The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

Emma, a high school student in 1996, has just received a computer from her father. Her best friend Josh, who lives in the house next to hers, has an America Online CD-ROM that he offers her. When she finished downloading it, she discovers Facebook in her list of favorite sites. Clicking on it, she discovers her Facebook page 15 years in the future. To her dismay, she sees herself as being miserably unhappy. She messes around with her life, desperately doing anything to prevent her unfortunate future. She decides to apply to different colleges so that she won't meet her future husband, but everything she does just seems to make a different future in which she is still unhappy. Josh, on the other hand, is extremely happy with his future, and he's terrified that something Emma does will mess it up.

It's definitely a cool idea, but the book did not execute it well. It turned into one of those books that's about high school kids, who they want to go out with, and all the other tiny things they do in their life. The future Facebook added an interesting element, but Emma ended up rushing home every day to check it, and ended up acting like kids do now, so it didn't seem different than the other books about a random high school kid. The idea wasted away as the book progressed, so by the end, it had lost any novelty that it had at the beginning.

The book is a 1.9. It's better than some books I've read, but not nearly as good as many others. Like Splenda, it seemed sweet at first, but quickly lost its appeal, and there are alternatives that are better.