Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

to read more about the book (synopsis, ratings, etc.) click here

My Star Rating : 3.5 stars

Goodness me. I have a lot of thoughts about this book. They're all floating around in my head. Sometimes I can grasp them and form them into sentences. It's like fishing, the way my mind works. You catch em, you let em go. It's a jumble and it's a jungle. Not really. I just said jungle because it matched poetically with jumble. If my mind is like fishing it can't be a jungle too, can it? More like a swamp.
OH I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M SAYING ANYMORE!
I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't know how to form this post in a coherent way because all my thoughts about this book are quite random and don't seem to flow well onto each other.
Maybe I'll make some lists again!

I think a lot of people liked Lola & the Boy Next Door a lot more than I did. Base off of Goodreads ratings and my friends on Goodreads' ratings/reviews. 
Why is this?
Perhaps it was Lola.

• I don't like Lola a whole lot. (Please don't yell at me!) I haven't read many reviews on this book but I've never come across anyone who said they didn't like her. So I'm just putting my own 'pinion out there: I did not like Lola. 
• I admit she is relatable. She is quirky and daring and not boring. She is creative. She is a human, teenage girl. She is relatable to probably almost everyone (who likes YA). 
• But not so much to me. She didn't do anything wrong, or anything to make me dislike her, it's just that she was presented in a way that didn't make me care for her. I didn't find myself caring about her. I sympathised... but I didn't fully empathise.
• She does not deserve Cricket (who is her soul mate, her first love and practically the PERFECT BOY). But she recognises this and acknowledges it, which actually redeemed her a little bit for me.
• Lola was delusional for the majority of the novel. I get that her situation with Max and Cricket was complex, and I do see the bad-boy appeal of Max (at the beginning he was introduced as the perfect boyfriend, and let's be honest who could resist a smoking hot, older, musician boyfriend?) but it became very clear very fast that Max was not only the wrong guy for Lola, but a bad guy in general. Meanwhile, Cricket was always there. Pretty much at Lola's beck and call. Very much charming, and very much available. The choice was (seemingly) extremely easy. But Lola held onto Max, held onto her unhealthy fantasy and drug, for too long. Lucky for Lola, Cricket was steadfast and unwavering, and simply waiting for her to be ready for him. 
• Maybe one of the reasons I didn't like Lola was just how amazing a guy Cricket is. He's a great character. He's the kind of guy every girl wants as their OTL. I'm sure every girl not-so-secretly ships themselves with Cricket. He is so blindingly perfect that it's almost disgusting. 

Things I Loved:

• Cricket. Obviously! See above.
• San Francisco. The setting of the novel. The gorgeous architecture, the Victorian houses all in different pastel colours, the hilly terrain. I love that city.
• "The Boy Next Door" aspect. Cricket and Lola are next door neighbours, they are in love and what's more is their bedroom windows perfectly align so they can creep on each other (or in their case, have late night moonlit conversations) through their windows. It's unrealistic, but it's one of those fairytale situations I wish I could be in. A cute boy who is in love with me, and who I'm in love with, climbing across a makeshift bridge from his window to reach my bedroom, yes, I'll take one, thanks.

Things I didn't love:

• The book cover. I don't like having real people's faces replacing the imaginary faces I form in my head from what the book describes. The cover bothers me because the girl and guy on the front are so pose-y and obvious. I thought the guy was Max at first! Not Cricket. Because the book said Max had a tattoo of a star on his hand. And then it said Cricket had all those wristbands which then made me think the guy on the front was an amalgam of both the characters (which is kinda ridiculous I know). So there was much questioning going on which I think is so completely unnecessary and takes away from story itself. And we're all here for a good ol' storytime, not to get confused by the models on the front cover. 
• Lola, but I explained this already. :)

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Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella

Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella

(My star rating: 4 stars)
read the synopsis here

Well, despite the 'low' ratings I saw for Wedding Night on Goodreads - I was once again thrown into the wonderful world of Sophie Kinsella.

The magic and beauty of literature is that it allows your spirit to be dynamically shifted by merely looking at the words on a page.

In every Sophie Kinsella book I have read - my mood is lifted, I end up crying, and there is always, always a happy ending. For Wedding Night however, it wasn't a happy ending. It was a BEST ending. Literally, the outcome could not have possibly turned out better for the characters.

You may be wondering why I only gave it a four star rating instead of the usual 4.5 or 5 I normally award S.K. books, so I'm going to tell you why.

The characters were lovely; I did like them a lot, and it was really cool (and necessary) to switch between the narrators Lottie and Fliss, but the hero/s and heroine/s didn't exactly have the (for lack of a better term) epic-ness that past S.K. characters had. A reason why I may have felt this is that the characters in Wedding Night are a fair bit older... Lottie is 33 years old and Fliss is 38. Lottie is all about settling down and Fliss has a 7 year old son and is getting through her divorce. Of course we still get packs and packs of crazy behaviour from the protagonists and lucky for us there are two of them. Double trouble!

