History is All You Left Me - Adam Silvera

'There's an alternate universe where we're a crew of three, so tight and unbreakable we don't need a fourth to even it out for me. Where a fourth would only be trouble. Jackson drives, you're sitting shotgun, I'm yelling at you both to turn up the volume when our anthem comes on, and we all sing so loudly the radio doesn't stand a chance against our slightly off-key, comfortable chorus. But that's not a universe any of us lives in, unfortunately.'

Hi again!

Here's another book by Adam Silvera, who wrote They Both Die at the End. I was so impressed with that one I picked this up for the Kindle pretty much right away (even after I said I'd wait). And I guess it's safe to say that I was much less impressed with History is All You Left Me. In this one, our OCD-ridden main character has to deal with the death of his ex-boyfriend, best friend and the one he thought he'd be with forever, Theo. He becomes friends with Theo's new boyfriend, Jackson, in an effort to collect all the remaining pieces of Theo's life. And there may even be something Griffin's not even admitting to himself...

I think the main plot of this book, as described above, is solid enough. The execution, however, was a little... sloppy? I found myself skimming through the latter two thirds of this book because I wasn't really invested in Griffin and Theo's relationship, which was mostly told in flashbacks. There's also not all that much happening in this book, plot-wise. I also didn't like most of the characters - the main three came across as somewhat horrible people and also kind of removed from everyone else.

The book is beautifully written, though. I picked up many nice quotes like the one I used at the top. The book also started out very thought-provoking. Towards the end the plot just got really weird, and I found it difficult to remain invested. 

Regardless of how this wasn't really the book for me, I'll be reading Adam Silvera's other works too whenever I come across them.

When Dimple Met Rishi - Sandhya Menon

'"Hello, future wife," he said, his voice bubbling with glee. "I can't wait to get started on the rest of our lives!"'

Hello!

Needless to say, I was super excited to read When Dimple Met Rishi. Why? Not only is there an iced coffee on the cover (important but ends up being mistreated in the actual story), but it is an Indian-American young adult book about Indian-American teenagers battling with issues that come from the melding of these two different cultures. In short-hand; it's not super-American and stereotypically boring like most YA novels! How great is that?

It's also worth noting that in this book, the female main character has a passion for coding! It would be great if I didn't need to award medals for 'girls wanting to do ''''men's'''' jobs in young adult books' but you would be surprised with how rarely that happens. Ew.

Anyway, When Dimple Met Rishi stars Dimple, weirdly-named quirky Indian girl living in America, pressured by her mum to find an Ideal Indian Husband but wanting to do web design and not get married. The other half is Rishi, a traditional Indian teenager who's also living in America but more fond of stability and making his parents proud. They meet at Insomnia Con, a course of sorts for aspiring web designers and the sorts, where Rishi thought they were going to get together and Dimple has never heard of him before. Plot ensues. Also, for some reason, this technology course includes a talent show, winning which helps you win the whole thing? Please explain your logic, book.

As said, I had high hopes for this. But alas, India and web design both take a back seat as Dimple complains constantly about: rich people just because they're rich, perfectly well-meaning parents caring about her, a nice guy being nice and wanting to be strong and independent and not in a relationship. She also takes every opportunity to emphasise that she is definitely 'Not Like Every Other Girl'® because she doesn't wear make-up or love shopping for clothes et cetera. Not only that, but her friend Celia, who does enjoy these things, is described as being less of a decent person because of it? (Feminism PSA: It's okay if you like these things or if you don't, as long as you don't put other people down for thinking differently!)

 Meanwhile Rishi is so ridiculously, over-the-top nice that it just made me doubt if he wasn't secretly trying to be annoying. You know? Like, I may have liked him more if he had some actual character flaws beyond just being painfully nice and extremely polite or whatever.

Talk about over-the-top, this book actually reads a lot like fanfiction, in that it has great representation but big parts of the plot are just too nice and too convenient and no way no one actually does that in real life (looking at you, Rishi). And I love good fanfiction. The book also tries to convince you that it's different from other such works, while being exactly, completely like them.... yeah. Also, what is essentially the main conflict (*insofar as this book has one) is resolved around half-way through. What happens after that, you ask? Nothing, really. Nothing.

