The Infinite Moment of Us

Title: The Infinite Moment of Us
Author: Lauren Myracle
Rating: 

Get it Here:
Barnes and Noble
Book Depository

The Infinite Moment of Us is a teen fiction novel about two teenagers trying to figure our their lives the summer before they go away to college. Wren is a preppy parent pleasing girl who has never taken chances and done anything for herself. She feels oppressed by her well-meaning parents’ expectations of her and instead of going to a college nearby, finds a way to get away from them and her problems. Charlie is a foster kid with a sad past. He lives with foster parents and a foster brother that love him and yet he can’t bring himself to call his foster parents mom and dad because of a fear of abandonment. He also has never known romantic love as the only relationship he’s ever been in was with a person who wouldn’t open herself to him emotionally, initiating a sex-only relationship with Charlie. Both go to the same school and the summer before they book head off in different directions, they decide to get to know each other (as they’ve been in the same school for years, have notice and been intrigued by each other but have never approached one another).


It wasn’t a book I hated and it wasn’t a book I liked. It was just okay. And that bothered me because I usually have very strong opinions about novels. Unfortunately, while Wren and Charlie’s love story was cute, I didn’t feel the characters were fleshed out enough, the character development shoddy and the writing choppy in its themes and timing.


To begin with, i was frustrated with the fact that Wren did not act her age. The teenage characters in the books were supposed to be eighteen and the dialogue sometimes felt juvenile for the age group. Wren also read like a fifteen year old instead of an eighteen year old. I’m not saying that everyone matures at the same rate. I myself was sheltered as a teen but she read almost too childlike and it bothered me. Especially since the book was targeted at the higher end of the teen fiction age bracket.

    As a general rule, there is a correlation between the age of a novel’s main characters and the age of its readers. Readers gravitate towards characters that are close to them in age. Therefore if the main character is eighteen, it is likely the novel’s readers will be in their late teens or early twenties.

But here, I felt that Myracle completely missed the mark with her age group. Had she marketed the book towards a younger audience, it would have made more sense.


Another of my complaints about the book, is how choppy her themes are. First there is Wren’s feeling of oppression towards her parents controlling her. While the author does develop this in the beginning of the book, the theme is basically lost when Wren tells her parents that she’s renouncing their college plans for her and that she is following her own path. Her parents are disapproving but it is light in comparison to the was she sets up their controlling ways in the beginning of the book. Her problems seem a bit hollow and as her relationship with Charlie grows, making her own decisions and being her own person takes a back seat to her relationship with him. This is frustrating to me because it messing up her character arc and story line and because it makes her feel like a weak female character. She then develops a feel of abandonment - why Wren when Charlie was the one who was abandoned by her mother? There is no reason given in the book why Wren is so set on closing herself off from Charlie every time something goes wrong when Charlie is the one who would have been more prone to running from her, of being scared of being abandoned again…


I’m not sure if the author just wasn’t sure of her characters or if she let her characters dictate the story in a way that made her writing seem sloppy, but the fact that Wren’s self-discovery was halted by a boy and three chapters of that halt were dedicated to whether or not Charlie and Wren would have sex bothered me. This with the fact that Wren giggled a lot, baked brownies, and only ever wore skirts and dresses, made her seem a bit two-dimensional to me. And even her pondering if souls had trees couldn’t fix her character flaws for me.


It bothered me that the characters but aside a lot of their bigger problems to fixate on having sex. It bothered me that Charlie’s abandonment issues were glossed over with one short story about his mother leaving him. The author went more into the next girl he was involved with being emotionally unavailable than getting into how he felt about his mother. And all Charlie ever really went into was how in love he was with Wren, the deeper stuff? the harder stuff? that was glossed over as “I don’t want to talk about it” and one lined explanations he made about his childhood in passing.


Miracle did her characters a serious disservice by only skimming the surface of her characters that while nice, had little depth to them. Especially when Wren’s motivations throughout the novel kept changing. First she wanted to get away to prove to herself that she could be her own person without her parents. Then she wanted to prove to herself that she could do something big and help other people. Then she wanted to prove that she could leave town and depend on herself. Then she didn’t want to leave because she didn’t want to leave her boyfriend but then… As a character, Wren was a mess.


Finally, I absolutely HATED the ending of the book which was not really an ending at all. It was a drop off, a “fill in your ending here” ending and I hate that. Maybe if the rest of the story had been more structured, i wouldn’t feel that this ending was lazy on the author’s part but that’s how it felt to me. Lazy. And before I conclude, as a nit-picky aside, I also felt that the beginning of the novel would have read better in first person than in third. This feeling went away halfway through the book as I’d gotten used to the voice of the characters by that point but I feel the story would have benefited from the readers being closer to the characters.


So overall, it was an okay read. It was short and I finished the book in one day. And while it was enjoyable, there were glaring problems for me with this book. If you’re looking for a light summer read to pass the time while on the train, this might be something to pack in your bag. But this book will not change you life, will not make you think deeply about your relationships, or your place in the world. The cover is pretty and the characters are likable (for the most part), their romances cute and overly teenage-y.


If you do pick up The Infinite Moment of Us, please let me know what you think or what parts of the book you loved or hated! Look forward to hearing your thoughts!