The Beginning of Everything discussion

Summary:
The book The Beginning of Everything by Robyn Schneider is solely about a boy named Ezra Faulkner. Ezra was a junior in high school, the star of his school’s tennis team since freshman year, the golden boy, extremely popular, and was dating the most beautiful girl in school, Charlotte. One day, a couple months towards the end of school, with prom drawing near, Ezra got into one of his usual arguments with Charlotte and ended up not going with her to a party later that night. Ezra was fine with it considering they argued regularly and went to the party to hangout with his friends. Little did he know that in a few hours he would find Charlotte cheating on him with someone he didn’t know. He stormed out of the party and got into his car only to be hit by another. The aftermath of the crash changed Ezra for the rest of his life. He broke his wrist and shattered his knee, and from then, he was never the same. Ezra never got to go to prom and spent the rest of junior year and that summer in the hospital with no one coming to visit. Ezra’s wrist would heal but his knee was permanently damaged so he would no longer be on the tennis team.
His senior year wasn’t anything like he’d expected. Without being on the tennis team, his old friends treated him different especially because of the cane he now had to walk with, however, Ezra rekindled with an old friend and joined the debate team. But, the most significant event that happened was that he met the most amazing girl, Cassidy Thorpe. During the start of school they were good friends, but over the course of the year they became very close, and Ezra fell in love. However, as time went on. as the two shared many memories, all while Ezra was getting over his own personal tragedy, a secret comes out from Cassidy’s past that causes them to question their future together.
Personal Experience:
I absolutely loved this book. My favorite genre of book recently has been a love story inspirational mix and this book fits into the category perfectly! I loved how real this story was, how a majority people can relate to it, and how the overall theme was about how everyone has their own personal tragedy because I just think it's so true! Also, it did have a little bit of humour. I feel like some tragedy, romance books are all sad and have no happiness or humour to them, but The Beginning of Everything had a perfect combination of truth, love, adventure, and humour. One of my favorite characters was Toby Ellicott, Ezra’s best friend, and he’s the one who really brought the good, goofy, uplifting humour to the story. Altogether, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves a good love story with a little bit of a twist.
Big Idea Word:
The big idea word for this book would be change. This story is all about how everyone has their own personal tragedy, how Ezra Faulkner’s life would change after his accident, after his own personal tragedy, and how he would soon learn it would be for the better. Ezra spends almost the entire book, all the way up to the very end, figuring out who he really is and changing himself from the person he used to be to the person he really is, “So who was I in the aftermath of my personal tragedy?” (Schneider.13). However he didn’t do this alone, he had help from the girl he fell in love with, Cassidy. She helped him change, get out of his comfort zone, and find who he truly was, “She was determined to help me figure out who I wanted to be, now that I sat with the debate team and participated in flash mobs and snuck into college lecture halls” (Schneider.195).