Essentially gonna give this a 2/5 just because Indian representation and a couple of cute moments, but I can't really recommend this to anyone with a good conscience.

For the Helmet 2017 Reading Challenge I put this in category 33: A book about India. Yeah, I know, I'm reaching again but hey, Indian characters, Indian author... roll with it.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - J.K. Rowling

'SCORPIUS: The world changes and we change with it. I am better off in this world. But the world is not better. And I don't want that.'

Note the super cute matching bookmark from Hel-Ya!

Hello!

Oh boy. This is a book that's difficult for me to review, because I want to do it right and actually get quite deep into why I didn't like it, not just saying 'oh no it's new and it's not a novel so it sucks'. And am I the right person to talk about this? Probably not, because although I read all the books within the last year and some other stuff, there's so much more on Pottermore and this whole fandom that I'm not really into. The books are the canon to me, really. But I do read books and I wanted to give this one a proper review (outside of the whole Harry Potter curse) so here we are! Of course, I didn't see this in the theatre, in its intended form, so I can only really criticise what I read, not what it actually is.

Also, if you're super picky about your spoilers, maybe skip this one. I'll warn you before the actual spoilers, everything else is just the first 10%... but some people are really careful when it comes to Harry Potter so just in case!

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth installation in the Harry Potter series. For real, that's what it says on the back cover. It's not a side adventure or an extra, but the eigth story, according to itself. And really, this is a terrible disservice to the story, isn't it? It's not a full-length novel, but a play, and it's not actually written fully by Rowling herself. I only put her down as the author because that's how it's on the cover, with letters the size of a cat, but it's quite clear she had little to do with this book.  So how could it probably be on the same level as the seven books before it? I think this book would have received much less hate if it was marketed differently, perhaps as a semi-canon what-if fanfiction. As it is, Rowling has stated that this is indeed canon.

Of course, there's also people who are going to say that this 'ruined their headcanon', and I can't really blame them. This book comes nine years after the series originally ended (I'll personally never forget how J.K. Rowling said in an interview that she doesn't want anyone continuing the story after that) with the words 'All is well.' And then it turns out all is not, in fact, well.

Anyway. Harry and Ginny's son Albus gets sorted into Slytherin, surprising everyone. He befriends Scorpius Malfoy and is pretty much shunned by his peers for not being worthy of the Potter name, as he's a Slytherin and not a very great wizard to boot. He decides to do something his father couldn't to prove, mostly to himself, that he too can be good. This is really all I can tell you without heavy spoilers.

Scorpius Malfoy is the best thing about this book. He almost made this worth the read just because of how great he was as a character. Albus was okay too, but he just acted so annoyingly most of the time, it was a bit difficult. The older generation, however, get little to nothing to do in this book, as do the other kids, Rose, James and Lily. I feel like they could have as well been cut out and I wouldn't have even noticed.

One of my least favourite things with this book was the fact that oftentimes, it made me feel uncomfortable. For real, sometimes the humour (I assume these scenes were meant to be funny?) made me vince, and I don't appreciate that in my books. Particularly when * (scroll down or CTRL+ F to find this under the spoilers). Seriously though, Harry Potter books have sometimes had the awkward joke or two, but this thing had far too many.

Before the spoilers, I'll let you know I gave this a 3/5. That's on the scale of normal works, of course - as a Harry Potter book I'd give this 1/5.

To the Spoiler-mobile! (???)

The worst thing this book does is getting the Time-Turners back. Oh yes, those are back. These are the Harry Potter way of time travel, in a universe where they honestly never really found their place. I hope you'll agree when I say that time travel is kind of monumental, and therefore it's really strange if the only 'normal' use for it in a series is so that one of the main trio could make all of her lectures. Of course, there's also the question of 'why didn't they save character X if they had a Time-Turner?' Because of this, all of them were destroyed in The Order of the Phoenix. Of course, in this book they find one that wasn't destroyed (surprise), only to find in the book's climax that there's one more, and this one is, like, golden and not riddled with any problems of the first one. Deus ex machina to the finest.

