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Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily Series) Kindle Edition

by Rachel Cohn (Author), David Levithan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.3 2,626 ratings

Book 1 of 3: Dash & Lily

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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Now a Netflix original series starring Austin Abrams and Midori Francis! A whirlwind holiday season romance from the New York Times bestselling authors of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist.

“I’ve left some clues for you.
If you want them, turn the page.
If you don’t, put the book back on the shelf, please.”

16-year-old Lily has left a red notebook full of challenges on her favorite bookstore shelf, waiting for just the right guy to come along and accept its dares. Dash, in a bad mood during the holidays, happens to be the first guy to pick up the notebook and rise to its challenges.

What follows is a whirlwind romance as Dash and Lily trade dares, dreams, and desires in the notebook they pass back and forth at locations all across New York City. But can their in-person selves possibly connect as well as their notebook versions, or will their scavenger hunt end in a comic mismatch of disastrous proportions?

Co-written by Rachel Cohn (GINGERBREAD) and David Levithan, co-author of WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON with John Green (THE FAULT IN OUR STARS), DASH & LILY'S BOOK OF DARES is a love story that will have readers scouring bookstore shelves, looking and longing for a love (and a red notebook) of their own.

From the Publisher

dash n lily, dashnlily, dash and lily's book of dares, tween books, netflix book, love, friendship


	Dash & Lily's Book of Dares	Dash & Lily's Book of Dares	Mind the Gap, Dash & Lily	The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily

Customer Reviews	262	2,626	712	919
Price	$9.99	$10.10	$9.29	$7.99
Read all the books in the Dash and Lily series!	The Netflix Series Tie-In Edition!	Dash and Lily trade dares, dreams, and desires in a whirlwind romance across NYC!	Will London bring Dash and Lily together again--or will it be their undoing?	Told in alternating chapters, this story is bound to be a Christmas favorite for seasons to come!

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

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. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

From Booklist

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 Cohn’s 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 pair’s perceptions of each other don’t entirely reflect reality; Dash’s 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 Lily’s loneliness and heightens the connection between them, in another surefire hit from the creators of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2006). Grades 9-12. --Courtney Jones

About the Author

Rachel Cohn & David Levithan have written three books together. Their first, Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, was made into a movie starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, directed by Peter Sollett. Their second, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, was named a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. For their third book, Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, David wrote Dash’s chapters and Rachel wrote Lily’s. Although they did not pass the chapters back and forth in a red Moleskine notebook, they did email them to each other without planning anything out beforehand. That’s the way they work.

Rachel’s previous books include Gingerbread, Shrimp, Cupcake, You Know Where to Find Me, and Very LeFreak. David’s previous books include Boy Meets Boy, The Realm of Possibility, Are We There Yet?, Wide Awake, Love Is the Higher Law, and How They Met, and Other Stories.

For more information about Rachel and David, you can find them at RachelCohn.com and DavidLevithan.com, respectively. You may also catch them in the aisles at the Strand.

From the Hardcover edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

-Dash-
December 21st

Imagine this:

You're in your favorite bookstore, scanning the shelves. You get to the section where a favorite author's books reside, and there, nestled in comfortably between the incredibly familiar spines, sits a red notebook.

What do you do?

The choice, I think, is obvious:

You take down the red notebook and open it.

And then you do whatever it tells you to do.

It was Christmastime in New York City, the most detestable time of the year. The moo-like crowds, the endless visits from hapless relatives, the ersatz cheer, the joyless attempts at joyfulness--my natural aversion to human contact could only intensify in this context. Wherever I went, I was on the wrong end of the stampede. I was not willing to grant "salvation" through any "army." I would never care about the whiteness of Christmas. I was a Decemberist, a Bolshevik, a career criminal, a philatelist trapped by unknowable anguish--whatever everyone else was not, I was willing to be. I walked as invisibly as I could through the Pavlovian spend-drunk hordes, the broken winter breakers, the foreigners who had flown halfway across the world to see the lighting of a tree without realizing how completely pagan such a ritual was.

The only bright side of this dim season was that school was shuttered (presumably so everyone could shop ad nauseam and discover that family, like arsenic, works best in small doses . . . unless you prefer to die). This year I had managed to become a voluntary orphan for Christmas, telling my mother that I was spending it with my father, and my father that I was spending it with my mother, so that each of them booked nonrefundable vacations with their post-divorce paramours. My parents hadn't spoken to each other in eight years, which gave me a lot of leeway in the determination of factual accuracy, and therefore a lot of time to myself.

