty funny and was making me laugh out loud with the hilarious conversations between Lillian and Josh but I soon realized that there was going to be more to the story, something more serious.

The story starts off pretty much on the light side, we have Lillian who’s had a crush on her best friend Josh since the first time they met but Josh is unaware of her feelings and she’s never really acted on them. They embark on a road trip to Portland where they’re suppose to find Penny, Lillian’s friend because Penny has faked her own kidnapping and Lillian wants to get her to come clean about it, but she‘s also using it as an opportunity to spend alone time with Josh. Throughout the book we get snippets of what I assumed was Penny’s diary because they pop up in between paragraphs and the first time it happened it confused me, I wasn’t really sure if it was Lillian or Penny but it soon became clear and we begin to see how hard Penny’s life had been. I felt pretty awful for poor Penny, her parents never paid much attention to her or made her feel loved, they pretty much only used her as a babysitter and driver for her little sister, never really showed any interest in her life. Besides the problems she had at home she was also trapped in an abusive relationship.

I loved Josh, he was a fun and sarcastic, so oblivious to everything and made a joke about anything even at the worst times which lighten the mood in the story during the tense scenes and had me laughing several times. Lillian was like the other half of Josh, she had a great sense of humor which made the friendship perfect even though she had higher goals in her life they got along great, they seemed to have a deep connection, which made the story so easy to get lost in and a great read. I think what I would've liked to have seen a little bit more focus on Penny's problems, the ending seemed to resolved too easily for me, but she was more of a side character and the story focused mainly on Lillian and Josh. Don’t Stop Now had a bit of seriousness in it but it was also mixed with a lot of fun light moments and hilarious dialogue between the two main characters. It was a great story about love, friendship, taking on responsibilities, letting go. The writing was easy flowing, the characters likable and it had a deeper message than I expected which was a great surprise. I think older teens and adults will enjoy this one and seeing these character come to terms with the changes of life from high school to becoming adults.