A review by labunnywtf
Infinite in Between by Carolyn Mackler

4.0

Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 3 - "Earshot"

I've been burning through audiobooks like they were...erm...actual books. So, I've taken serious advantage of the apps that my library uses for audiobooks, like Overdrive and Hoopla.

Except I've run out of titles I know on those apps, or at least ones that don't have holds on them. So, I dive into the unknown. Scary place, leading to lots of angry DNF reviews.

I glanced over the reviews on Goodreads before downloading this (Seriously, 10 downloads a month who can survive on that?), and it seemed this was a solid three star piece of fluff. Let's do it.

I enjoyed this a great deal. It's Judy Blume-ish, where nothing bad really happens to anyone, but also there's sex. And some cursing. It's a rather confused age range, really. But again, nothing bad really happens to these people. I was anticipating bad, but this book kept it on the fluffy side.

This is your quintessential high school experience novel. It starts out with the feel of The Breakfast Club, a mish mash of different cliques, and you experience the growth of each character throughout the four school years. They don't all stay together, which is actually what I had anticipated going in. I was very pleased to see that wasn't the case.

The characters are all loveable. My favorite was Mia, who is the Aly Sheedy of the piece. I was a bit perturbed when she decided to blend rather than stand out, but her personality still shone through, and she didn't lose herself. That's all I can ask.

The friendships and relationships here feel so very real. The two minute boyfriends/girlfriends, the toxic friends, the 21st century equivalent of the three-way call nightmare. If you remove the existence of cell phones, this story could take place in any decade, in any town.

What really and truly is the joy of this book, though, is seeing it as a reminder of what a small world high school truly was. (Or, if the reader is actually still in high school, realizing it). It's high school with a twist of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Little insignificant things happening in your life are affecting someone else near you in a major way.

As someone 15 years removed from high school, it makes me look back and think, "Hunh. Wonder what was happening while I was wrapped in my own little head."

It's the Buffy speech from Earshot. It's rather amazing.