"Dash & Lily", the Christmas rom com that will make teens want to read

Midori Francis in the "Dash & Lily" series.

-

It's probably the best Christmas rom-com of the year. 

, available since November 10 on Netflix, has been propelled into the top 10 most viewed content on the Los Gatos platform.

On the one hand, because it's a

series

, which could not have been done better in this anxiety-provoking climate of confinement.

On the other hand, because this Christmas rom-com is not quite like the others and may well give teenagers (and their parents) reasons to campaign in favor of the reopening of bookstores.

Explanations.

Dash & Lily

, a series produced by Nick Jonas (Yes, that of the Jonas Brothers), is the adaptation of the book

by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, to whom we already owe the cult rom com

.

A romance that begins in the Salinger section of a bookstore

This Gen Z teen romance begins when Dash (Austin Abrams, seen in

,

and

s) discovers a mysterious red notebook in the Salinger section of Manhattan's famous Strand bookstore a few days before Christmas.

It is no coincidence that it hangs out precisely in this radius.

Dash has a lot of holden Caulfield, the hero of

, universally recognized as a symbol of rebellion and anxiety among teenagers.

This red notebook was left by Lily (Midori Francis, spotted in Younger), a New York girl just as bookish as Dash, between two copies of

by Salinger.

Lily left behind a series of puzzles to solve and challenges to overcome.

Thus begins a correspondence through the red notebook where everyone writes what they feel and where they challenge each other.

The existential crisis of two lonely teenagers

Dash and Lily are both lonely, each in their own way.

Like Holden in

, Dash is a disillusioned arrogant who likes to correct bookstore workers for incorrectly ranking Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the letter "M" instead of "G".

Like Holden, Dash wants to avoid confronting his divorced parents.

He told his father that he would spend the holidays with his mother, and vice versa.

Thanks to Lily's red diary, like Holden, he will wander all over New York on the eve of the holidays.

This son of a wealthy family seeks less to break the rules than to experience his existential crisis.

Lily's large, multi-ethnic family has a lot in common with the Glass family imagined by the American writer in his short story series.

Lily is an optimistic outcast who finds comfort in her family and the adults around her.

While she loves celebrating Christmas with her family, her parents flew to Fiji, leaving her alone with her older brother.

Like Zooey, Franny's brother in Salinger's story, the latter will push his sister out of her shell.

For his part, Dash finds an accomplice in his patient best friend Boomer (Dante Brown).

A romantic Christmas wander around New York

With her predictable arc and predilection for coincidences, Dash & Lily could have sunk into the syrupy.

What makes this series a refreshing rom-com is its third protagonist, New York.

Our two heroes will go in search of themselves through a giant treasure hunt on the scale of the city, with challenges to complete in order to find the next red book drop-off location.

What keeps the series in balance is the authenticity of the multicultural and contemporary New York it depicts.

(Ah, this improbable Hanukkah punk show that all lovers of the Big Apple will dream of when it is impossible to visit in 2020)

And then there are all those

really cool

references

: the DVDs, the Die Hard franchise and that soundtrack that goes

from Joni Mitchell's

to The Pogues'

.

There is no doubt that

is the ideal Christmas rom-com to watch with your teenagers.

Do not be surprised that the latter then campaign for the reopening of bookstores and rob the Salinger department!

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