The plot didn't have as many layers as I was expecting/hoping for... normally with S.K. you get a huge scandal simmering away underneath the upper layers of plottiness and relationshippy romance stuff. Wedding Night didn't really have that, although that doesn't mean there weren't any heart-wrenching, sob-inducing moments, coz there were a few of those. For example when Fliss has her breakdown in the hotel and Lorcan ushers her into the steamroom to cry it out, or when Richard goes to Arthur to find out about the fire that happened fifteen years ago all to soothe away Lottie's fears, or when he walks up to Lottie on the beachside on Ikinos island and tells Lottie he loves her even though all the hotel guests are watching and her husband is standing right there.

Wedding Night was a funny, light and easy read that still brought out of the all the emotions. So for that I give it full props! Sophie Kinsella still remains one of my favourite authors and I would still recommend this book even though it is not the best S.K. novel out there.

Bonus feature!
Watch me fail at talking about this book!

Book Mash! [video]

new on my bookshelf : wedding night

 I was in Big W today and found this lovely new novel by Miss Kinsella - who, as you should well know by now, is one of my favourite authors of all time. 

I will probably start reading Wedding Night TONIGHT. 

Here is the Goodreads page for the book in case you need a lil bit more info/love Sophie Kinsella and didn't realise she had a new book out. 

OMG I just hopped onto Wedding Night's Goodreads page... I can't believe the ratings are so low! 

I really hope I enjoy this one as much as ALL her others (because I have literally read all of her other books and none disappointed me in the slightest).

Alrighty so that is what's new on my bookshelf - you might be seeing a review soon ;) but 'til then 

PEACE OUT, SAAAAAAN!

(PVP Dope Fresh Nation reference)

Lament by Maggie Stiefvater

Lament by Maggie Stiefvater

I wanted to really like this book, and I wanted so much to fall into the story and be immersed in it and feel a strong connection with the characters... but unfortunately that didn't happen. I also wanted to enjoy the writing but that didn't happen either. 

This review is gonna be a few paragraphs and two lists. Normally I would ramble but I don't wanna do that for this book because it might turn out like a complain-y negative rant. 

So first I'll tell you a bit about the story and then list the things I liked and the things I disliked about Lament.

The story is about this sixteen year old girl Deirdre (or Dee) who is a really talented musician with a frankly boring personality. She hates compliments (everyone has always told her how amazingly talented she is as a harpist and how wonderful her voice is, blahblahblah) and she is OCD about scooping icecream. Oh and she  always throws up before a performance due to nerves. Like, every time.

The book begins when she's at a musical performance competition and she MEETS THE GUY FROM HER DREAMS. He appears as she's vomiting in the bathroom and he holds her hair back. (lol) The author doesn't even establish what he was doing in her dreams in the first place. Anyway, they end up performing together (his name is Luke and he plays the flute) and take out the competition. 

I think Dee realises from the get go that there's something strange about this Luke guy. But soon she also realises there is something strange about HERSELF. She is a cloverhand. The blurb of the book says that means she can see faeries, which I don't think is explained the same way in the novel, but oh well. Dee is being stalked by faeries left, right and centre; finding four-leaf clovers EVERYWHERE. Dee nicknames one particularly creepy faerie-stalker "Freckle Freak". She also finds out that she has telekinesis and is telepathic too. Which is useful, I guess. None of this makes her character any more interesting though, sadly. 

I suppose you can already guess that Luke and Dee fall in love, BLAHBLAHBLAH. He saves her loads of times, she saves him, happy ending. 

After typing out that sentence, I pretty much don't have anything left to explain to you about the story.

TIME FOR THE LISTS!

Things I liked about Lament: 

1) The character of James, Dee's oldest and bestest friend. Whom Dee does not deserve.

2) Remember Freckle Freak? Well, Dee ended up killing him with an iron nail which led to him exploding into FLOWERS. I would love to see this moment adapted to screen.

3) The focus on music. I love music. Music is quite central to the paranormalcy of the story and to faerie-culture, which I haven't seen a lot of in other re-tellings of fey folklore. Music is definitely a force.

4) The cover. I like the colour combo or white, black and RED. I like the splattery paint blobs, the musical notation, the dove and the cage. I don't like the tagline, however.

Things I disliked about Lament:

1) Maggie Stiefvater's writing - the imagery, the dialogue, the lack of speech tags, I just had so many problems with it. The writing didn't flow for me because every other page I would have to stop and just be awestruck by how nonsensical/unrealistic/tacky the writing would be. Sorry, Maggie. I do like you as a person!

2) The characters (bar James). I didn't particularly like Deirdre or Luke, or their relationship (which seemed forced and frankly unbelievable). But most of my loathing is directed towards Delia, the evil aunt. She wasn't hashed out very well - she was definitely presented as the ultimate villain, YET she was NOT the antagonist to Dee the protagonist. The Queen was. 

Now it may seem from the lists above that I liked the book more than I disliked it, but honestly in terms of importance - writing style and characterisation trump those four other things by MILES. I'm bummed I didn't enjoy the writing and that the characters weren't more endearing, but unfortunately that's the general impression I got from the book. :(

My STAR Rating: THREE STARS (out of five, obvz!)

