review
Teenage girls will be queuing up to read Franziska Moll’s fantastic debut! The engaging characters immediately draw readers into this engrossing, moving and uplifting novel.
Rico and Elena are four months away from taking their end of school exams, deeply in love and about to celebrate their first anniversary as a couple. Then Rico is hit by a lorry as they leave school one day and, although visibly unharmed, he sustains internal injuries and falls into a deep coma. Along with Rico’s family, Elena tries to identify the things that will keep the comatose Rico in touch with his old life and help to bring him back, surrounding him with the music, books and sounds that once meant so much to him. But Rico remains totally unresponsive. Elena tries to comprehend what Rico is experiencing by imagining the feeling of being in a coma and then trying to get her body to stop functioning, but finds herself incapable of not moving. She tells him enough is enough, they’ve learned their lessons but now it’s time to wake up. Elena visits the hospital daily and talks about the history of their relationship: Rico was always the more positive, forwardlooking and contented half of the couple, while she has played a cooler, more cautious role. Yet both of them have always been thoroughly committed to one another and happy to be together.
Then Elena finds a list on Rico’s computer entitled ‘10 Things I Must Do Before I Die (with Elena, of course)’. With the encouragement and help of Rico’s heavily tattooed and pierced care-worker, Tim, Elena sets to work achieving Rico’s targets on his behalf. Gradually Elena starts to come to terms with Rico’s physical deterioration and her own loss, until she is ultimately able to explain to him the reasons for her more withdrawn and private approach to life, including the top ten things he doesn’t know about her.
In its relaxed, colloquial style, Moll’s story moves back and forth between the present – Rico’s coma and the reactions of all those who are left behind supporting him in hospital – and the past twelve months when the relationship between Rico and Elena was established and developed. Its universal themes of first love and loss, coupled with the quality of its storytelling and lightness of touch, mean that The Things I Dream For You is sure to appeal to English-speaking readers.
All recommendations from Spring 2014