The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily
by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
High School    Knopf    217 pp.
10/16    978-0-399-55380-6    $17.99
Library ed.  978-0-399-55381-3    $20.99    g
e-book ed.  978-0-399-55382-0    $10.99

It’s been a year since the two teens met and fell in love in New York City (Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, rev. 1/11), thanks to a red Moleskine notebook and its scavenger hunt clues. Now it’s Christmastime once again, but, at “a balmy seventy degrees,” it sure doesn’t feel like it. Lily blames global warming for her bah-humbug mood, but she’s had a rough year, what with Grandpa’s heart attack and subsequent operations, so it’s up to Dash to bring on the holiday cheer. This sequel isn’t quite the carefree, flirtatious romp that the first book was. There are plenty of lighthearted, silly moments, but the stakes are higher now, as Lily begins contemplating mortality, change, and what it really means to love and be loved.

From the November/December 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.