The Do-Over
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The Do-Over
“Chaos theory,” she says. “Basically, the idea is that a small change in the atmosphere, like a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil, can cause catastrophic consequences somewhere else, like a hurricane in Japan. Make the tiniest change or decision in one area of your life and it can have a huge effect on the rest of your life.”
Like choosing Ben over Alistair. That decision had a ripple effect on everything, even if I’ll never know exactly how. Guilt stabs at my chest. My decision to go back and change things with Alistair has already affected my friends and family, but maybe going back and changing things again will fix that. Maybe my parents will be back together.
“So, is there somewhere else that I can buy another crystal that will change things again?”
“Afraid not,” Irene says, sighing. “I got that particular crystal from a cave deep in the Australian outback years ago. I don’t have any more.”
And she was willing to sell it to me for fifteen dollars?
As if she can read my mind – although maybe she can? – Irene says, “I only sold those crystals to people who truly seemed to need it.” She shrugs. “I must have thought you fit the bill.”
Jennifer Honeybourn’s The Do-Over focuses on Emelia, a kind of nerdy high school girl who has just hit the jackpot – Ben, the hottest guy in school, wants to date her. Emelia’s best friends, Alistair and Marisol, are skeptical. Beyond the fact that Ben is more of a bully than anything else, Alistair has romantic feelings for Emelia, emotions which he confesses the same night Ben asks her out. Feeling torn, but wooed by the power of the cool kids, Emelia chooses Ben. She thinks, naively, that she, Alistair, and Marisol can continue on their friendship unchanged in spite of her new beau.
After six months of dating Ben, Emelia has fully realized the mistake she made. She’s lost her friends and doesn’t feel a true connection with the new group that comes with Ben. At a night market, just after the first time she sees Alistair with his now girlfriend, she stumbles across a fortune-telling tent and buys a crystal that will allow her to undo a past mistake. The plot is a little clichéd – nerdy girl starts dating “cool” guy, loses old friends, realized this “cool” guy is actually kind of a jerk, and regrets turning down her nerdy friend when she had the chance. That being said, The Do-Over is about more than teenage romance and is more about people navigating complicated relationships and discovering who they are with the backdrop of a little bit of magic and a lot of “Settlers of Catan”.
When Emelia wakes up after going to bed with her magical wish rock, things aren’t exactly as she had hoped – she’s no longer dating Ben (and never had), but she’s not dating Alistair either. Instead of getting ready to head off on a family vacation, her parents are getting a divorce, and Emelia has a job that she has no memory of. The conceit is a bit of a twist - instead of waking up the day of the party when she chose between Alistair and Ben, she wakes up the morning after the night market; what has changed is that the last six months have been completely different, and she has no recollection of this “new” timeline. It’s a neat twist, initially creating a reality that seems almost as bad but in different ways than what Emelia had hoped to escape from. While Emilia is not (and never has) dated Ben in this timeline, a lot of other things have changed, too (some of which seem like they should be beyond being affected by a teen girl’s dating choices). Emelia has to navigate the good and bad that come with this change and determine what is truly important to her and her friendships
Of course, as Emelia adjusts to her new normal – she manages to fake her way through the part-time job she apparently has and does her best to fall back into a natural rhythm with Alistair and Marisol, but she feels torn. She isn’t stuck and unhappy with Ben, but this isn’t exactly what she wished for, either. While she still has her friends, their relationship has changed over the last six missing months, and she struggles to understand if she truly made the right decision to go back for her do-over.
This fun twist on the “be careful what you wish for” trope brings an extra level of interest to a story that could otherwise seem a little clichéd. Honeybourn manages to capture the angst, confusion, awkwardness, and confusion of teenage years without resorting to stock characters. While the ending is pretty easy to spot, the characters are developed enough that you still want to see the journey they take to make it to their happier ending. The Do-Over also includes a significant set of LGBTQIA+ characters, not just as tokens but as fully realized people. Representation is important, and especially for teens across all sorts of literature. Inclusion without tokenization is a step towards normalizing queer representation across media – and even better these characters get a pretty happy ending. Overall, The Do-Over is well-written, engaging, and sure to appeal to teens who are interested in nerdy subcultures and romance.
Susie Wilson is the Data Services Librarian at the University of Northern British Columbia. When she isn’t helping students and researchers, she’s curled up reading a book or hiking up a mountain, depending on the weather.