The Here and Now by Ann Brashares

I received an ARC of The Here and Now in return for an honest review. Thank you to Miss Brashares and Random House Publishing for this opportunity.

Official description:

Follow the rules. Remember what happened. Never fall in love.

This is the story of seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn’t come from a different country. She came from a different time—a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins. 

Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they’re from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she’s told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth. 

But everything changes when Prenna falls for Ethan Jarves. 

One of the blurbs on Goodreads describes this book as an "unforgettable epic romantic thriller".  While I admit Miss Brashares' has an interesting imagination, I never once thought of this story as epic, unforgettable, or a thriller.

Miss Brashares does not do a very job of developing the characters. At the very beginning of the story the reader is just dropped into the middle of the plot. There is no build up of the main characters. And within just a few pages the reader is thrown forward by two years and the characters have matured and it is never really explained. The reader never really gets a chance to build a relationship with any of the characters. The story goes back and forth between scenes making it somewhat difficult to keep up with what is going on. I had to go and re-read pages on a few occasions to understand what I was reading. And then the ending just happened all of a sudden. She left the reader with questions. It is like she literally just ran out of ideas for the story.

 I don't really like to give bad reviews, but this story was not for me. I would give it 2 stars and those are for imagination only.