Book twenty-four: The Next Thing on My List

The Next Thing on My List* (2007)
Jill Smolinski

Rating: 2.5/5

My trip to the airport bookshop on Good Friday made me realise a couple of things.


First of all, book buying is slightly bewildering when done before 9 am. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever bought a book before noon before.

Second, I have a sneaking suspicion that I “accidentally on purpose” forgot to get the book I had planned on reading out of my suitcase before I checked in. I am on a slight-book buying ban (as in, I shouldn’t buy any more books til I read the ones I have, but if I see one that I want, I can still justify it to myself), so I think my subconscious outsmarted me.

Finally, and probably of most interestingly, there seems to be a trend in book blurbs that I had never noticed before. The blurb of 99.9 percent of the books I picked up** went something like this: “Name, age, description of life/situation (usually beginning with martial status)…”

For example, “Suzy Smith, 35, thought that when her marriage… etc. etc.”

Amusingly, they did this for EVERY character that was introduced… so it would be “Suzy Smith, 35, thought that when her marriage to Lincoln Lane, 58…”

It was like reading an article in NW. Hmm, actually maybe the people who write the back cover’s think their target market are the readers of NW and that this kind of continuity would comfort us.

The Next Thing on My List follows June Parker, 34, single… sorry, couldn’t resist. One night on her way home from her weight watchers meeting, June decides to do a good deed, and offer Marissa, 24, a ride home. Unfortunately for both of them, the trip ends in tragedy when Marissa is killed in a freak accident.

June can’t help feeling she is to blame and becomes deeply depressed.

Six months after Marissa’s death, June visits her grave and though she tries to avoid it, ends up talking to Marissa’s older brother. June admits to him that after the accident she found a list Marissa had made of twenty things she wanted to do before her 25th birthday. Out of guilt – and embarrassment – June promises to complete the list herself.

This serves as a good premise, as we follow June through completing such tasks as kissing a stranger, running a 5k, and more challenging, changing someone’s life. It kind of felt like an episode of My Name Is Earl, only there was no Randy and more Issues.

I thought this was well written and I found my self drawn into June’s story despite the early hour. However as much I liked the first part of the book, I found the last quarter really let the whole thing down.

Smolinski did a great job of setting the whole thing up, but I felt in the end both June and the author took the easy way out.

I’m not a huge fan of books where they set you up to have an expectation of what is going to happen, then go for the easier solution. I’m not saying that every book should have a perfectly clichéd ending, but it just felt like that Smolinski realised that she was going to have to work quite hard to pull off what she had set up, so she switched it to an easier resolution.

And in the end June got off easier as well. So in a way, I felt the more clichéd ending would have resulted in more character development and a more interesting life than what she ended up with.

The last two chapters were very abrupt in the change in direction and this made the ending feel rushed. However, this starts strong and is well written, so I’d be interested to read more by the author.

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* Read Friday, April 6

** Though I was going for the brightly coloured ones, of course. It was much, much too early to consider anything else.