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From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)

Dash and Lily meet through a notebook left in a bookstore by Lily (with the help of her older brother) and found by Dash. This smart, funny novel is set in New York City during the holiday season, a time Dash hates, while it’s Lily’s favorite part of the year. The contrast serves initially to define each of their characters: Dash is sophisticated and sarcastic, Lily is innocent and upbeat. In chapters that alternate between Dash’s (penned by David Levithan) and Lily’s (written by Rachel Cohn) perspectives, the two teen’s lives draw closer and closer together through their conversation on the notebook’s pages. They send one another to tantalizing, often seasonally festive locales around the city to retrieve the notebook for each round of the exchange. They also demand honesty of one another, and in responding to that demand each is challenged to reveal more than what they would typically share with people they know. Dash and Lily are articulate and witty—perhaps too much so to quite ring true—but it’s impossible not to become drawn into their lives in this delightful story that probes the sometimes surprising depths of each of their characters as a friendship on paper develops—with a few dramatic and sometimes hilarious ups and downs—into romance. (Age 13 and older)

CCBC Choices 2011 © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2011. Used with permission.

From Booklist

November 1, 2010
Grades 9-12 In their third collaboration, Cohn and Levithan present another clever New York romance. Levithan writes the chapters narrated by Dash, a bookish 16-year-old spending Christmas break alone. He finds a red moleskin notebook amid the shelves of the Strand bookstore. Are you going to be playing for the pure thrill of unreluctant desire? asks Cohns Lily in the first coded message of the notebook, with an invitation to respond. Lily is aglow with the yuletide and devastated that her parents are spending the holidays in Fiji. Armed with anonymity, Dash and Lily exchange the notebook in various locations around the Big Apple, filling it with their greatest hopes and deepest fears, and ultimately find themselves falling in love. Not surprisingly, the young pairs perceptions of each other dont entirely reflect reality; Dashs ex asks if he is in love with the girl writing in the book or the girl he is picturing in his head. The spirit of the season amplifies Dash and Lilys loneliness and heightens the connection between them, in another surefire hit from the creators of Nick and Norahs Infinite Playlist (2006).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)

From Publisher's Weekly

October 4, 2010
Cohn and Levithan use a familiar but fun formula for this holiday-themed collaborationâ€"think Saint Nick & Norahâ€"mixing an enticing premise with offbeat characters and some introspective soul searching. Two New York City teens left alone for Christmas "meet" when Dash discovers Lily's cryptic notebook wedged between J.D. Salinger books at the Strand. Its clues lead him on a treasure hunt through the bookstore; he responds with his own clues, and soon they are using the notebook to send each other on adventures across the city and to trade their "innermost feelings and thoughts." Fans will enjoy the zingy descriptions and characterizations that populate this Big Apple romp (at one point, Dash must reach inside the coat of the Macy's Santa to retrieve Lily's message; later, he sends her to go see a "gay Jewish dancepop/indie/punk band called Silly Rabbi, Tricks Are for Yids"). Readers will be ready for the real romance to start long before the inevitable conclusion, but as with this duo's past books, there are more than enough amusing turns of phrase and zigzag plot twists to keep their attention. Ages 12â€"up.

From School Library Journal

October 1, 2010

Gr 9 Up-Dash and Lily, 16, find themselves on their own in Manhattan at Christmas. Dash is alone by choice-he's told each of his divorced parents that he's spending the holiday with the other, leaving them both to take vacations out of town. Lily's parents are taking the honeymoon they couldn't afford when they got married. They think that Lily is in the capable hands of her older brother, but he's less interested in her than in his new boyfriend, and then he gets sick and spends most of the holiday in bed. He does, however, start in motion the activity that is central to the story. It involves a red Moleskine notebook with a list of literary clues that Lily leaves in the stacks at the Strand bookstore. Bookish and erudite Dash finds it and is intrigued enough to follow Lily's lead and leave some clues of his own. The dares in the book's title refer to innocent things such as going to various crowded places like Macy's and FAO Schwartz to pick up messages. As the dares go on, the teens reveal more and more about themselves in the pages of the notebook, until they finally meet under the worst possible circumstances. While the words, ideas, and sentiments are not those of typical kids, they are not out of the realm of possibility for well-read teens. As they did in Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist (Knopf, 2006), the authors combine their talents to write an appealing book. It makes readers long to buy a notebook, begin filling its pages, and find a friend who might turn out to be more. This book will spend as much time off the shelf as Lily's notebook.-Suanne Roush, Osceola High School, Seminole, FL

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.