The plot with the Time-Turners is that Albus overhears Cedric Diggory's father asking Harry to go back and revive him and decides 'hey I'll go save that random guy because why not!' and so him, Scorpius and Delphi (gonna get back to her) travel through these multiverses trying to save him with the Time-Turner.

And really, you can't expect people to be happy when a badly written play comes along nine years after the much-loved story got its conclusion and goes back and changes things. People have had nine  years to imagine whatever they wanted to follow, because there wasn't meant to be any more. Rowling must have been paid a ludicrous amout of gallions to go through with this.

This book also portrays Harry as a bad father, which didn't really resonate with many people. He's absent in Albus' life and when he is there, he cannot really connect with him. This seemed strange to me, because the book portrays it as Albus having a complex by not being Harry Potter, but anyone who's read these books knows that Harry's life wasn't always all that rosy. So why don't they ever even attempt to have this conversation? It's just odd. Also, having grown up without a father but with many great father figures in his life, it's odd that Harry can't figure out a way to be that for Albus, who's actually a lot more like Harry than his other two kids, James and Lily. He even mentions that he didn't have a father figure himself. What do you mean, what about half of the male adult characters in the books...???

Also, the villain was, to me, incredibly lame. For real, I could have told you before this book came out that it will be alright so long as it doesn't try to imitate Voldemort as a villain. Of course, he was the most menacing villain in the series because he had seven book's worth of development. But he was killed, for real, he's done now. And what does this book do? Well, Delphi, who's Albus and Scorpius's accomplice in getting Cedric Diggory back, turns out to be Voldemort and Bellatrix's daughter [Voldemort's daughter are you kidding me] with a plan to revive Voldemort. Yeah, like I said, lame. It's clear that the new villain they should have given this wouldn't have been as interesting as Voldemort, but it still would have been better than this half-baked rehash. Delpi's motivation is also a quite flimsy and quickly developed 'I wanted to see my father' -complex.

Oh, and this is a minor thing, but the Trolley Witch, like, climbs on the roof of the Hogwarts Express and tries to prevent Albus and Scorpius leaving and apparently her pumpkin pastries are grenades and her hands transform into spikes and stuff... This bit was played for comedic effect, I think (?), but it didn't really work for me.

Overall, this book did pretty much all of the things I didn't want it to do. The only way it could've been worse if it rehashed the 'Voldemort trying kill Harry as a baby' -scene too.... Oh, wait, it did! Altogether, this book doesn't create or add much into the whole Harry Potter universe, and it was very lackluster. I really do hope there won't be any more after this.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this in category 39: A book about aging. It's a bit of a reach maybe, but this book is about the new generation and we also see Albus grow a lot as he ages, so... that's what I'm going with.

* Particularly when Albus was Polyjuice Potion'ed into Ron and kissed Hermione (his aunt) 'firmly' and said that he wants to make another baby. Ew? Who thought I would want to read something like that? Let alone see it play on the stage?

Charisma - Jeanne Ryan

Hey!

This book was so dull it put me off writing about it for nearly two weeks after finishing it. That bad.

Charisma is from the same author as Nerve, which apparently isn't all that good. It is, however, a basis for a movie from last year that was pretty enjoyable on its own right. So when Charisma, with its colourful 'from the author of Nerve' cover (right there on the right) started popping up at Waterstones and the synopsis sounded interesting enough, I thought I could check if it's really that bad.

Well that was a mistake, clearly.

The idea of the book is this: Aislyn has suffered from crippling shyness all her life, and would do anything to be more outgoing, so that she could live her life. When the anything comes in the form of an experimental drug called Charisma, she jumps at the opportunity. For a moment, she has everything; fame, popularity, charm, love. Soon, however, she comes to discover that you can't have your cake and eat it too, as the side effects prove to be dangerous, even fatal.

There's also this side plot that's supposed to have you wondering whether gene therapy is ethical or not, but all I could think of was how Charisma tried to seem all smart and deep, without any of the work or thought that normally goes into being either of these things.

The execution of the whole books is one of the worst ones I can imagine. Just for the plot, I have dozens of ideas of making it more tolerable, even good. That doesn't even start to cover the dull writing style...

