P.S I Still Love You Review

P.S I Still Love You by Jenny Han

Title: P.S. I Still Love You

Author: Jenny Han

Series: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before #2

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: May 26, 2015

Genre: Realistic Fiction; Fiction; Contemporary; Romance; Young Adult

Pages: 288

Format: ARC: Bound Manuscript

Lara Jean didn’t expect to really fall for Peter.
She and Peter were just pretending. Except suddenly they weren’t. Now Lara Jean is more confused than ever.
When another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?

In this charming and heartfelt sequel to the New York Times bestseller To All the Boys I've Loved Before, we see first love through the eyes of the unforgettable Lara Jean. Love is never easy, but maybe that’s part of what makes it so amazing.

IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL!!! *sobs*

Lara Jean is back, and she is ready to face all the cute boys, hopeless romanticism, and heartbreak in the world. Okay, maybe not all the heartbreak out there, but she is definitely going to get her fair share. After (unexpectedly) falling for Peter and coming this close to losing it all, Lara Jean is back to writing letters. This one, however, is singing a different tune. She wants Peter back no matter how much work it requires. They had something real, and Lara Jean wants it. That is until– well–she doesn’t anymore. After a surprise visitor appears, Lara Jean is suddenly forced to face some serious problems of the love triangle variety. Not to mention, Genevieve (a.k.a the evil witch) is up to her meddling exploits, and she just may succeed this time. Lara Jean and Peter have undeniable chemistry, and yet, is it really worth risking it all?   

I have been waiting for this book for SO LONG! I was fortunate and lucky enough to receive a magnificent ARC of it a whole two weeks before the publication date. EEP! It’s a good thing too, because I’m pretty sure any further waiting would’ve given me an aneurism or something. Yeah, this ARC saved my life.

I’m just going to say it: this book, no matter how you look at, is not of the ruminative, hard-thinking, or mature persuasion. In fact, it is quite literally the exact opposite. It is immature, juvenile, childish, cheesy, hopelessly romantic, and sweetly simple, and I love it all. It makes me feel like I’m ten again, all dreamy-eyed at the idea of a first kiss or a boy holding my hand. This book is the quintessence of summer reading and/or cheesy romance. I can’t get enough of it. I just want to lie on the beach under the sun and read about Peter and Lara Jean all day long.

When I first laid eyes on the first book in the series, it was love at first sight. I mean, come on, the title? To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before? Is that, like, not one of the best titles you’ve ever heard? It is up there with The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (both of which I love). From the first moment I cracked open the cover, I was hopelessly devoted to Lara Jean’s story, which is why I picked up this copy of P.S I Still Love You at the first available opportunity. Much to my delight, it did not disappoint.

There were times in the book where I was right there alongside Lara Jean. I was so conflicted. Was I still Team Peter or had I converted to Team John? I really had no idea. Peter just has so much chemistry as a character, but John is perfection (maybe too perfect?). Two mesmerizing pieces of male character specimen; how am I supposed to root for one or the other?

Just at the first book did, this highly anticipated sequel of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before left me wanting MORE! While there is no word on a third book, if Jenny Han chooses to write one, she has a devoted and ready reader available. Every single girl should at least give Jenny Han’s cute, lovey-dovey series a go, and they probably won’t regret it (unless they have an aversion to swoon-worthy romance, which, frankly, I just don’t understand why they would). Oh, and P.S. I love this series and probably always will.

I'll Give You The Sun Review

I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson

Title: I’ll Give You The Sun

Author: Jandy Nelson

Series: None

Publisher: Dial Books

Publication Date: September 16th 2014

Genre: Romance; Realistic Fiction; Contemporary; Coming of Age; Young Adult

Pages: 371

Format: Hardcover

goodreads

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

Twins Noah and Jude were as thick as thieves, but somewhere along the line of their rocky relationship, something went horribly and inexplicably wrong. They are the exact opposite of each other; Noah is the shy one, reserved to the point of being introverted. Jude is out-there, confident, and has a line of admirers about a mile long, until, well…, until she doesn’t. Told from alternating points of view between the two twins, the story tells you the beginning, and it tells you the end. Can Jude and Noah overcome their severed bond and meet somewhere in the middle?   

This novel left me with two thoughts: hot boys of the James Dean persuasion, and the powerful seductive effect of oranges. Jude had it all. She was pretty, and she was liked. When something happens that revolutionizes her entire world, she is left alone. She is an outcast. Superstitious and eccentric, she stopped fitting in a long time ago, even before Noah was lost to her. She aspires to be an artist but has a hard time overcoming the fact that her mother’s ghost is continually sabotaging her. Rough deal, right? When she meets an artist, and his perfectly tortured assistant, she exhumes secrets that were once thought dead and buried and learns some things are worth fighting for.

