3.5
Hope and Other Punch Lines
ByPublisher Description
The New York Times bestselling author of Tell Me Three Things and What to Say Next delivers a poignant and hopeful novel about resilience and reinvention, first love and lifelong friendship, the legacies of loss, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.
"A luminous, lovely story about a girl who builds a future from the ashes of her past." --KATHLEEN GLASGOW, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces
Sometimes looking to the past helps you find your future.
Abbi Hope Goldstein is like every other teenager, with a few smallish exceptions: her famous alter ego, Baby Hope, is the subject of internet memes, she has asthma, and sometimes people spontaneously burst into tears when they recognize her. Abbi has lived almost her entire life in the shadow of the terrorist attacks of September 11. On that fateful day, she was captured in what became an iconic photograph: in the picture, Abbi (aka "Baby Hope") wears a birthday crown and grasps a red balloon; just behind her, the South Tower of the World Trade Center is collapsing.
Now, fifteen years later, Abbi is desperate for anonymity and decides to spend the summer before her seventeenth birthday incognito as a counselor at Knights Day Camp two towns away. She's psyched for eight weeks in the company of four-year-olds, none of whom have ever heard of Baby Hope.
Too bad Noah Stern, whose own world was irrevocably shattered on that terrible day, has a similar summer plan. Noah believes his meeting Baby Hope is fate. Abbi is sure it's a disaster. Soon, though, the two team up to ask difficult questions about the history behind the Baby Hope photo. But is either of them ready to hear the answers?
"A luminous, lovely story about a girl who builds a future from the ashes of her past." --KATHLEEN GLASGOW, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces
Sometimes looking to the past helps you find your future.
Abbi Hope Goldstein is like every other teenager, with a few smallish exceptions: her famous alter ego, Baby Hope, is the subject of internet memes, she has asthma, and sometimes people spontaneously burst into tears when they recognize her. Abbi has lived almost her entire life in the shadow of the terrorist attacks of September 11. On that fateful day, she was captured in what became an iconic photograph: in the picture, Abbi (aka "Baby Hope") wears a birthday crown and grasps a red balloon; just behind her, the South Tower of the World Trade Center is collapsing.
Now, fifteen years later, Abbi is desperate for anonymity and decides to spend the summer before her seventeenth birthday incognito as a counselor at Knights Day Camp two towns away. She's psyched for eight weeks in the company of four-year-olds, none of whom have ever heard of Baby Hope.
Too bad Noah Stern, whose own world was irrevocably shattered on that terrible day, has a similar summer plan. Noah believes his meeting Baby Hope is fate. Abbi is sure it's a disaster. Soon, though, the two team up to ask difficult questions about the history behind the Baby Hope photo. But is either of them ready to hear the answers?
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesHope and Other Punch Lines Reviews
3.5
“Thanks to Spotify Premium, I was able to listen to such an emotional audiobook. This story focuses on a young girl who became famous as a child due to being photographed at 9/11. While the photograph does not exist IRL, the characters affected by 9/11 feel very relatable and realistic. As someone who grew up in the NYC area when 9/11 actually happened, I felt very close to the characters. Both narrators did an excellent job of evoking emotion into their performances. I really enjoyed the humor the author was able to inject into the story despite the focus being such a difficult topic. The author's note stuck with me about how historic events like 9/11 that have such a large impact on many of us and how 9/11 was the biggest event she thought of at the time that had a clear distinction of a 'before' and an 'after'. This book was published in 2019. Little did she know COVID would hit in 2020 which is the most recent big event with a clear 'before' and 'after'. While I'm not the target audience, I appreciate YA fiction like this in its ability to cover difficult topics and make me feel/think. I will admit I had a couple moments where I teared up. A book whether written or audio must be praised when it's able to make me reflect and motivate me to write this long review.”
About Julie Buxbaum
JULIE BUXBAUM is the author of the What to Say Next, as well as the New York Times bestseller Tell Me Three Things, her debut young adult novel. She also wrote the critically acclaimed The Opposite of Love and After You. Her work has been translated into twenty-five languages. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two young children.
Other books by Julie Buxbaum
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