I was popping back and forth between their apartments while they were away--but mostly I was spending time in the Strand, that bastion of titillating erudition, not so much a bookstore as the collision of a hundred different bookstores, with literary wreckage strewn over eighteen miles of shelves. All the clerks there saunter-slouch around distractedly in their skinny jeans and their thrift-store button-downs, like older siblings who will never, ever be bothered to talk to you or care about you or even acknowledge your existence if their friends are around . . . which they always are. Some bookstores want you to believe they're a community center, like they need to host a cookie-making class in order to sell you some Proust. But the Strand leaves you completely on your own, caught between the warring forces of organization and idiosyncrasy, with idiosyncrasy winning every time. In other words, it was my kind of graveyard.

I was usually in the mood to look for nothing in particular when I went to the Strand. Some days I would decide that the afternoon was sponsored by a particular letter, and would visit each and every section to check out the authors whose last names began with that letter. Other days, I would decide to tackle a single section, or would investigate the recently unloaded tomes, thrown in bins that never really conformed to alphabetization. Or maybe I'd only look at books with green covers, because it had been too long since I'd read a book with a green cover.

I could have been hanging out with my friends, but most of them were hanging out with their families or their Wiis. (Wiis? Wiii? What is the plural?) I preferred to hang out with the dead, dying, or desperate books--used we call them, in a way that we'd never call a person, unless we meant it cruelly. ("Look at Clarissa . . . she's such a used girl.")

I was horribly bookish, to the point of coming right out and saying it, which I knew was not socially acceptable. I particularly loved the adjective bookish, which I found other people used about as often as ramrod or chum or teetotaler.

On this particular day, I decided to check out a few of my favorite authors, to see if any irregular editions had emerged from a newly deceased person's library sale. I was perusing a particular favorite (he shall remain nameless, because I might turn against him someday) when I saw a peek of red. It was a red Moleskine--made of neither mole nor skin, but nonetheless the preferred journal of my associates who felt the need to journal in non-electronic form. You can tell a lot about a person from the page she or she chooses to journal on--I was strictly a college-ruled man myself, having no talent for illustration and a microscopic scrawl that made wide-ruled seem roomy. The blank pages were usually the most popular--I only had one friend, Thibaud, who went for the grid. Or at least he did until the guidance counselors confiscated his journals to prove that he had been plotting to kill our history teacher. (This is a true story.)

There wasn't any writing on the spine of this particular journal--I had to take it off the shelf to see the front, where there was a piece of masking tape with the words DO YOU DARE? written in black Sharpie. When I opened the covers, I found a note on the first page.

I've left some clues for you.

If you want them, turn the page.

If you don't, put the book back on the shelf, please.

The handwriting was a girl's. I mean, you can tell. That enchanted cursive. Either way, I would've endeavored to turn the page.

So here we are.

1. Let's start with French Pianism.

I don't really know what it is,
but I'm guessing
nobody's going to take it off the shelf.
Charles Timbrell's your man.
88/7/2
88/4/8
Do not turn the page
until you fill in the blanks
(just don't write in the notebook, please)

From the Hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003F3PMFC
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf Books for Young Readers (October 26, 2010)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 26, 2010
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5730 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 274 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #381,798 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #16 in Teen & Young Adult Holiday & Celebrations Fiction eBooks
- #352 in Teen & Young Adult Fiction about Friendship
- #955 in Teen & Young Adult Friendship Fiction