Aislyn as a character is quite plain with the whole 'too shy to live' thing, but after the side effects kick in (this is around 1/3 in so the idea itself isn't all too fleshed out), she becomes downright tolerable. You'd be surprised to learn just how much a person can whine and cry and complain after (briefly, sure) getting everything they've ever wanted. Also, my empathy was further reduced by her knowingly taking the drug, acknowledging it's experimental and there might be side effects and even signing a consent form(!!!). So I didn't really feel for her.

Her best friend's name I've already forgotten, but she was the opposite of Aislyn in nature; outgoing, happy, brave. She also abandoned Aislyn when she really needed her to hang out with her new boyfriend, so that was nice.

Aislyn also has a super dull boyfriend, John or Jack or something. He's basically there so that Aislyn could complain some more about maybe dying in the future, just when she's so happy (although all the complaining she did could have fooled me).

All in all, this was the dullest thing I've read in a while (I'm at university, too!). I think I should stick to less obviously bad books for a change.

For Helmet 2017 I put this in category 10: A book with a beautiful cover (mostly because that's the only compliment I can give this book...)

PS. Apparently I didn't pick up a single quote while reading this. Yes, that bad.

Heartless - Marissa Meyer

'She fidgeted with a yellow ribbon. 'With this hat, it seems possible. Why' - her eyes brightened - 'this morning, I even had a fantasy that I'd single-handedly balanced the budget for the Royal treasury, and all of Hearts saw me as a hero.''
Hi!

I bought this book as a preorder because I was so excited about the blurb. It took me 2.5 months to waft through, so it might not come as a surprise that I didn't really completely enjoy it.

Heartless is written by Marissa Meyer, who's mostly famous for her Lunar Chronicles -series, which are reimaginations of classic fairy tales. (Which I've not read and after this one, never might) Heartless is different in that it's the origin story of the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland, so it's kind of like a supervillain's origin story. No, exactly like one.

Catherine Pinkerton is, at the heart of things, a very likeable character. She is the daughter of the Marchioness and has somehow caught the attention of the King of Hearts, who wants to marry her. This couldn't be farther away from Cath's wishes, as she just wants to open a bakery with her servant/best friend, Mary Ann. She also meets a court jester (called Jest, haha wow such creativity) who manages to steal her heart almost instantly. She can't just marry the King, whom she doesn't even love, can she?

What did work for me in this book is that it was generally well-written. The description was good and the dialogue okay. I liked most of the characters, and especially Cath herself and Mary Ann were very likeable. On the other hand, while I initially swooned over Jest much like Cath did, I soon found that as a character, he was boring, cardboardy, chivalrous, too good to be interesting in any level. This is really a bad omen in a book were much of the centre is taken by how much I'm supposed to like him and want him and Cath to be together. I must admit I would've never been sad if Cath had just gotten over him and started that bakery with Mary Ann.

The main issue I had, however, was the plot. It is difficult to write something where everyone knows the ending - hello, she's the Red Queen, of course she marries the King of Hearts - but it can be done well. Just look at Romeo and Juliet and all those other "hey guess what, at the end everyone dies" -type of books. It can work, but it needs to be done in a good way, if you hear me? What Heartless tried is this 'did she or did she not' -game where plot twist after another has you trying to figure out whether she did marry the King or not. Instead, the focus really should be on how that happened.

With all these plot twists that didn't feel too interesting, the story also moves at an agonisingly slow pace. Sometimes I could swear it doesn't know which story it wants to tell and thus ends up picking up a cherry on top of each cake, one at a time.

In the background, there's all this "women aren't suited for the man's world of business" and "you shouldn't sell your dowry because that's your only worth" -stuff going on and it was actually a quite interesting portrayal of the Victorian times when that was the focus (not often). There were also some interesting slight undertones of study of determinism, which was quite cool. All the characters eventually got their own fates and no matter how no one wants it, fate is fate.

Anyway, 2/5, wouldn't recommend but a ton of people seem to love this so maybe I'm the one who's wrong.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this book in category 14: A book you’d choose by its summary on the book cover.

