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.

Eurooppalaiset unet - Emma Pulkkonen

Heyo!

Back with marathon number two book number two: another Finnish one, this time last year's Finlandia nominee (you might remember how Akvarelleja Engelin kaupungista was the winner, and I would be tempted to say rightfully so)

Eurooppalaiset unet ('European Dreams') felt, to me, like a café with a fancy exterior that tries to appeal to a more academically inclined crowd in the most expensive part of the city. When you step inside however, you come to realise that there's nothing that's really groundbreaking or worth your time in this faux-fancy establishment.

Now, the book isn't actually quite that bad. There's actual quality to it, just quality that somehow comes across as trying too hard and failing because of it.

The idea is that there's all these people (maybe eight or so, I lost count) around Europe who lead different lives with their own problems, but eventually most of their stories actually weave together to create a semblance of connection. Like, on the level that some character's brother's daughter is working with some other character 20 years later. And while I see that was supposed to be amazing to me, well... it felt more like that person could have been working with anyone else without it having any implications for their lives.

Also, it was, again, (check out Kissani Jugoslavia for more of this) a bit too artsy. Someone got this superpower of sorts (not much of a spoiler since it's on the back cover) which didn't make any sense to me and I never found out if it was real or not. It was odd in a story that otherwise felt real.

I really wanted to like this book. I thought that the idea was cool, but obviously I wanted some deeper connections than what this had. The stories themselves were quite good and even harrowing but my topmost feeling is disappointment and I can't really shake that. What with the EU and all (having 'European' in your title is bound to draw these comparisons), I wanted a book about how deeply we're all connected these days. This wasn't that book.

I don't have much else to say. I feel like this book didn't have much to say to me either.

For the Helmet 2017 reading challenge I put this in category 17: A book cover colours are blue and white!

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.

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!

All the Bright Places - Jennifer Niven

“I remember running down a road on my way to a nursery of flowers. I remember her smile and her laugh when I was my best self and she looked at me like I could do no wrong and was whole. I remember how she looked at me the same way even when I wasn’t. I remember her hand in mine and how that felt, as if something and someone belonged to me.”

I don’t know what I expected from All The Bright Places anymore. I mean, the synopsis begins with the line ‘When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom,’ and it sounds great. (Bell tower at a school though? I just rolled with it) I don’t know what and why but either way, it sounded nice. It sounded interesting, it sounded special. In the author’s note, Jennifer Niven mentions that she wanted to write an ‘edgy’ novel, a YA novel, a novel about personal pain (I wouldn’t have known this just reading the book, sadly). Was it all those things? I suppose you know where I’m getting at.

Meet Ultraviolet Remarkey-able – and I wish so bad I was kidding about that name but sadly I’m not. I mean, I kind of found the nickname cute in that terrible, dorky way that makes you want to cringe, at first anyway. But I lost count how many times the Hot Reckless Boy^TM of the book repeats it. And I mean, it honestly made me cringe every single time so I hope you feel my pain here. Violet recently lost her sister, Violet is depressed, unfairly pretty, a cheerleader, a writer, quirky and popular. I kind of liked Violet. I had nothing against her depressed quirkiness. I think. Oh, also, Violet makes a webzine designed to help teenagers with all their problems, because she’s kind of saintly like that. It’s mostly irrelevant to the plot but relevant to my annoyance so there you go.

Theodore Finch is the mandatory hot reckless guy. He’s bipolar, suicidal, unreliable and hot, basically everything you could expect from a discount hot guy. Want to know the worst part of his character, though? He does not sound like a 18-year old. I mean, he quotes Virginia Woolf (some of it with the help of Google, which did make me chuckle) and writes Violet poetry on email. He writes songs and to top it off, he also talks like someone from the 19^th century. I’ll get back to his ultimately annoying poetry when I’m ready to spoil the ending for you.

The book claims to be the story of both of these characters, but I believe it was the story of Violet more than anything. She was characterised more strongly, and she got the focus most of the way. I don’t mind – she was more likeable than pretentious Finch whom the end made me hate more than anything. I'm not going to go into detail about the plot - they're forced to be friends and fall in love, naturally. The plot lacks actual conflict, and I was just constantly waiting, waiting and waiting.

I’ve seen people compare this book to The Fault in Our Stars, and I’m fairly sure the synopsis brought this up as well. It's not out of nowhere, either - we have the atmosphere of death, the girl whose name is a colour, the guy whose name is right-up ridiculous and to top it off, they do not sound like teenagers in the slightest with their metaphors and carefully constructed sentences. Of course, All the Bright Places loses in this comparison by miles – the plot was dull and lacked the tension of TFIOS most of the way through, the characters didn’t sound beautifully poetic but annoyingly so, and most importantly, TFIOS did it first. All the Bright Places is in this sense a Monday copy, a lookalike mimicking the success of a wildly better book – and I’m not even a TFIOS fangirl, believe it or not.

The weird thing is that I enjoyed the book, mostly. It was around the time Finch runs six miles frantically to get Violet flowers (violets, naturally) and where I took the quote at the top of the page from that I started to think, ‘Wait a minute. Do I actually enjoy these characters, because they’re kind of starting to piss me off right now?’ From there it was all downhill and the last tenth of the book (audiobooks make me measure weirdly, I know), I just forced myself to chug it down so that I could write a review about it and finally, thankfully read something else. I hope this doesn’t mean I’m getting over my YA phase because there are at least 50 more YA novels I’d like to read and enjoy.

…So anyway, the ending. The ending. Finch dies – it’s not surprising per se, but it was badly built and the tempo of the book didn’t give it the importance it could have had. I wish to draw another parallel to TFIOS here – it’s the same ‘this even is so important I’ll just say it’ kind of plot development. Finch actually commits suicide by drowning, and before he does, he leaves Violet fucking cryptic Facebook messages filled with poems to talk about the places he visited before fucking killing himself. I am so annoyed by the premise of this that the wannabe cuteness of Violet visiting all these places and seeing the signs he left behind didn’t make me awww or feel bittersweet or anything. I was just so done.

Violet also writes pretty little poetry for Finch after he’s dead and I continue to be so done. We pretend to see Violet pick up the pieces of her broken life but I think Niven was too afraid to actually give us an actual look at her future, so we get half-assed little glimpses instead. I don’t think this was the right time to ~leave it up to the reader~, honestly.

I think this is where the book goes wrong for me. I mean, the author wants to get across the message that suicide is serious, that I should feel sorry for Finch, who felt like he had no other option. But honestly? His life didn’t seem that bad to me and half the book was from his POV so I should know. He seemed to be kind of getting it together and then he spends a week or so visiting all the cool sights of Indiana (this makes sense in the context, sort of) and writing poetry. Then he kills himself, and I don’t feel sorry for him, and I think he had a choice, and I think he was an annoying asshole. I’m just so upset by this, ugh. Like Everything, Everything, this is another audio book I’ll be returning to Audible, because I honestly did not like it.

Also! There’s going to be a movie based on this book, apparently! I can't express how much complaining I'll be doing when it actually comes out. *sigh*

On other news, I picked up Never Always Sometimes as my next project, and so far it seems like a fairly typical high school novel with unquirky, actually teenager-like main characters. I’m content with my life choices right now, but I still can’t recommend All the Bright Places to you.