Customer Reviews:
4.3 2,626 ratings

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Rachel Cohn
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The great wish of my adolescence was to be diagnosed with scoliosis. Then I would be like Deenie. I LOVED the book "Deenie" by Judy Blume. I wanted to look like Deenie; I wanted her disease; I even wanted to live in Deenie's town, Elizabeth, New Jersey, a short hop from my dream destination, New York City. Although now that I live in Manhattan as an adult (with a fairly normal spine, I'm told), Elizabeth, New Jersey is more known to me as the place with the long lines at IKEA instead of as the hometown of Deenie. Like Deenie, my priorities eventually shifted.
I never did get that scoliosis diagnosis, but from my favorite childhood authors such as Judy Blume, E.L. Konigsburg and Ellen Conford, I did get inspiration for another goal: to write. I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to create stories. When I started seriously writing fiction, I didn't set out to write specifically for young adults, but as my writing matured, it became clear that when I got stuck writing in teen voices, it was a good place to be stuck. The author question I get asked most often now is how I am able to write from the perspective of a teenager, as if I were in that character's head. The honest answer is, I don't know. I try not to think about it too much, for fear of ruining it. But I do feel like I can readily channel my own teenage self and tap into those feelings, and that's something I try to convey through the written word.
When teen readers write to me now telling me how much they relate to characters I've created -- Cyd Charisse in "Gingerbread" and "Shrimp," Annabel and Lucy in "The Steps" and "Two Steps Forward," or Wonder in "Pop Princess" -- I think, I relate, too: I wanted to be Deenie!
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David Levithan
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David Levithan is the author and co-author of over twenty YA novels, many of them bestsellers. His first YA novel was Boy Meets Boy in 2003. For more about David and his books, you can check out his website davidlevithan.com. His lover's dictionary can also be found on Twitter at @loverdiction.
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Reader13

A Fun Jaunt Through Christmasy NYC!

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2011

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**Originally posted at my blog, That Artsy Reader Girl.**

This book is a fun little gem that is the kind of book everyone will end up reading eventually. I loved the uniqueness of the story. I would absolutely love to discover a little red notebook full of dares in my favorite bookstore! The dares were fun and unique, and put both Dash and Lily in weird positions--more so for Dash than Lily. I'll say two words about it and then leave it at that: fresh Santa. Haha! Loved it. These two were running all over New York City doing tasks, and then leaving the notebook for the other one to find. The anticipation and the mystery behind this cute exchange was incredibly fun and heartwarming to read about! The book alternates back and forth between Dash and Lily, just like the notebook does. According to the authors blurb and the end of the book, Cohn (Lily) and Levithan (Dash) e-mailed the chapters back and forth to each other and then continued writing the story as they got new content. I love that the book was created essentially the same way that the red notebook IN the book was. Pretty brilliant, if you ask me. In doing this, each author gave their own character a distinct voice. I loved the result!

Dash and Lily are very quirky characters. Dash hates Christmas, and lies to both of his divorced parents, saying that he is spending the holiday with the other. That way he can spend it alone. He's a bookish, hipster nerd whose biggest wish in life is to own his own 22-volume Oxford English Dictionary. Other than being very bookish herself, Lily is the complete opposite. She's a perky Christmas lover, but is abandoned by her parents who go to Fiji, and her brother who ignores her to spend time with his boyfriend. The exchange with Dash is the only thing that keeps her grounded. She's pretty unique. The descriptions of her outrageous outfits match the descriptions of her funny nature. Even so, she seems pretty mature for her age. Her rambunctiousness and uniqueness is a nice contrast to Dash's rather mundane existence. He's deep, and has funny things to say, but Lily is definitely the part of that duo that grabs attention just by walking down the street. I love that Dash is amused by her. It's so sweet. I love that the notebook strips them of their hiding places, and brings them out from behind their walls to really get to know each other in a way that they might not have if they had met under different circumstances.

They experience a lot of feelings and emotions together: loss, loneliness, curiosity, happiness, sadness, hope, worry, self-doubt, and they laugh a lot. They think about each other often, and try to imagine what the other one is feeling. They find themselves concerned about the other pretty much all the time. They pose important questions in the notebook, not just, "What's your favorite color?" Together, they realize that they care about each other a lot more than they thought they did. Sometimes that's a scary thing to realize, and they both know it. I enjoyed reading about a deep relationship that is so important to each of them, they spend time worrying and doubting themselves. As they wrote more to each other, they reflected on their responses. It was a quick development, but they did it with finesse. I can totally see how they fell for each other so quickly. They learned more about each other in that short time than some people learn in a year. Neither of them was perfect, but that actually ended up making them perfect for each other.

The things they said or thought were often hilarious, but they also had some very deep thoughts that made me think. One quote in particular that I just loved was thought by Lily, "You think fairy tales are only for girls? Here's a hint--ask yourself who wrote them. I assure you, it wasn't just the women. It's the great male fantasy--all it takes is one dance to know that she's the one. All it takes is the sound of her song from the tower, or a look at her sleeping face. And right away you know--this is the girl in your head, sleeping or dancing or singing in front of you. Yes, girls want their princes, but boys want their princesses just as much. And they don't want a very long courtship. They want to know immediately." LOVE that. It's so profound, and so true! We girls are not the only ones looking for a fairytale.