Did I Mention I Need You? - Estelle Maskame

'He studies the new Converse closely, and he finally decides on a spot along the rubber. He concentrates on what he’s writing, and when he’s done, he takes a step back and watches me, waiting to see my reaction. However, when I glance down, it’s not lyrics that I see. It’s three words, scrawled messily in his handwriting. Three words, and they’re in Spanish: No te rindas.'

This is the second book in the DIMILY trilogy and I wish I had spent this time somehow... better. The premise is this; Eighteen-year old Eden is in love with her stepbrother Tyler. She goes to spend most of the summer with him in New York, a year after the last time they saw each other. Eden's started dating Tyler's best friend, Dean, in hopes of forgetting her forbidden attraction towards what is kind of like a family member.

This book, the series as a whole, is kind of like a drug. I know it's not good for me or good as a whole either, it doesn't leave me satisfied but for a while, it kinda feels good. It's easy to read since nothing much ever happens and you could easily skip pages upon pages of Eden describing her outfit and the Times Square, and I can't say I didn't just skim through some of it. The plot is fairly thin through most of the book, including some very painfully constructed, fake tension scenes, third wheels that came and went, and friendships that weren't really worth much in the end (Didn't I say Eden and Rachel didn't seem like good friends? I rest my case.). There's a ton of manufactured drama that always ends up having little to no effect on anything.

I wish we had seen how Eden's life was when she wasn't with Tyler. We've just skipped a whole year of her apparently falling in love with Dean and apparently being friends with Rachel and also, moving to a new city. I believe her old best friend, the one who was kinda important in the first book, just disappears in the process? But none of that is apparently of any interest because Tyler is what we care about.

It's a downfall of this series that to me at least, it reads a lot like fanfiction (this is probably because it was published on Wattpad first). What I'm saying is that it reads like something by a young author (which it is) published on a site where romance with a lot of manufactured tension and cliffhangers left and right is candy, regardless of whether the story follows through with that tension or just falls flat and starts building up for the next big twist. I think it would probably be more enjoyable if read with that slow pace of waiting for the next update to be published, rather than wafting through all the twists at once like I've been doing.

On the bright side, Tyler's been having some growth while in New York. He's overall more likeable and a little more mature, but still with that bad boy vibe that evidently makes him attractive in Eden's eyes. There's also his roommate from Boston, Snake, who's the restless rootless happy-go-lucky roommate. Then there's Emily, Miss Perfect Brit to make Eden jealous for no rational reason. I guess Eden is just so in love...

Also, I mentioned that Tyler and Dean are best friends, yes? Well, this doesn't seem to be worth anything at all when Eden cheats on her boyfriend over and over and over again. Which she feels bad about but continues to anyway because she's in love and that supposedly makes it okay. It doesn't. You don't cheat on a person you supposedly care about multiple times with their best friend and just proceed thinking that you're still a good person. Eden and Tyler really suck for doing this and no amount of 'omg I'm a horrible person'-thinking (which there is a lot of, granted) will fix them in my eyes. Dean is a good guy - everyone in the book acknowledges this - but I'll never forgive him if he somehow forgives these two. No one needs friends like this in their life. Urgh.

Anyway, I'm gonna see this series to the bitter end at some point in time, so be looking forward to that. Meanwhile, I can't really see a reason to recommend this to anyone.

Made You Up - Francesca Zappia

“If nothing’s real, then what does it matter?” he said. “You live here. Doesn’t that make it real enough?”

I saw this book, I wanted to read this book, I left Did I Mention I Love You? by Estelle Maskame at 53% so that I could read this book right about now. I'll go back to the former one day though - the author is from Peterhead so I feel like I should.

Anyway, Made You Up is about Alex, starting her senior year in high school, schizophrenic. She has an awfully difficult time telling apart her delusions and reality, and thus makes an unreliable narrator. I really love those. Anyway, she wants to graduate really bad and go to college and not be sent to a mental hospital, so she tries to keep all of this in check.

She makes friends, she tries to live a normal life, falls in love, all that. This part of the book was kind of interesting but at the same time I wanted more emphasis on the disease itself. Alex's friends are nice and interesting, Alex herself feels like a real person, it's all good...

