Book Review: Unboxed by Non Pratt

Mikayla Leskey | Arts and Entertainment

family of four parents pregnant mom and dad and two siblings little boy and girl in stylish clothes in chalet are ready to welcome Christmas and New Year near Christmas tree with gift box presents. / Photo by 'fentonroma', licensed by Envato.com.

Over winter break, during one of my long Barnes & Noble’s perusal I came across a book by Non Pratt called Unboxed. I don’t know why exactly it drew me in at first, it was nothing like what I usually go for in books. It was short and plain fiction, no added fantasy or horror elements, just a group of teenagers about to relive their past.

In the end, I decided to get Unboxed because it reminded me of a game I recently played Lost Records: Bloom & Rage where in both stories, a group of friends meet up again after years of not seeing or talking to each other because they had a time capsule. Though Lost Records: Bloom & Rage certainly did have that fantasy element to it.

Unboxed by Non Pratt was surprising in how real it was. It was immersive and I felt like I was listening to a friend tell me the story like it happened to them. Like mentioned early, Unboxed is a story of four friends coming together to open their time capsule, in memory of their fifth friend, Millie, who passed away a few months earlier due to cancer.

All the characters are 18 years old, in between their freshman and sophomore year of college, five years had passed since they hid the box in their schools vents. It shortly revealed that the group started growing apart a week after the box was hidden when one of their members, Ben, moved to London with his mom, and the other characters shortly followed, either transferring schools or getting expelled.

Our main character is Alix, who’s biggest secret is that she’s gay and feels guilty from hiding it from her friends all this time. As well as the person who got all of them together again to open this time capsule. This fact alone seems to leave Alix as the defacto leader of the group, leaving her to decide where they go and when they open the box.

After a brief chase from school security, the four friends and Zara, the pretty one, boyfriend, who is a stereotypical jerk, go to a playground, one of the main hangout spots when this group were still kids. Which is where they decide to open the box, revealing a flash drive with their favourite songs, a photo album.

“So much of my life is digital-selfies saved on my phone, or vacations “albums” copied into files on Mom’s laptop-but I never take the time to go through them like this. Millie was the one who insisted on printing them out. I’d been the first to grumble about the waste of time and money, telling her we could see them when we wanted on her computer.” (Pratt, page 58)

There’s also five different envelopes with something they each added, like their favourite mementos, for Dean, the bad-boy of the group, had a birthday card the group wrote for him. In a different envelope it was dares they wrote for each other and if done the person who wrote it would have to reveal their deepest secret. The last envelopes were letters they wrote to their future selves.

Unboxed is an interesting and realistic tale of a group of young adults finding each other again, through all the trials and tribulation that teenagehood put them through, and everything that’s changed between them. They grew up, figuring themselves out without each other and they had relearn friendships and trust.

“None of us have finished becoming who we want to be.” (Pratt, page 107.)

Sources

Pratt, Non. Unboxed. Union Square Publishing, 2025.