The Beginning of Everything
by Robyn Schneider
Pages: 335
Characterization
Major Characters
Ezra Faulkner
Cassidy Thorpe
Toby Ellicott
Characterization
Minor Characters
Evan
Charlotte
Luke Sheppard
Phoebe Chang
Setting
Conflicts
In this story, Ezra is sort of struggling with himself. He had this identity for so long, and because of the accident, he's becoming someone completely different, and he's trying to figure out who exactly that is. He has to find out who he is and what he wants. Ezra has to face himself and kind of let out his real self.
Person vs. Fate
This is a major point in the story. This book plays around with fate quite a bit. Everyone has their tragedy, and this story is Ezra dealing with his. Everything sort of plays out by fate and chance. He has to deal with his own fate and what has happened to him in this story.
Summary
Golden-boy Ezra Faulkner had everything. Varsity athlete, popular, charming, good grades, dating the most popular girl in school; basically the paragon of high school popularity. Everything has always gone just right for him. Or at least it did until the night that everything changed. The night of his tragedy. As he stormed out of this party after seeing his girlfriend cheat on him, Ezra gets into his new, perfect car and disaster strikes. A wild driver comes along, hitting his car. His knee is shattered in the accident, along with everything that made him king of high school.
He becomes cast out from his "friends" and is a bit alone, until his middle-school best friend, Toby Ellicott, comes along. He reconnects with Toby and gets introduced to a whole new world. A world where he's on the debate team, a world full of flash mobs and secret films. And most importantly, a world with Cassidy Thorpe, the new girl full of life and mystery and new adventure. A girl who shows him how to truly live.
Through their adventures and time together, he finds out more and more about her and he eventually falls in love. They go through lots of ups and downs, highs and lows, falling hard and fast. It's amazing, but fleeting, as too many great things are. Cassidy suddenly seems to change. Slowly and then all at once, she's a seemingly new person. She avoids him and no matter how hard he tries he can't get to her until one day at the vet, after his old dog had been attacked, why she had been avoiding him: her brother was the one who had hit him in the accident that night at the party and then he died a few days later. Every time she looked at him from the moment she found this out, all she could see was her brother, dead in him. They drifted away after the death of his dog, Cooper. This is a bit of a turning pint for Ezra. He realizes how fatally flawed this place is. He realized that after everything, that he didn't need her. He began to feel like everything was his own again. He comes to realize that the Cassidy he had loved was some figment of his imagination: that he had her held up on a pedestal the whole time.He realized that he needed to stop existing and start living.