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzimiya by Nagaru Tanigawa is a sci-fi YA novel written in Japanese and translated into English by Chris Pai. I found this little book when I was in New York in December, strolling through the children's section of the Strand bookstore. At first I thought the novel might be Middle Grade rather than YA but then I noticed the "AGES 15 & UP" sign on the back cover. 

To be honest, I didn't finish reading it. It's barely 200 pages in length but I felt so disconnected to the story, the characters and the writing I didn't see what I would gain in reading the last quarter. It definitely had potential in the beginning and even in the middle(ish), and I could forgive all the unexplained things that were introduced at the start because the author was beginning to explain things further on.... but then about 2/3 of the way through, events got a bit crazy, I felt lost and I didn't expect or want my reading of the book to be a difficult one. A lot of time travel/alien things got thrown at me and I felt like they weren't introduced in a way that enticed me to find out more, instead I felt the opposite. So that's mainly why I didn't read on after that point.

But anyway let me tell you a little about the plot.

The protagonist is Kyon, a boy (and also an alien with ESP) who goes to North High school and is in a club called the SOS Brigade with his friends (who are also aliens or time travellers; one is even a robot). It's one week before Christmas Eve and the leader of the group, Hiruhi, is decorating their clubroom and planning their Christmas party. The next day, Kyon wakes up in a parallel universe. The SOS Brigade doesn't exist, Hiruhi doesn't even go to North High, the girl Kyon likes doesn't recognise him, all his friends are now human, his cat doesn't talk anymore and the only chance he has to find out what's happened to him is through his shy, no-longer-robot friend, Nagato. 

That's the simple basis of the novel. 

I didn't particularly like Kyon.. at all, actually. He wasn't UN-likable, but just kind of... a typical teenage boy. His character didn't seem very unique, other than the fact that he had ESP (which wasn't mentioned until later and had me confused as to why his dialogue never had quotation marks). One problem I had was that he felt attracted to all three major female characters in the novel. It wasn't exactly the most affable trait. He didn't have to go on and on about how beautiful Hiruhi was, or how cute Nagato was, or how well-endowed Asahina was. He didn't have to mention having fantasies or dreams about Asahina. He didn't have to tell us those details. I suppose when a writer takes on 1st person POV narrative, they have to know they're investing a lot in that character.

The English translation definitely detracted from the novel a bit - I had to get used to the style of writing. There's always going to be something that gets lost in translation, but it wasn't that big of an issue though. This novel is part of a series, and I suppose another major reason why I didn't finish it is because it didn't explain things for me to understand the story well enough to enjoy it. And this detracted from the novel even more so than the translation. A lot of the time travel/alien aspects referred to terms and other things I think the author may have assumed the reader to know already from the past books of the series. So as one whole, or as a stand-alone, this book doesn't fair that well. 

I bought the book on a whim, really... I was intrigued by the cover and the fact it was written by a Japanese writer, but the book alone just didn't do it for me. Maybe I'll watch the movie to get a better idea of the characters and setting and pick it up again later on. 

STAR RATING : 2.5 out of 5

Bookshelf Scavenger Hunt TAG!!!

In case you didn't know... I am kinda addicted to YouTube. And I have been for many years.
I knew about the booktubers (bookish youtubers/vloggers), but I never really subbed to many. Recently though, I found this Aussie booktuber (her channel is LittleBookOwl) and she posted the Bookshelf Scavenger Hunt TAG and it looked like SO MUCH FUN. So I decided to do it too!
The last tag video I did was the Divergent Tag and that was months and months and months ago.
I hope you click play and enjoy my version of the Scavenger Hunt Tag! And if you've done it too, link me to it in a comment on this post or a comment on the video :)

P.S. Sorry I haven't been posting. I haven't had the time to read leisurely (which is a terrible excuse for not taking the effort to make the time...) and I've also been quite depressed and feeling extremely apathetic towards life.

But a few days ago I stumbled across polandbananasBOOKS... aka Christine on youtube. Her videos are passionate, hilarious and they've refueled me a bit and given me some book lovin' motivation to jump into the wonderful world of YA fiction (or just fiction in general) again.

Currently I'm trying to read Ulysses by James Joyce for my Modernism unit in English. It's really, really tough-going. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone in their right mind would voluntarily read this 800 page painstaking trek of a novel. 

Anyway enough of rambling from me. Let me know what you thought of the tag video! I love tags; they're so fun to do so if you have any other TAG rec's, throw them my way! 

x

... So this excites me..

It looks so bad-ass. 

Lily Collins looks amazing as Clary... and Jamie Campbell Bower, YES PLEASE. The casting in general looks awesome. Lena Headey as the mum? I am gonna love this. 

Definitely looking forward to it when it comes out.

Also back last year when I heard they were making the film adaptation of City of Bones I got out my unread copy of the book and started reading. I haven't finished it yet but I do like it and will hopefully finish it before the movie is released. 

ANYWAY... back to writing essays.

{Sorry I've been AWOL - I thought a little apology, however pathetic, was well overdue.}