I don’t like Devi as a character, but I’m also unable to judge her too harshly considering (1) she’s a fictional character, and (2) the fundamental foundation of her character is that she regrets the choices that have led her to where she is. Admittedly, though, this is, in fact, a YA novel that I’m assumably overanalyzing anyway, so I will dismiss that moral dilemma for the rest of this article.)ĭevi in particular frays my willing suspension of disbelief she’s selfish, lazy, judgmental and careless. (Being a young adult novel with a teenaged protagonist, “Gimme a Call” doesn’t really examine the ethical implications of puppeteering people’s lives without their knowledge or consent, which made me increasingly uncomfortable as I aged. Old Devi’s friends, the fringe characters who fill out the plot, essentially shape-shift every time she strong-arms Young Devi into a new solution, so there’s little emotional investment in their storylines – especially when the new versions of them don’t know any better.

Lockhart calls it, of the book that kept me occupied – after all, it certainly wasn’t the characters. Presumably it was the sheer “outrageous concept,” as author E. The repercussions of what snowballs into a series of calls result in Old Devi’s reality altering around her every time Young Devi changes any choice.Ī lighthearted, relatable story, right? One without intellectual weight – and yet “Gimme a Call” continues to exert an effect on me years (six, maybe?) after I first read it, much in the same vein that iconic short stories from English classes like Henry James’ “The Beast in the Jungle” do. Devi, loathing her forthcoming future of a community college, parents with a messy marriage and a no-longer boyfriend, instantly intervenes in her younger self’s life.

” (Of course, I object to the “chick lit” label on principle, but that is another tangent for another time, and it is, factually, how the novel is classified.) The premise of “Gimme a Call” is that Devi, our 18-year-old narrator on the cusp of graduating high school, somehow (via unexplained but useful plot devices) magically calls her 14-year-old self on her screwed-up cell. So reads the back-cover blurb of Sarah Mlynowski’s adolescent chick lit novel, “ Gimme a Call.

Sarah Mlynowski’s “Gimme a Call.” (Courtesy of Barnes & Noble)

Gimme a Call by Sarah Mlynowski