90 Days Of Different
By Eric Walters
Sophie (Grade 9)
2/5
90 Days of Different is about an 18-year-old girl named Sophie, who undertakes a summer-long challenge to do something different every day to become more exciting. Sophie is helped in her journey by her best friend, Ella, who runs her social media accounts and posts her adventures online.
I have the same name as the protagonist and was interested in the book. So I was super excited when my reading group chose this book together. However, I was massively disappointed in what I read.
The first issue was the reason Sophie was changing herself. Her boyfriend, Luke, had broken up with her because she was too uninteresting. Ella does little to help, confirming what Luke said and making Sophie feel worse about herself. She then pushes Sophie into doing this whole summer of Differents, which is just a bunch of activities put together by Ella that are either dangerous or embarrassing.
That leads me to the next problem; Ella. Throughout the novel, Ella is passive-aggressive to Sophie by being sour about not being the pretty friend and making her feel bad when Sophie is uncomfortable with what Ella had planned for her. When Sophie gets injured during one of her differents, Ella did not even cancel her date to care if her best friend was okay. Afterwards, when Sophie is upset that she left, Ella turns on her, saying how Sophie is not being grateful for all the hard work she put in to make the Differents happen and making Sophie feel guilty for not asking about how her date went. Ella being so toxic throughout the story was something that bothered me a lot.
Now, when I saw how terrible Ella was as a friend, I thought that there would be a load of character development as the book progresses. I was disappointed to find close to none, the only progress being with her family problems. Ella remained her sour self, and Sophie was the same as always, except for having lots of followers on social media for her little stunts.
There are some good parts, however. For example, I liked the part of the story when Sophie got a negative comment about the Differents she was doing that made her realize something positive. I also loved the progress she made with her family. She was worried about them because she was leaving for college, but they proved that they would be alright after all.
Mostly, the book was monotone and flat, without an obvious climax or moral of the story. Many of the Differents were a bit cliche or similar, making the novel borderline uninteresting.
I, personally, was very let down by this novel. I have found other books that are better written than 90 Days Of Different and have the same theme. One of those books is Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson, one of my favourites.
Happy reading!