Noah, on the other hand, is everything Jude isn’t. He’s shy and hopelessly romantic when it comes to the boy next door. He’s sees the world differently than everyone else. His perspective is artistic, unique, and unlike anything I’ve ever read before. He sees colors in thoughts and masterpieces in ideas. He craves acceptance and inimitability all at once. His world and his thoughts are unattainably beautiful in ways I didn’t even think were possible. He and his sister weren’t just characters to me. They were magic.

With this book being a wonderful piece of art by its own definition, it is no surprise that art, painting, colors, and seeing the world like it’s a masterpiece are all central themes. The dynamic of the characters and all of their wonderful individualities were broad, animated strokes of an acrylic portrait, the setting a soft, seeping watercolor, and the plot a blended, and indulgent oil print.  Each element was crafted and chiseled like they were tangible, palpable pieces waiting to be observed in an astonishing showcase.

Jandy Nelson’s Printz Award-Winning novel is not one to be trifled with. This is the no-joke, abso-effing-loutely real deal, and everyone should be treating themselves to what is going down in history as a classic. I’d give more than the sun for this book; I’d give the whole damn world. 

Afterworlds Review

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Title: Afterworlds

Author: Scott Westerfeld

Series: None

Publisher: Simon Pulse

Publication Date: September 23, 2014

Genre: Fantasy; Contemporary; Supernatural; Realistic Fiction; Young Adult

Pages: 599

Format: Hardcover

goodreads

Darcy Patel has put college and everything else on hold to publish her teen novel, Afterworlds. Arriving in New York with no apartment or friends she wonders whether she's made the right decision until she falls in with a crowd of other seasoned and fledgling writers who take her under their wings… 

Told in alternating chapters is Darcy's novel, a suspenseful thriller about Lizzie, a teen who slips into the 'Afterworld' to survive a terrorist attack. But the Afterworld is a place between the living and the dead and as Lizzie drifts between our world and that of the Afterworld, she discovers that many unsolved - and terrifying - stories need to be reconciled. And when a new threat resurfaces, Lizzie learns her special gifts may not be enough to protect those she loves and cares about most.

Ohmygod, this book was so bad. Soooo bad. Like, really, really painful. Honestly, how I even finished it I have no idea.

I’m not even going to rewrite the summary. I really do not feel like reliving it.

It’s almost like Westerfeld couldn’t exactly decide between two stories: one, a paranormal romance about a girl who can pass into the Underworld, and two, a young author learning to “discover herself,” so he smooshed them together and called it a book. Too bad that both were absolutely awful.

I’ll start with the paranormal story, aka the fake story that was serving as a fake manuscript. It was actually the lesser of the two horrible evils because this one actually had a plot line. You’re probably thinking, “But wait, don’t all published stories at least have a discernable plot line?” I was once like you, all naïve in thinking that publishers would at least make sure their book had some plot to it, but oh contraire, my dear reader, that apparently is not a requirement. This one did however have a sliver of a conflict and just a bit of a standard plot line. And that is the only good thing I can say about it. Throughout the entirety of this book, all the main character’s fellow author friends kept saying how good her story was and how creative and how amazing. Lies. All of them. The characters left much to be wanted and the story line was utterly atrocious. The world building was virtually nonexistent and did Westerfeld forget how to write dialogue? And even if I wanted to like it, I couldn't because I was being constantly interrupted and reminded that what I was reading was in fact not a real story. How am I supposed to submerse myself in a story when I know it's fake? I’ve read Westerfeld before, and I once was a huge fan of his. I really liked Uglies and The Leviathan series, but this book? He would’ve been better off just not writing it.

Now for the realistic fiction part. Oh god. There were parts in this book where I just all together skipped these sections because I could not stand the main character. She was whiny and did nothing to help herself. And what about using all of your money from a manuscript (that sucks by the way, read above) and spending it on living in New York City instead of college is smart in any way? Seriously. How stupid is this character? And news flash, if you’re going to write a story, you might want to make sure that the story has a plot! Plot is important. Like, really important, and it does not exist here. There was literally no conflict. Absolutely none. I would’ve gotten the same effect if I had read a story about a deer skipping across a field. I was bored out of my mind, and I really saw no point in reading Afterworlds. If this story, no…book (there were no story elements whatsoever, so it really wasn’t a story now was it?) is based on Westerfeld’s real experiences of being published (although I doubt it by how ridiculously unrealistic it is), I feel bad for Westerfeld, and I also don’t see any reason why he should share with us his incredibly boring tale of publishing.  

Overall, two stories were shoved together in a haphazard fashion and without any consideration for the individual stories themselves. The cost was the quality of both stories, and the result was a book I would recommend to no one ever. Let’s just say I wish I had never picked up this horrifying excuse for a book.