...Except that the way schizophrenia is portrayed in this book is pretty much the most unrealistic thing ever. Alex portrays only the positive symptoms (named so because they add to normal behaviour, not because they're a good thing) and few to none of the negative ones. It's a special snowflake YA version of an actually serious illness, and that's just not okay.

Sadly, I liked it. My knee-jerk reaction was to give this book a 3.5,/5 and be happy with it, round it up and carefully recommend. But the more I think about it - how inaccurate are you allowed to be without it being dangerously awful? I mean, this amount of misrepresentation should be a crime (kind of like the Leave campaign for Brexit... forever salty.) and how can you give a book like that a good score, no matter what it accomplished (not much, really). So I went back and put it down to three, then two. Now I'll say it's just a half rounded up. The half simply comes from the likeable characters and the one good plot twist that I liked. The rest is just lack of research culminated into a pretty bad book. Charlie especially was so likeable, the little sister I never had. I want to give five stars to Charlie alone and none to the rest of the book.

'“C’m’ere, Charlie.” I spread my arms. Charlie hesitated, then ran across the room and climbed into my lap. I wrapped my arms and the blanket around her. She saved me from trying to figure out how much I should tell her. “I don’t like it when your head breaks.” I knew she was old enough and smart enough to know that my head didn’t actually break, but she’d been calling it that for so long it didn’t matter anymore. I think it made her feel better to think of it like something broken that could be fixed.'

Another problem I had with the book were the side plots; all of them were weird and unrealistic and disconnected; I just didn't feel like they added much to the story. There's this thing about the scoreboard at the high school that was mentioned again and again and again and Alex didn't understand it and neither did I. There is, however, a very good central theme about a lobster tank (red lobsters, to be more precise), and it's a shame it's wasted on a pretty bad book.

The writing isn't that bad, it's just the research that's lacking. And by extension, it's also lacking the care to write a good book. What a pity, really. You shouldn't write about these things without any background knowledge / research or at least asking someone a lot smarter than you. I wish this book had never been published or alternatively, that Alex was just portrayed a different kind of weird. Some fantasy special snowflake weird, whatever. What I read was just plain disrespectful. And I really wanted this to be good, too.

What's Left of Me - Kat Zhang

 ‘With other boys, she could craft a mask of smiles and laughter. She seemed to hardly want to glance at this one. Why? Because he wasn’t really one boy, but two? Because hidden inside his body were twin souls, nestled side by side? If so, then Addie looked away for exactly the same reasons I wanted to stare until I memorized the shape of his face. But I wasn’t the one in control.’

I picked up What’s Left of Me because the premise sounded interesting. Each person is born with two souls in the same body, but usually one of these gains dominance by the time they turn ten, and the other one disappears. For Eva and Addie, this doesn’t happen, and they have to live in fear of being discovered, because Hybrids are considered dangerous. It’s a bit Divergent-like, if Divergent was less interesting and the main character even more dull. Yeah. It also starts a trilogy of its own, called The Hybrid Trilogy.

The main character is Eva, who is the recessive soul in her body, the one who was to disappear but never did, putting herself and her sister, the dominant soul in danger. I couldn’t tell you much about Eva even if I tried. She hasn’t been in control of her own body for years and doesn’t have any interests, either. Addie likes drawing, Addie is level-headed, Eva is just there. While it was interesting to see how the recessive soul saw a world she didn’t interact with, she also made for an incredibly dull protagonist.

I was also annoyed with Eva because she knows that in order to protect herself, Addie and their whole family, they have to pretend they've settled - that she has disappeared. Does she do this? No, because freedom is more important than everything else. At a very crucial moment when she's ruined everything, she starts laughing. It's these kinds of things that just didn't make me like her all that much.

The book can be easily separated into two parts by looking at the setting and the pacing, and neither of them did much for me. The first part I was waiting for the other shoe to drop and when it did, I didn’t become very invested. Also, interestingly, the book has zero important characters who aren’t Hybrids, which also reminded me of Divergent; “People like me are rare and dangerous but everyone and my love interest is one of them.” Dull. I would’ve preferred at least for the here unnamed – this is for spoiler reasons – love interest to be “normal” and not “super special awesome” in the same way the main character is, for a more dynamic story.

