To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before

August 25, 2018August 25, 20187 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Jenny Han
Genres: Young Adult
Pub date: Apr. 2014 (read Aug. 2018)

I’ve known about this book for ages, but it sounded pretty juvenile and vapid, so I decided to give it a pass. But then I saw the ad for the Netflix movie and it looked super cute, so I decided to finally pick this up and give it a read. I flew through it in my 25infive readathon, reading it in a single day. I definitely still think it’s juvenile, but it was also really cute and did have more depth than I was expecting.

The main reason I liked this is primarily because it’s about sisters. Lara Jean has 2 sisters, Margot and Kitty, and together they make up the cutest little family. Kitty was easily my favourite and I loved how this book focused so much on the relationships between the sisters, not just on boys.

The premise of the story is that whenever Lara Jean has a crush that she wants to get over, she writes them a goodbye letter (that she keeps in a hat box in her closet) and that helps her move on from her crush. Embarrassingly, one of her crushes is her friend Josh, who is now Margot’s boyfriend. But Margot and Josh break up at the start of the book when Margot moves to Scotland for University, causing a resurgence in Lara Jean’s feelings for Josh.

She vows to do nothing and move on, but then her letters somehow end up getting sent out to the 5 boys she has loved before and everything changes. Josh is totally taken aback by the letter, and to save face, Lara Jean starts a fake relationship with one her other former crushes, Peter.

I’ve read some criticisms that Lara Jean’s voice is too young for a 16 year old, but her naivete is actually one of the other things I liked about this book. She’s interested in boys, but at the same time totally scared of them and puts all her efforts into her relationships with her sisters instead. I thought it was great to showcase relationships between sisters and that not every teenage girl is just obsessed with boys.

There’s not really any surprises in this book. It’s a short, feel good YA book. Nothing groundbreaking – but a fun quick, summer read.

Radio Silence

August 22, 20187 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Author: Alice Oseman
Genres: Young Adult
Pub date: Feb. 2016 (read Aug. 2018)

Okay, this was pretty fantastic. I cannot believe the author is currently only 24 FREAKING YEARS OLD! I opened up this book and caught a glimpse of her author pic and was like, omg this girl looks like she’s 12. But never underestimate young people because seriously, who can write teenagers better than someone who was basically a teenager when they wrote it.

There’s a lot of really great things happening in this book, but what struck me most is how honest these characters are. After I finished this I immediately picked up a copy of Gretchen McNeil’s Ten, which is a young adult mystery/thriller, and spoiler alert, the dialogue and characters are really bad. Coming out of this book, I immediately noticed that McNeil’s characters were more like caricatures of teenagers rather than actual teenagers. This isn’t a review of Ten, but it was such a contrast to Radio Silence, that it really highlighted to me how great the characters are in this book.

Radio Silence primarily features two teens, Frances and Aled. Frances is head girl at her school and has worked insanely hard her entire life with the end goal of getting into an English Lit program at Cambridge University. Likewise, Aled felt a huge pressure from his mom to succeed in life by attending a prestigious university and has been accepted to a program starting in the fall (he is one year older than Frances).

However, Aled’s secret is that he is the creator of a mildly popular science fiction podcast called Universe City. Frances’ secret is that she’s a huge fan of the podcast and posts fan art to Tumblr under an alias. Aled and Frances both feel pressured to be different people in their real lives than they are in private and Frances regularly acknowledges that she has a school persona and a real persona. When a chance encounter leads them to discover they both love Universe City, they collaborate on the project and develop a really close friendship.

This book features a super diverse cast of characters, both in racial and sexual identity. But my favourite part of the book was the platonic relationship between Frances and Aled. Oseman tells us from the start that this will not be a love story. It’s such a brilliant move because it acknowledges all of the different types of relationships that exist between people and that you don’t have to write a romantic relationship to write a good story. Frances and Aled genuinely both really cared about each other and I loved that this novel showcased that.

