The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily

Spoiler Disclaimer

Synopsis

It's been one year since Dash and Lily fell in love through their fun game of passing a journal back and forth while daring each other to do festive things, but that year hasn't been without its challenges. Lily's beloved grandfather had a heart attack and she's been very much immersed in helping him through a difficult recovery. As a result, she hasn't had as much time to spend with Dash as she'd like and her usual sunny personality has all but disappeared. Now Christmas, typically Lily's favorite time of the year, is upon them again, and she's just not in the holiday spirit. When the pair do get together, their plans seem to fall apart, leaving Lily in despair that their relationship will weather the storm. But with a little help from Lily's family and all their friends, Dash starts planning a holiday celebration that recreates some of their best moments from the previous year, and if he can pull it off, it just might convince Lily that they still have a future together.

Review

The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily is the second book in Rachel Cohn and David Levithan's YA series, Dash & Lily, about two teens who met and fell in love while passing a journal back and forth in which they dared each other to do various tasks. Now Dash and Lily have been together for a year and they still care for each other a great deal. However, during that time, things have been especially difficult for Lily whose beloved grandfather had a heart attack. Unable to be alone, he moved in with Lily's family and Lily has been doing a lot to take care of him in addition to school and her dog walking business. This has left limited time for her and Dash to be together and it's starting to have a negative impact on their relationship, leaving them both feeling very distant from one another. Lily, who typically loves Christmas to the extreme, hasn't even been in the holiday mood, so Dash decides to do something to help jump-start her holiday cheer by creating the twelve days of Christmas before Christmas. He starts by getting her a tree so that she can move forward with her annual Christmas tree lighting party, but when both of Dash's parents, who hate each other, show up to the party, things quickly start to fall apart. Over the coming days, Lily continues to struggle with feeling down, while trying desperately to reconnect with Dash until she's about ready to call it quits. But then Dash pulls out all the stops to make their one-year anniversary special. Even though things don't entirely go as planned for the remaining days until Christmas, they start to find the right amount of good will and magic to restore the spark they thought they'd lost.

Dash and Lily make such a cute couple. After their fun game in the first book, I thought they fit together perfectly. They're the yin to each other's yang. But this book sees them hitting a rough patch in their relationship. Ever since her grandfather's heart attack, Lily has been preoccupied with taking care of him. She's a loving, giving person who genuinely doesn't mind doing it, but it's obviously taking a toll on her and her connection to Dash. In her personal life, she's wrestling with wanting to be in the Christmas spirit but unable to find it and then getting frustrated when everyone around her expects it from her. This is evidenced in her "running away" for a day, a feeling a lot of people have when life is overwhelming. On the romance front, she and Dash have been seeing less of each other because of all her obligations, and both are feeling the distance. Like many adult couples, Lily struggles with wanting more from Dash but finds herself unable to articulate what she needs. She also kind of expects him to read her mind, and it takes an honest, forthright conversation with her mom for Lily to realize that she's sort of self-sabotaging. Meanwhile, Dash is trying to find a balance between letting Lily have some space and trying to reignite the romantic spark. Although he's mostly come to terms with his parents' animosity and his dad being a jerk, I think deep down he worries that someday Lily might come to hate him and that they'll end up like his parents. I do applaud him, though, for all the efforts that he put forth to help Lily feel special even though it sometimes wasn't exactly what she needed in the moment. I think that in the end, the bumps in the road only made them stronger as a couple.

This book is aimed at teen readers, but it does have some content with which parents and guardians might take issue. It contains some profanities, including a couple of religious epithets and a handful of f-bombs. Lily eats some Christmas cookies before realizing that they have a "special ingredient," likely weed, but definitely some kind of drug. Lily kind of runs away--at least from her problems--for a day, which leads to her parents freaking out when she doesn't come home that night, and she isn't entirely forthcoming with them about where she was. Some supporting characters drink alcohol. I don't recall there being any violence to speak of unless you count Dash having a "duel" with a secondary character using water pistols filled with ketchup, which ends in a wrestling match, but is completely played for laughs. Dash and Lily share kisses, some of which are pretty chaste, while others are mentioned to last longer, but there's little in the way of description accompanying them. There is some occasional sexual innuendo, but no graphic sensuality. Lily and her mom have a frank conversation in which her mom basically tells Lily that she trusts her to make her own choices about sex and to be responsible. Lily models some Victorian era underwear for Dash. It's not entirely clear if she intended for it to lead to sex, but in any case, they're interrupted before anything further can happen. Dash catches a supporting character smoking and watching porn. On a lark, Lily helps a harried baker decorate gingerbread houses, which leads her to also helping decorate x-rated Christmas cookies. However, they aren't described in any detail beyond merely mentioning that they're gingerbread people in various sex positions. That's about all I can recall, so I'd say that the book is probably still suitable for a mature teen audience of about 16 and up.

The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily is composed in dual first-person narration. It's my understanding that Mr. Levithan writes Dash's perspective while Ms. Cohn writes Lily's. Dash and Lily actually spent very little page time physically together in the first book, so this one has a somewhat different dynamic that actually lent itself better to the YA romance genre. It was tough seeing Dash and Lily hitting some bumps in their relationship road, but understandable under the circumstances. Even adults who are facing the kinds of stressors Lily does would probably have trouble navigating them and might break up. Lily almost does at one point, but I'm glad that she pretty quickly walked it back and eventually gained some much need perspective. I felt like Dash behaved admirably as Lily's boyfriend. He doesn't get everything right, but he certainly tries his best. Dash and Lily's family and friends all play important roles in supporting them and helping them see the way through the forest to a better place. By the time the book came to a close, I was feeling good about where they were in their relationship and think they have the potential to make it for the long haul. It seems like, for GoodReads users, this was their least-favorite book of the series, although not having read any reviews yet, I'm not sure why. Overall, though, I enjoyed The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily slightly better than the first book, which is why I bumped it up the extra half-star. It has certainly left me looking forward to checking out the final book of the series, Mind the Gap, Dash & Lily next holiday season.

Visit

Rachel Cohn

David Levithan

Themes

Amazing Animals
Book Lovers
Christmas Stories