The Catastrophic History of You and Me by Jess Rothenberg
by: Allen Tan
“Shot through the heart and you’re to blame, you give love a bad name”. A fifteen-year-old girl died, because of a broken heart, big woop right? It could’ve been just an accident? A heart attack? A stroke? But no, somehow in some way a girl dies because of heartbreak, a legit heartbreak. You Give Love a Bad Name by Bon Jovi is like one of the main theme songs for this book. This song is the most relevant song for this book because it is one of the songs that served as a kick-starter for this book because of what happened to our main character, Brie, literally and figuratively. And oh boy, what can I say, that is how you start a story.
Before we dive into the review of this book, let us give a background on the author. Jess Rothenberg is a writer and a freelance editor. She grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. She was one of the former editors of books, such as the #1 International Bestselling Vampire Academy series. The Catastrophic History of You and Me is actually her debut novel, a teen flick drama has been translated into multiple languages.
The book mainly focuses on how to move on by going through the five stages of grief which are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. What does a person, I mean a dead person, do to fully be free from all the unfinished business she had on earth, which we will see in the book that she will struggle, hard. But now as she is D&G (dead and gone) as the book said, she was transported to a little pizza place named Slice. There she met a lot of dead kids and adults, but just one boy caught her eye, and that boy’s name is Patrick. With Patrick as a new “friend” of hers, he will help her learn the concept of time and space of being dead, the way she can interact with the things in the living world while her still being on the realm of the dead. As she is going through each stage of grief, Patrick is also there to help her know all the rules and regulations of being undead and supports Brie how she comes to terms with her newly found problems. And as you can read from the title, we can tell that this will be a very emotional book.
Rothenberg did not miss any detail, from the imagery of her words to describe the place that the characters were in, to the feelings and emotions of each character that you can almost experience those moments as if you are there with them. And I gotta say, with this being her first book, it is very impressive. She did not waste any of the characters that were mentioned in the story, she completely utilized each and every character to make them relevant for the story. She doesn’t leave out any lose details, from memories and objects that were mentioned now, can be a foreshadowing that is a page-turner for the story.
The way she addressed all the stages of grief with accuracy and carefulness that this can possibly what a person is going through during this stage. With denial, being the stage that is very overwhelming and meaningless and sometimes can be the longest stage that a person can go through in all the five stages, in which Rothenberg took advantage of being the stage with the longest number of pages. Anger seems to be endless suffering for Brie, with her being frustrated on what had happened to her friends and family after she died and the fact that she can’t do anything is causing her pain but with it, the more she’s angry the more she gets to heal. Bargaining, this stage of the book may be the most painful and relatable thing to read because of the way Rothenberg had written this part, the desperation on how Brie wants and begs to go back to the normal life she had with her friends and family. In which, we can relate it to ourselves as we would bargain anything just for our friends and family or just anything you wanted so badly, but never getting it at all. Now depression and acceptance are one of the shortest chapters of all the five stages because in this part of the book, she got nothing else to do and she felt hopeless which leads to her depression but with her depression and all that she had been through after all this, she finally accepts the fact that she can no longer go back to having a normal life, and in which, sometimes, is the best way to move on.
The Catastrophic History of You and Me by Jess Rothenberg is the first book that I read, besides the textbooks from school, that I truly enjoyed and finished. From page 0 to the last page, and to the last print of the book. Well, considering that our subject in school forced me to read one, but I, nevertheless, am thankful for forcing me to read and taking my time to relax and let my imaginations run wild with this book. This book talks about being dead with unfinished business on Earth, and Jess Rotherberg’s spin of the afterlife is pretty unique considering the usual picks on the afterlife are chaotic and scary while in this book it's just really sad and lonely, which is very very relatable.
I liked the idea of falling back into the world from her new, after-death world, and the fact that, no matter how hard Brie tried, she could not find her way “home” in the after-life. Both details helped separate the world of the living from the world of the dead, serving as another reminder of how the place she is in now may look the same, but actually isn’t. Largely, I think the reason why I enjoyed The Catastrophic History of You and Me so much is its format. Brie’s story is told in a perfect medley of flashbacks and “real-time”, seamlessly moving back and forth between the past and the present and Brie’s current reflections. I was a little wary when I realized that Brie was visiting the past out of order, remembering things as they came but not necessarily in the order in which they happened. And yet, surprisingly, Jess Rothenberg makes this organization work, and work well. Reading about Brie’s memories in the order in which she remembered them, in the order in which they meant something to her after she had died, felt authentic. It made Brie seem realistic (well, even more, realistic than she already seemed).
In conclusion, I loved this book. I would definitely recommend this book to be read immediately because it is so relatable in all aspects of our relationships, like friends, family, and love. It highlights the complexities of certain situations, how there are multiple sides to every story, many ways of seeing things from different perspectives. Jess Rothenberg implements these elements in this novel amazingly, highlighting how aspects of various relationships — the friendship between characters, the connection between a parent and a child, a romantic entanglement of any sort — can be more complicated than they seem on the surface. The things Brie learns about the people in her life through her journey in this book are invaluable, both for her as a character and for us, the readers. I would rate this book an 8 out of 10.












