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Summary
Summary
Devorah is a consummate good girl who has never challenged the ways of her strict Hasidic unbringing.
Jaxon is a fun-loving, book-smart nerd who has never been comfortable around girls (unless you count his four younger sisters).
They've spent their entire lives in Brooklyn, on opposite sides of the very same street.
Their paths never crossed . . . until one day, they did.
When a hurricane strikes the northeast, the pair become stranded in an elevator together, where fate leaves them no choice but to make an otherwise forbidden connection.
Though their relationship is strictly forbidden, Devorah and Jax arrange secret meetings and risk everything to be together. But how far can they possibly go? Just how much are they willing to give up?
In the timeless tradition of Romeo & Juliet , this thoroughly modern take on romance will inspire laughter, tears, and the belief that love can happen when and where you least expect it.
'A heartbreaking story about finding your first true love - that is also a heart-filling story about finding your own truth.' Nancy Werlin, New York Times bestselling author
' Like No Other is a powerful and not-put-downable story of forbidden love. Una LaMarche has created two brave teenagers who readers will root for to the very last page.' Carolyn Mackler, bestselling author of Tangled and co-author of The Future of Us
Author Notes
Una LaMarche is a writer and journalist whose work appears regularly in the New York Observer and on the Huffington Post . She is the author of Five Summers , a young adult novel, and UNABROW, a collection of humorous essays based on some of her more questionable life choices. Una lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son. Find out more at unalamarche.com or follow her on Twitter @sassycurmudgeon
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up- Two culture-crossed teens struggle with hormones and family expectations. Devorah has been raised in the Hasidic tradition in Brooklyn's Crown Heights neighborhood. Though many consider the dress and behavior standards unrealistically restrictive, Devorah has never given her parents cause to worry. All that changes when a power outage traps Dev in an elevator with Jaxon, a West Indian teen who lives close by but culturally comes from a world away. Their instant chemistry in the elevator leads to secret phone calls and meetings and lies told to both families. Trouble mounts when the teens defiantly continue to meet, ending in a beating and a banishment. Parts of the story seem a bit contrived, such as sheltered Devorah creating and monitoring an illicit Facebook account. Narrators Phoebe Strole and Leslie Odom are terrific as Dev and Jax, who alternate chapters. Strole navigates the Yiddish expressions beautifully, and Odom sounds trustworthy and appropriately overwhelmed by his feelings. VERDICT Hush, by Eishes Chayil (Walker Children's, 2012) packs a harder punch, but is not available as an audiobook. A good choice for most high school libraries. ["This is an effective romance with light touches of humor and serious drama": SLJ 6/14 review of the Razorbill book.]-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Devorah is a Hasidic Jew, and her life is full of loving family, constant ritual, and avoiding outsiders. Jaxon is a smart, funny black teenager who has yet to see much success with girls. Both live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, but it takes a stuck elevator during a hurricane for the two to share their first words. Despite Devorah's trepidation, sparks fly. Intense first love unfolds fast and furious between this unlikely pair, and Devorah is terrified they'll be found out, shaming her family and ruining her future within her community. Readers will fall for these two lovestruck teenagers as easily as they fall for each other. Devorah's chapters are rich in detail about Hasidic Jewish life, both the pain its rigid rules bring her and the love it inspires in her. Jaxon's big heart and romantic nature make him the perfect match for Devorah, who craves personal freedom and a chance to chart her own future. LaMarche's (Five Summers) characters are authentic and fully realized, and the dire consequences that threaten this clandestine romance make the novel read like a thriller. Ages 12-up. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
How's this for a meet cute? New York teens Devorah and Jaxon get stuck in a hospital elevator during a hurricane. Though their encounter is a fairly brief one, it's also intense, and both come away with that love-at-first-sight feeling. Here's where things get complicated. Devorah is a Hasidic Jew, and a frum one at that ("basically the Yiddish equivalent of 'hopeless goody two-shoes'"). Jaxon is black. They live in present-day Crown Heights; and although, as Jaxon says, "the neighborhood has become so gentrified that I'm more likely to get hit by an artisanal gluten-free scone than a bullet, let's be real," tensions can still run high, especially within Devorah's ultra-conservative family. Even though Devorah's menacing brother-in-law, a member of the Shomrim (Orthodox neighborhood watch), is on to them, she still can't resist accidentally-on-purpose bumping into Jax at his work and accepting the cell phone he sneaks (in a grand romantic gesture) into her yard. The story is told from the teens' alternating perspectives. While Jax is a little too good to be true, Devorah, whether agonizing over her love life or sharing informative details about Hasidic daily life and religious philosophy, is believable and engaging. Her struggle between tradition and modernity, filial duty and personal fulfillment, is complicated and realistic; just because she doesn't want an arranged marriage doesn't mean she's ready to turn her back on her family and her culture. This leads to a conclusion that, while bittersweet, is still hopeful. elissa gershowitz (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Sparksboth romantic and culturalfly when Hasidic Devorah and Jaxon, the son of West Indian immigrants, meet on a hospital elevator stuck between floors during a hurricane.This chance flirtation fans a tiny flame of doubt into a wildfire. Devorah knows she doesn't want to live out her parents' vision of the future: a highly circumscribed yet loving life of faith and family in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Devorah begins lying to her parents and sneaking around their rules to spend more time with Jaxon, falling for him hard and thinking that a relationship with him would help her avoid entering an early, arranged marriage and inevitable motherhood. But her suspicious, holier-than-thou brother-in-law, Jacob, seems intent on catching Devorah in the wrong. Meanwhile, Jaxon thrills to the romance of their shared secret, laboring over a heartfelt mix CD and devising detailed plans for a date that won't break the rules of sabbath. The novel is by no means perfect: Jacob's villainy is positively clichd, and the number of factual missteps throughout (by tradition, Devorah would not have been named for a living grandmother and would never call that grandmother a shiksa, for example) render the narrative troubling and unreliable. The story is most successful in the scenes between the protagonists and their respective families, which readers will note are more similar than they are different.A highly readable though flawed twist on the classic star-crossed lovers plot. (Fiction. 