You Have Seven Messages

By: Stewart Lewis
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: September 2011
ISBN: 978-0-385-74028-9
Reviewed by: Amy Lignor 
Review Date: October 2011

Luna is a teenager who lives in Manhattan. She has the world at her fingertips, and has some serious dislikes when it comes to snooty girls who, frankly, give her a headache. She’s not into the ‘tweenish’ stuff like make-up and boys, she is actually quite a loner. Luna loves her little brother and her big-time movie director father, but the one thing that is hurting her more than life is how much she misses her mom.

Luna’s mom was a stunning model turned writer, who was also a great friend. Unfortunately, her mother stepped off a curb one evening and was hit by a car, and Luna can barely deal with the world. She loves her dad, however, and wants him to be able to date and find a way to have a life, and doesn’t get mad when he begins a relationship with a quiet, unassuming teacher.

What Luna does do is head to her mother’s studio to clean the place up; spend some time in the location where her mother loved to be as she did her writing and spoke with all her ex-model friends. What Luna finds, however, is something she was definitely not searching for - her mother’s past. There is a cell phone that has seven messages that her mother never heard, and Luna begins to listen to these messages one by one.

In her own personal life, Luna is enchanted by the young man she sees across the street. There, in the window, is a handsome young man who is constantly playing his cello, and Luna can’t seem to take her eyes off him. When she gathers the courage and meets the cello player named Oliver, Luna soon finds her heart racing at the speed of light. Oliver, thankfully, isn’t like all the other moronic boys; he is a strong, caring person who Luna really begins to care for. He is also the young man who hears all about the seven messages and helps Luna try to figure out her mother’s past, the secrets that were buried there, and what really happened the night she died.

There are a slew of characters in Luna’s life that readers will fall for, and they’ll like Luna as well, even though at times she can be a bit snooty herself. The writer has put together somewhat of a mystery, wrapped in a romance, embedded in a girl’s struggle to live her life in the aftermath of an accident - discovering secrets that she wished had remained secret.

Quill Says: A good YA with a solid plot that touches on many teenage issues.