Dash and Lily's Book of Dares is about a teenage girl named Lily who randomly places a notebook in the shelves of The Strand bookstore in New York City that contains clues, eventually setting its finder on a mission to decode a dare. As you can guess by the title, a teenage boy named Dash finds this notebook one day and plays along. We then follow Dash and Lily throughout the course of the story as they get to know each other via the notebook and the dares they send each other on, across all of New York City. This book had been super hyped up across the book-ternet so I was expecting it to be more exciting than it actually was. So, in that sense it was a little bit of a let down however, it was an enjoyable read and I had a good time reading it. I rated it 3/5 stars.
I am here to say...the Netflix series is wildly different than the book. BUT...I am actually not mad at it. Normally, I hate this. I hate this to the very core of my being, when movie people change things around and make stuff up for no good reason other than to like, I dunno shake it up? But why are we shaking it up when you have a very fine piece of writing in front of you that literally tells you exactly what should be in your movie? But I think it didn't bother me with Dash and Lily for two reasons:
1.) The Netflix series is an eight-episode series. The book is only 260 pages. I could see why content-wise they'd need to tweak or add some stuff in order to fill up eight episodes worth. And,
2.) I didn't really feel super emotionally invested in these characters or the story so I suppose it didn't bother me that stuff got changed around?
In fact - I daresay, did I like the Netflix series better??
Character-wise I actually found Lily to be kind annoying in the book. In the book she's sixteen but her behavior makes her seem a lot younger/more immature than that. I get that that's part of her story line - the coming of age of a socially awkward wallflower but it was a little eye-roll inducing at times. The movie did a good job of highlighting her breaking out of her shell in a less cringey way. I definitely liked Dash's character a lot more and similarly, the Netflix series did a good job of amplifying what was good about his character.
Plot-wise, Netflix took a lot of creative liberty in their adaptation. A LOT. I'm talking entire plot lines added, entire plot lines taken away. The way in which Dash and Lily eventually meet - which is essentially the crux of the story, is done completely different on the small screen than in the book. But again - I kind of liked it better?? The series made it so that their paths unknowingly crossed in advance of their actual first meet which I think kind of makes it more dreamy you know? Like, you bump into your soulmate on the street and you didn't even know it was your soulmate how romantic right??!
There are small things Netflix got wrong that don't really matter in the scheme of things but again - like, it's written in the book guys why not just I don't know, do what it says? Lily is supposed to wear black-rimmed glasses, Dash's best friend Boomer is supposed to be ginormously tall, Dash is supposed to be staying at his mom's house over Christmas, that kind of stuff. But all is forgiven because we got a Harry Potter reference in the Netflix series.
So, after talking that through I think it's safe to say I liked the Netflix series better than the book. Mark this down; let it be known on this day in history, the 20th of December 2020, Carissa liked a mini-series adaptation better than its book. A real Christmas miracle. That said, if you haven't already - go watch Dash and Lily on Netflix. It's a fun, cute, Christmasy good time and you can take comfort in the fact that you are not missing anything if you don't read the book.
There are two more books in the Dash and Lily series that I plan to continue on with, so I am excited to see where their story goes. And who knows, maybe next year we'll get the Netflix series to continue on too?!
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