12-16) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In this contemporary version of West Side Story, the role of Maria is played by 16-year-old Devorah, a member of the Lubavitcher community, while this Tony is Jaxon, whose family is West Caribbean. Both are serious students, close to their families, and good kids. There's no reason for them to meet Devorah rarely ventures outside the confines of her ultra-Orthodox community. Then, her sister goes into labor on the night of a hurricane, and Devorah is at the hospital with her. After a power loss stalls an elevator, Devorah finds herself alone with Jaxon, a female-male proximity strictly forbidden by her religion. But fate has other ideas, and that encounter leads them to a furtive relationship that awakens feelings in Devorah not just of romance but also of freedom. Told in the teens' alternating voices, the book offers even more perspectives as friends, family, and counselors learn about the situation (in Devorah's world, to their horror). The actions taken don't always feel organic to the characters, but readers will be fascinated by this peek into a different world, as they empathize with the couple's emotions and feel buoyed by the hopeful ending.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
EVEN BEFORE DEVORAH BLUM meets the lanky West Indian nerd who will derail her plans to remain an "unfailingly obedient" Hasidic girl, there are signs she's wavering. "Like No Other," Una LaMarche's second young adult novel, begins as a hurricane bears down on New York City. Devorah's 18-year-old big sister, Rose, is about to give birth to her first baby prematurely. In the sweltering hospital waiting room, Devorah, dressed in a long wool skirt and tights for modesty's sake, envies other girls sitting near by who are wearing shorts and tapping on cellphones, despite a sign forbidding their use. Devorah, 16, isn't allowed a phone, because her family is part of the strict Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement. She used to admire how Rose, who had a "wild side," read fashion magazines on the sly. Now, she laments how her sister has grown meek in marriage. Devorah's own imminent future as a doting wife and teenage mother doesn't look so bright to her anymore. By chance, she ends up trapped in a dark elevator with Jaxon Hunte, a black straight-A student who is equal parts kind, impulsive and wannabe smooth. Those unexpected minutes together change everything about who they think they are. Considered a freak at school, he's never flirted this confidently with any girl. Until now, she was practically allergic to rule-breaking. Being alone with any man who isn't a relative threatens to besmirch Devorah's virtue, as it's considered a violation of "yichud." But she ends up liking it more than she should. Mere conversation with a male stranger is forbidden, so theirs is electrifying. For a chaste romance, "Like No Other" can be surprisingly seductive. LaMarche - a journalist who has often written for The New York Observer - expertly conjures up what high-stakes infatuation feels like. Desperate stunts are pulled. Declarations are made in short order. Jaxon and Devorah's romance thrives on obstacles, and they fall in love in a foolish, tender, hasty way, much like Romeo and Juliet, who - let's not forget - married the day after they met. And - get this! - they actually meet face to face, and talk, and touch, instead of conducting their courtship entirely via text messages. They are so old-school they listen to the Shirelles together. This interracial love story deserves praise for having a black hero and a winsome ultra-Orthodox heroine, when so few young adult books do. Alternating between their points of view, the novel is set sometime after 2012, when Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer. Jaxon says that after the shooting "Mom wouldn't let me wear a hoodie for six months." Devorah and Jaxon live in the Crown Heights neighborhood, where tensions between black residents and Hasidic Jews led to three days of race riots in 1991. It's hard to know how far relations between the neighboring groups have improved, though, because, frustratingly, LaMarche addresses racism only indirectly. Devorah's father describes the inhabitants of Jaxon's side of Eastern Parkway as "not our people"; Cora, Jaxon's boss at his fast-food job, says of the Orthodox: "They're not like us. And they don't like us. Understand?" But Jaxon really doesn't seem to get it, despite Devorah's brother-in-law calling him "a piece of trash." Even after the Shomrim, the Jewish neighborhood watch, beat him bloody, Jaxon staggers home devastated he might never see his beloved again. He barely registers that he was pigeonholed as a predator, and probably not for the last time. And in an oddly chipper tone, he resolves to return to see Devorah, "in bright daylight" when the Shomrim can't go "Rodney King" on him. Why does LaMarche refer to flash points in America's difficult racial history only to avoid having Jaxon grapple with the plight of being black, fresh-faced and misunderstood? By contrast, Devorah often contends with the unfairness of her predicament in funny inner rants and occasionally mournful realizations. It's wrenching for the reader to grasp that college is out of the question for her because she's female, though her grades outshine her older brothers'. Sure, Devorah has lied and kept secrets from her family, but at one point, she realizes "I don't deserve to be treated like a criminal." Ultimately, her struggle to reconcile her strict upbringing with her blossoming desire for freedom drives this riveting tale. Like the biblical Deborah, she discovers she's a fighter. CATHERINE SAINT LOUIS is a reporter at The Times.