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You Have Seven Messages

Stewart Lewis

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Oct 08, 2012 Kate rated it liked it

Shelves: youngadult, fiction, 2012

Stewart Lewis is not at all a bad writer, and I look forward to reading more of his y/a work. This one was a little overly long, but held my interest. High schooler (she turns 15 in the novel) Luna lost her model mother one year ago in an accident. She is tall and well-to-do, living in the Upper West Side with her acclaimed film director father Jules and her precocious 10-year-old brother, whom she tries to protect from the same information she is trying to get from the adults in her life about Stewart Lewis is not at all a bad writer, and I look forward to reading more of his y/a work. This one was a little overly long, but held my interest. High schooler (she turns 15 in the novel) Luna lost her model mother one year ago in an accident. She is tall and well-to-do, living in the Upper West Side with her acclaimed film director father Jules and her precocious 10-year-old brother, whom she tries to protect from the same information she is trying to get from the adults in her life about the true nature of her seemingly happily married parents' relationship and her mother's somewhat mysterious death. Lewis distracted me a bit by including real celebrities as characters in the novel, so that I was wondering if he got Drew Barrymore's permission to write her in, and if he knows her and Orlando Bloom personally, when it might have served him better to make people up. The only reason I could think for him to do this (though this explanation still doesn't necessitate it) was as part of the "can't judge a book by its cover" theme: Luna is surprised the Drew is nice and treats her as an equal (never mind that they kind of are, since both are daughters of Hollywood celebrities), just as she is surprised to learn of her mother's emotional affair roiling beneath the surface pretense of a happy marriage. She wants to get to the core of things, the truth, and this is reflected nicely in her "raw" talent for photography that lands her a rare gallery show.

The affair brings us to another theme Lewis is clearly interested in. Luna runs off to Italy toward the end of the book to stay with her uncle and his partner; they are monogamous, but have bisexual and polyamorous/open-marriage friends. Luna recognizes that though she wants to just have one boyfriend, the nature and fluidity of relationships differ depending on who is in them. (I hope no ultra social conservatives get ahold of this book, because I could imagine them reviling it as a textbook for indoctrinating teens into promiscuity blah blah blah). This, coupled with a hint that her father may have also dabbled in extramarital shenanagins, paves the way for her to accept and forgive both her parents.

Overall, I thought this book could have gone deeper, especially with the intrigue set up about her mother's death. The mystery isn't much of one, and the resolution isn't that satisfying. You could argue that that's part of an intertwined theme: that maybe the dramas we create about each other (especially celebrities) are situations that, at their core, are not such a big deal. But that makes for a bit of a fizzle of a plot.

Additionally, I kept noticing small mistakes. Oliver uses Luna's mom's phone to call the mysterious Clay -- but wouldn't Clay see that it was the mom's cell calling? Instead, he falls for a "package for delivery" scam Oliver concocts to get his address and a look at him. I was unconvinced; Oliver should have dialed from his own phone. We never get an answer for why Oliver suddenly dumps Luna. Jules keeps his dead wife's apartment, utilities and all, for over a year; fine, but when he finally decides to sell, would a realtor really show the unit the very next day, with all of the previous tenant's belongings inside? I guess it's possible. Minor missteps like these distracted me the same way the real celebrities did.

Overall, You Have Seven Messages was a decent read tackling a few important issues, though more superficially perhaps than Lewis meant. I think he has the potential to write one of the future big teen hits, though, if he can tighten up his sprawling themes, get an eagle-eyed editor, and ramp up his plots. I hope his next one will deal with an average high schooler rather than the rich and famous -- not that they don't have valid issues as well, but maybe not ones as hard-hitting to a general teen audience. ...more

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Jan 08, 2012 Kate H rated it it was amazing

Shelves: goodreads-yajuvenile

I loved this book. I know many peple disliked the ending and I can get that b/c the part in New Yprk and the part in Europe are almost like two entirely different novels. However the final bit was my favorite part; the first part of the book was good in the way that many YA novels are good but the final part truly shone for me. It greatly reminded me of a Madeleine L'Engle novel in tone b/c Luna is like so many of L'Engle's main characters super adult and incredibly young at the same time. Furth ...more

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Mar 29, 2011 Liz marked it as to-read

Jan 13, 2013 Lisa marked it as to-read

Aug 20, 2013 katayoun Masoodi marked it as tbr-ebook

Shelves: ya, ebook

Jul 23, 2014 Krista the Krazy Kataloguer marked it as to-read

Shelves: to-read-interloan-my, to-read-nys

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