The writing style isn’t bad but it’s also not good. There’s a lot of disinteresting description and going in circles around the same issues. What’s Left of Me also doesn’t have those beautiful thoughts about life that I often look for in books. Even the parts that I thought were good were only so in context and when I tried to pick a favourite, I ended up pretty much deleting all my highlights because they were so dull. Bleh.

There were some discoveries Eva and Addie made about Hybrids towards the end that were definitely interesting in their own right, but I as wasn’t very invested in the story itself, they didn’t really make a difference to me. Also, can I just say how unrealistic I thought it was that American kids get taught about an American war pretty much every year? I thought they were sheltered beyond common sense from everything they might find frightening. Whatever.

What’s Left of Me wasn’t completely terrible – especially in the beginning I was hopeful it would be a book I could actually like – but it wasn’t good, either. Kind of sucks to leave Addie and Eva (and all the characters who were so disinteresting I already forgot their names) where they are, but I won’t be picking up the other two books in this trilogy.

After You - Jojo Moyes

‘I wore my old dresses, my brightly coloured cardigans and satin pumps, and let myself be enclosed in a bubble of happiness, aware that bubbles only ever existed for so long before they popped anyway.’

I said that I’d read this book, right? Well, I did. I didn’t like it. Prepare for me to rant about it. Also, if you haven’t read Me Before You and want to do so, I’d advise not to read this because… well, it’s the sequel. Apologies for pointing out the obvious. Also, you might be better off not reading this one if you thought Me Before You had an ending you liked, really.

The premise of After You is this: Louisa, after the heart-breaking loss at the end of Me Before You, just kind of stopped living. She tried to escape, lost touch with her family, moved to London and got another boring job after the boring job she has at the start of the previous book. Because try as she may, Louisa Clark is not a person to step out of her comfort zone even if threatened with a pickaxe (unless a hot guy practically forces her to). This changes when she a) falls from the roof (which, surprisingly, has pretty little actual value in the plot and serves more as a gimmick excuse for her to not go to the roof again without two pages of fear every bloody time) b) meets Lily and c) meets a hot guy.

I kid you not but all the other subplots in this book felt flat and uninteresting for me. Also, they were pretty unnecessary, because I was just looking forward to finishing the book. In short, Louisa gets a new hero complex and decides that since she doesn’t want to do anything with her life, she’s just going to take the responsibility of fixing other people’s. Yawn. I feel like I’ve read this before. Does she experience the personal growth I wanted? I don’t feel like she did. Moreover, the book is about healing after the loss of a loved one, of course. But where’s the growth?

I actually quite liked Lily’s character; she’s a wealthy brat, full of teenage entitlement and life and laughter and anger. She storms around and stalks around and brings actual emotions to where Louisa continues to be sad. She was probably the first character I actually liked in these two books, well, along with Nathan who has little to no skin around his bones. All in all, she was a pleasure to have around, at first anyway…

I feel the distant need to complain more fully so let me just say that from here -> on out I’m just going to spoil everything that annoyed me, which is most of the book, so…. If you’re interested in reading it (despite my warnings!!!) maybe stop here. Maybe, however, I can just save you the trouble by laying it out for you. Anyway, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers.

So anyway, of course when I liked Lily (who, by the way, is Will’s 16-year old daughter no one knew he had. Surprise! No but really, I was so unsurprised I thought I had already read that on the back cover), they had to screw that up for me by giving her a tragic backstory that mirror’s Louisa’s. At a party, she is drunk and is taken advantage of. It’s pretty boring and used to explain away her bratty behaviour – she’s just not in a good place. All in all it’s not a compelling plot detail and makes me sort of dislike her. Towards the end she also just up and leaves to live with her grandmother (Mrs. Traynor, yes) in what seems like a hasty, once microwaved but still lukewarm effort to explain everything away to be well.

This same working actually haunts most of the ending; it feels sloppy and quick and not at all like the end I wanted. After all the non-pleasant effort I went through while reading this book, I wanted to be rewarded with an epic end at least. Thanks for nothing, kind of.

