The weather is getting colder, Starbucks broke out the red holiday cups , and Thanksgiving is just around the corner. But let’s go back to that happier—and warmer—time in late August when two novels about love were published: The Beginning of Everything and The Infinite Moment of Us. These two books aren’t on our long list, but in a year when contemporary realistic romance is ubiquitous, each of these novels has noteworthy qualities. Let’s snuggle up and discuss, shall we?

(By the way, you know we do spoilers here, right? Don’t say I didn’t warn you when I spill some major secrets.)

The Beginning of Everything, Robyn Schneider
Katherine Tegen Books, August 2013
Reviewed from ARC

Robyn Schneider’s protagonist is Ezra Faulkner, a high school senior whose entire life is changed by a car accident that shatters his knee. Schneider lays out her thesis in chapter one; what do you do, and who do you become, after the defining moment of your life?

Ezra and new girl, Cassidy, represent the two paths you can take. Ezra pushes forward because he physically can’t be who he used to be; his inability to go back to being school tennis star forces him to reassess who he is and what he wants. Then there’s Cassidy, the perfectly geeky/pretty/witty manic pixie dream girl. While Ezra is living out the book’s title, Cassidy remains a snapshot of a girl too good to be true, because it allows her to hide the wreck she really is.

The theme is executed with great earnestness, which makes me wonder if this novel might be more suited to folks my age as a kind of aspirational nostalgia. Ezra’s new geeky debate team friends are beautifully flawed; they host a floating film festival, read comics, and watch Doctor Who (full disclosure: as soon as one character was described as wearing a bow tie and blazer, I knew that Robyn Schneider was speaking my language). They’re people I would hang out with now. But this means that the characters look and act like mini-adults, and struggle through identity issues that most adults are still working on. So when the characters act like teenagers, it’s hard not to see uneven writing.

It’s no surprise that this novel has three stars, but it’s not a serious contender this year; Robyn Schneider is a writer with chops. She has a strong voice and a real knack for supplying her characters with great dialogue. There was so much about her depiction of the high school experience that was just right, but next time she should give us real teens.