My second favourite part of this book was the realistic portrayal of the amount of stress society places on young people to go to university and succeed academically. I suspect there’s a large contingent of people out there that can’t relate to Frances and Aled’s need to be top of their class and the pressure to go to an ivy league university, but I’m sure there are a lot of people out there that don’t excel academically and are made to feel inferior by either not getting into university or not wanting to go.

In some way or another, I think everyone feels insecure in high school. Some people feel the need to excel in academia, others in sports or in the arts. Some people don’t care about any of that and just want a group of people in which to belong or an escape from their sometimes less than ideal home situation. We have a tendency to compare ourselves to those around us, especially in the social media age, and there’s a huge amount of pressure to fit in. There are not many novels written about college or the transition to college, and I thought this was a wonderful portrayal about that period.

In addition to Frances and Aled, Radio Silence features a wonderful cast of secondary characters. I thought Frances’ mom was wonderful and I loved how she supported Frances and in return, how Frances was always very open and honest with her. I loved how the friendships developed in this novel and how Frances eventually came to be close with both Daniel and Raine as well.

Overall I thought this was a fantastic book. It’s captivating in it’s honesty. Every character was portrayed so well and I had no problem believing in the authenticity of each of these people. Well done Alice Oseman, I’m excited to check out her new book, I Was Born For This.

Leah on the Offbeat

August 17, 20182 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Author: Becky Albertalli
Genres: Young Adult, LBGTQIA+
Pub date: Apr. 2018 (read Aug. 2018)

I really wanted to love this…. I may be the only person on the planet who liked, but didn’t love, Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda, and that’s pretty much the same way I feel about Leah on the Offbeat.

All of Becky Albertalli’s books are fantastically diverse and I’m so glad they exist, but this was just so predictable and it doesn’t have all that much going on in the plot. This book follows Simon’s story and is focused on his best friend Leah, but I don’t think it’s really necessary to have read the first book. Even though Simon came out as gay, Leah struggles to come out as bi to any of her friends. She’s in her senior year and as much as she hates to admit it, she is really sad that she’s going to have to say goodbye to all of her friends at the end of the year and becomes defensive and confrontational with many of the people in her life.

I know teenagers are moody and that Leah starts pushing everyone in her life away to avoid having to feel sad about saying goodbye to them, but I thought she was a bit mean at times. She’s pretty hard on her mom and the smallest comment from any of her friends would set her off. It just bothered me that she made this huge deal out of Morgan’s racist comment when she was throwing tantrums about anything said to her that she deemed to be the least bit offensive. Was Morgan wrong, absolutely, but I feel like white people also feel this right to be offended by everything and Leah definitely embraced that little bit of white privilege.

I just felt like Leah’s character was super inconsistent and kind of mean, but there were never any consequences for her. I thought she was unreasonable at times and I thought several of the characters made questionable and sometimes problematic choices that were never really acknowledged. Leah lies to Garrett and never apologizes, she totally drops Anna from her life and basically forgets about her and Morgan, Nick’s entitlement to be mad at Abby and then be a total hypocrite about her feelings, and basically everyone being mean to Taylor. She was in Leah’s band… like they must somewhat be friends, but apparently everyone seems to hate her. Plus, Leah is super rude to her mom, who is supposedly like her best friend. I liked that her mom called her out on just giving up on life whenever something doesn’t go her way, but she basically just continued to do that I just wanted to yell at her whiny ass to get over herself.

I loved that Leah was an ally, I loved that the story had gay and bi-sexual couples, I loved that Leah was a fat girl who didn’t feel bad about being fat or feel like she needed to go on a diet. But I felt like Albertalli was just throwing her progressiveness in my face. It’s weird for me to feel this way because I believe wholeheartedly in everything Albertalli was trying to do with this book, it just felt really forced to me. I don’t need Leah to tell me she’s an ally, or that she loves her body, just show me that she’s an ally who loves her body. Readers are pretty smart and it just irked me that everything was spelled out for me. SHOW DON’T TELL.

I know I’m no longer in the intended audience for YA books, but I usually don’t have a problem with well written YA books as I feel they can still be relevant to people at any age, but this one just felt a little too juvenille or me. Anyways, it’s just a personal opinion. I know a lot of people love this and I’m really glad it exists for teenagers. But it just wasn’t a favourite for me.