Also, of course Ambulance Man Sam (he’s the love interest in this one) gets injured at the end in a faux-interesting near-death experience with didn’t feel like anything when I wasn’t invested in a) him and Louisa’s relationship or b) him as a character in general. The thing they had was built quickly out of pretty nothing but sex, and Louisa spent until this moment questioning it. She leaves for New York at the end of the book (for a job she almost didn’t take, which was when I almost bit her head off through my Kindle) and they think their relationship might last the distance. Spoiler alert, love: I don’t think so.

Additionally, there’s this incredibly weird subplot where Louisa’s mum, eternal housewife, has a “feminist awakening” of some sort and the other characters think she’s clearly off the handle for suddenly wanting a life of her own every now and then instead of taking care of everything 24/7, 52/12. What in the world? It also ends with Louisa’s father waxing his legs, at which point the mum decides that maybe this can work after all. It was all just incredibly weird, didn’t add to my experience and honestly made me feel uncomfortable at the patriotism that was touched at but then made to seem like touching at it was actually stupid and the woman should by all means be in the kitchen. What.

All in all, I think I’m done with Jojo Moyes’ books now. I know a lot of people like them and also these two, but they just don’t work for me. That’s pretty weird because I like romance and chick-lit and heartbreak and healing. Guess you can’t always win.

If you read this far, here’s an interesting thing I learned recently that’s not very related: Did you know that most Kindles use E-Ink technology? Probably. Did you know that that technology has a liquid in the screen and in the liquid a film and in the film microcapsules, in which are positively charged white particles and negatively charged black ones? With a negative field applied, the white particles come to the surface and vice versa. This is how the Kindle can have white without a backlight and with a backlight (usually it’s either or) and also that nice black, also why it flashes when you change pages etc. I just thought this was incredibly interesting!

The Spectacular Now - Tim Tharp

“Yeah,” she says. I’m beginning to see that her “yeahs” are almost always two syllables, one for “yes” and the other for “but I don’t know if anything will ever come of it.”

The Spectacular Now, I’d say, is a novel about youth. It’s about finding yourself and about finding your place, sometimes it’s about finding that there’s no place for you. It’s real and young and it should be everything I ever wanted.

The two main characters, the narrator Sutter Keely and the girl with insight, Aimee Finicky, are about as different as any two people can be. He’s foolhardy, outgoing and careless, she’s warm, calculating and only has wild adventures in her daydreams. She lives in the future, where she has worked out everything, while he doesn’t even want to think a day ahead of time. He gets the rare chance to make a change in her life, to convince her to come out of her shell and live, but at the same time he could end up ruining her. Of course, on this mission, which is not about seducing her, they end up dating, the unlikely couple surprising working. That’s pretty much the plot of the book, leaving out only what happens after they’ve ended up dating.

Oftentimes Sutter got on my nerves, for he is self-righteous and presents his thoughts like they’re the only truth. Empirical observing turned into scientific facts, he believes he understand guys, girls and life better than the people around him. The novel is clearly written by a man, and Sutter, while thinking of himself as a gentleman, ends up being a terrible jerk more than once. Maybe I’m not Aimee, but I didn’t find his carelessness about everything charming or even bearable. I don’t think people should be allowed to be so immature all the way until early adulthood. I didn’t like him constantly thinking about himself first, no matter how many times he named Aimee as his priority.

Sutter searching for his father felt much like the search in The Fault in Our Stars – if you want something too much, build it up in your mind and think it’s everything you’ve ever wanted, you’re bound to be disappointed. Only one of these books ends in a catharsis I found personally satisfying, however. I felt like The Spectacular Now didn’t have enough real, actual, heart-breaking joy to make up for the times it made me sad and despairing. The balance was off and the book left me wanting something else.

There’s that 2013 movie based on this book, and if I understand it correctly, it ends well differently from the book. I don’t know if I’m happy with that. I didn’t like the ending I read, but maybe that just meant I didn’t like what I had set out to read. The actors are some of the current YA novel-to-movie favourites – Miles Teller, Brie Larson and Shailene Woodley. Maybe I’ll give it a watch one of these days, since the novel wasn’t a total waste of my time. It wasn’t good, either.

PS. Sorry about not posting anything lately - I lost my laptop charger and finally, finally caved in and bought a new one! Will be posting reviews on all the books I've read this summer asap!