My final thoughts: Dash and Lily is a pretty adorable book about a Christmastime romance between two unsuspecting teens who are a lot more mature than is to be expected. Throughout the red notebook's journey, these two learn things about themselves and each other. As they learn more, they grow closer. They realize perfection is not necessary, and that girls aren't the only ones who dream of fairy tales. It was a magical read for me that took place in my favorite city in the USA. I definitely recommend this to those of you who enjoy Christmas romances, but hardly ever read any because they are all SO cheesy and cover every possible emotion all at once. This book is nothing like that, and you'll love it. :)

And on that note... It's time for me to scour the shelves of the local bookstores to see if Mr. Right has caught on to this awesome idea yet.

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Rlane

A Wacky and Fun Romp!

Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2012

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Dash and Lily's Book of Dares is a wacky romp through New York, starting in the famous book store, The Strand. It had me laughing hysterically in parts, and is laced with heartfelt introspection.

The story starts out with a red notebook and a dare. This notebook lands into the hands of Dash, the perfect person for this pursuit. It's Christmas time and Dash is alone by his own design. He's not a big fan of Christmas, and some of the assignments or dares are pure torture for him because of this. This is a testament to how invested he is in these dares and in finding out who's at the bottom of them.

Lily is the author of the red notebook. She's a little bizarre and doesn't quite fit in, and doesn't have any close girlfriends. Instead she's close to her family. At the urging of her brother, she sets up the red notebook for the perfect person to find at the bookstore she loves. Lily has exactly the opposite view of Christmas from Dash, she absolutely loves everything about it, but this year she's on her own since her parents went to Fiji and her grandfather went to Florida. Her brother is in town but he's caught up in a new intense romance and can't be bothered to entertain Lily, she's bored and alone, so Dash's counter dares couldn't have happened at a more perfect time.

This story was co-written by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn and chapters were passed back and forth, each of them writing in response to the others writing. I recently met these two at an author signing and it was evident from their interaction they have an easy and fun relationship, and this definitely translates into the writing. Their banter back and forth in person was just as witty and hilarious as it is in the book. At one point while reading this, I was cracking up so hard I was crying. This scene may or may not have included: a large dog, angry mothers, baby catching, a crimson alert, and the police. Wacky, slap-stick humor at its best!

For those of you like me who require romance in a story, fear not! These two, in spite of their differences, seem to connect so well without even meeting each other at first. I guess we can thank Rachel Cohn for the romance, because she's the one who pushed for a romantic and happy ending that'll put a smile on your face. David was going to be so cruel!!

A copy was provided by Mira Ink through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

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Reginaldo Batista Lira

Divertido

Reviewed in Brazil on February 6, 2023

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Ainda não li inteiro.

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Susie

Carino

Reviewed in Italy on December 17, 2023

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Libro super carino, quando vedo un film o una serie tv che mi piacciono, adoro leggere il libro per vedere le differenze! Consiglio di prenderlo in lingua originale per chi capisce l'inglese.

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Merlinda

Geweldig boek!

Reviewed in the Netherlands on December 1, 2020

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Wat een Top boek!! Echt een aanrader! Natuurlijk als je de serie gezien is de sfeer net wat meer aanwezig als je het leest, vooral de kerstmis vibe.
Helaas was mijn boek wel helemaal nat, mede dankzij DHL

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Ashley

Perfect

Reviewed in Mexico on October 20, 2017

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Came in very good conditions and before anticipated. The book is very short, so as a paperback it is very flexible, if that makes any sense. My only complaint is that you don’t know which cover you’re gonna get once you buy it as two covers are displayed in the publication of this book, the classic one and the newer edition. I would have liked the classic one but ended up with the new edition. Nevertheless, I love this book so 5/5 would recommend.

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Gwen

So unexpectedly wonderful!

Reviewed in Canada on February 15, 2016

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This was the first book I had read by these authors and I loved it so much. I started this story on a whim not realizing I was signing up for an all nighter. The next morning at 7am I finished the book with a huge smile on my face and grumbles from my husband that I kept him awake with all the laugh out loud moments as well. All the characters were so quirky I really had no idea what was going to happen moment to moment. If you are looking for a light hearted and some what silly book then definitely give this one a try, I hope you love it as much as I do.

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Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily Series) Kindle Edition

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

From Booklist

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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Rachel Cohn

David Levithan

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