A Girl Like That

May 18, 20183 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐.5
Author: Tanaz Bhathena
Genres: Young Adult
Pub Date: Feb. 2018 (read Apr. 2018 as Audiobook)

I listened to A Girl Like That as an audiobook and I’m really not sure what to make of it. I wonder what it would be like to read as an actual book because I found it extremely hard to follow as an audiobook, which makes it hard to review.

The story was super interesting in that it takes place in Saudi Arabia. I haven’t read any books about Saudi before, but I know they are not a very advanced nation when it comes to women’s rights. Most notorious I think is that women aren’t allowed to drive. This is really just the tip of the iceberg though and this book made me furious on behalf of women living in Saudi Arabia and the injustice of how they are treated by men, the government, and the religious police. The depth to which sexism and rape culture is ingrained into society in this book was truly frightening, but sadly not unbelievable.

This book tells the story of teenager Zarin Wadia, who ends up dead in a car crash with a boy named Porus (not a spoiler, happens in the first chapter). Rumours had been speculating about what kind of girl Zarin was and that her loose morals led her to this grizzly end, but as the story flashbacks we learn more about her character and what kind of girl she actually was. The pressures and strains placed on her by her family and classmates, and the injustice of what it means to be powerless and a woman in Saudi Arabia.

Its told from several different points of view and I think this is what confused me because it’s not always evident in the audiobook what character is narrating. Both Porus and Zarin narrate, along with a number of their classmates. I really wanted to like this and I definitely appreciate the author for telling this story, but sadly it just wasn’t an enjoyable reading experience for me. I might have enjoyed this better as a book rather than in audio form because I also didn’t like the narrators, but 2.5 stars for this experience.

Love, Hate & Other Filters

April 18, 20186 Comments

Rating: ⭐⭐
Author: Samira Ahmed
Genres: Young Adult
Pub Date: Jan. 2018 (read Apr. 2018)

This was disappointing. I picked this from my library’s limited selection of audiobooks because I’ve been having a lot of success with Young Adult audiobook’s lately and I’ve been seeing some buzz about it.

To be honest, I didn’t even look at the synopsis, I just new it was about an Indian teenager who was into film. I didn’t like the Maya’s voice from the beginning and I found her such a whiny narrator to listen to. When I hit the 20% mark and this book was still just a surface level romance novel, I debated DNFing and went back to look at the synopsis. When I realized the main premise of this book was actually supposed to be about a terrorist attack and the struggles many Muslim people suffer to be accepted after any terrorist attack, I decided to stick it out.

I appreciate what Samira Ahmed was trying to do with this book. She addressed several different themes: the struggle of Indian daughters to breakaway from their parents expectations, the struggle of any teenager to pursue a career in something as unstable as the film industry, and the xenophobia and hate against Muslims and those who are “othered” in the United States. These are all great themes and I was interested in exploring the different ways people react in the aftermath of a tragedy and how some people let their hate overcome them, while others fight for those who are marginalized. But I thought the execution in this book was terrible.

Honestly, this was a romance novel with a brief look at some of the themes I’ve discussed above. It didn’t explore any of these themes in any great depth and I thought all of the characters emotions were very surface level. This book had more unyielding parents (I’ve read a lot of books of this nature lately), but the drama felt really forced and not authentic. In theory I understood that Maya’s parents were trying to protect their daughter in a world that is not very kind, but no one used any reason in this book (Maya included), except for her Aunt, and everyone felt extremely 1-dimensional. The main story was ultimately a romance and it wasn’t a very well written one. It was so cliche and I just couldn’t help rolling my eyes through the entire thing. This book just had so much more potential, but it got bogged down with a heavy romance and the author barely explored any of the complex themes she introduced into the story.

Even though this tacked something I haven’t seen addressed much in literature, I would not recommend this book. It was too poorly written and executed. Pick up I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, The Nowhere Girls, or The Poet X instead.