Manga Review: Love Me, Love Me Not, Volume 1, by Io Sakisaka

Rating (Out of 5): ~4

Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)

Release Date: March 2020

Volumes: 12.

Spoilers?: Light, just on relationships with the boys.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells. RightStuf.

Volume: 2.

Goodreads Synopsis:

A new romance from Io Sakisaka, leading shojo manga creator and author of Ao Haru Ride!

Four friends share the springtime of their youth together.

Fast friends Yuna and Akari are complete opposites: Yuna is an idealist while Akari is a realist. When lady-killer Rio and the oblivious Kazuomi join their ranks, love and friendship become quite complicated!

Review:

Just as both Yuna and Akari are saying goodbye to their friends who are moving away, they stumble upon each other, and thus form a new friendship. They form a friendship quickly, but they have very different ideals. Yuna is romantic and more easily influenced, believing that she can find her prince. Akari, on the other hand, believes anyone can fall in love with anyone if they want to, and is a bit more realistic in her relationships.

With such different views on romance alone, they're bound to have some disagreements. When Yuna finds out that Akari might have come between a couple, that sparks their first potential fight. It shows some maturity, though, when Yuna realizes what she's doing and decides to be up-front with Akari about it.

From the get-go, we meet two love interests. Akari's brother is one, and that shows an interesting depth to his character. Instead of getting to see him as stuck-up or princely, we get to see multiple sides of him, including as Akari calls him out on how he's acting and coming across. I really appreciated this aspect. Then there's Yuna's childhood friend, who I think I'm going to be a fan of.

We get to see both sides of the stories here, both girls perspective, which is nice. They're very different, and we don't get multiple protagonists like this very often in manga. I'm excited to see how their stories develop.

A review copy was provided by the publisher, VIZ Media, for an honest review. Thank you so, so much!

Giveaway!

Since I received an extra copy of this volume, I figured I'd try a giveaway for it. I've given a couple of different options to enter, since I know some people follow me on different formats.
Giveaway runs from 4/13 thru 12AM on 4/20 (Sunday night). US only. 

No purchase necessary, no information will be given away or used for anything else.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Novel Review: Five Summers by Una LaMarche

Rating (Out of 5): ~3

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: RazorBill (Penguin)

Release Date: 2013

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Teaser Tuesday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Bittersweet, funny, and achingly honest, Five Summersis a story of friendship, love, and growing up that is perfect for fans of Ann Brashare's The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Judy Blume's Summer Sisters.

Four best friends, five summers of camp memories

Emma, Skylar, Jo, and Maddie have all come back to camp for a weekend of tipsy canoe trips to the island, midnight skinny dipping in the lake, and an epic game of capture the flag—boys versus girls. But the weekend isn't quite as sunwashed as they'd imagined as the memories come flooding back. . . .

The summer we were nine: Emma was branded “Skylar’s friend Emma” by the infamous Adam Loring . . .
The summer we were ten: Maddie realized she was too far into her lies to think about telling the truth . . .
The summer we were eleven: Johanna totally freaked out during her first game of Spin the Bottle . . .
The summer we were twelve: Skylar’s love letters from her boyfriend back home were exciting to all of us—except Skylar . . .
Our last summer together: Emma and Adam almost kissed. Jo found out Maddie’s secret. Skylar did something unthinkable . . . and whether we knew it then or not, five summers of friendship began to fall apart.

A young adult book with a friendship story that will last long after the last s'more is gone.

The Cover:

I like this cover. It's a little simple, but pretty. There's more drama in the book than it portrays, perhaps, and not so much happy-go-lucky, but I do think that it shows a good idea of what you're getting. I like that it's showing them at camp, and there are four girls.

Quotes:

• "'You are my rose, never my thorn, and through these pledges, friendship is sworn.’” (Hardback, pg. 11)
• "Nothing left to the last minute ever turns out the way you want it to; that’s when the most mistakes get made.” (Pg. 15)

Review:

I expected to love this book. I found it cheap, but it was already on my radar. It sounded like a fun contemporary book, and I’d heard pretty good things.

About half of the book is in Emma’s point of view, and I just did not care for her. She was boring and normal, and I just didn’t care for her viewpoint much at all. Her biggest storyline was with Skylar, and how she was in love with Adam, and I didn’t care much for her either. Skylar's big problem was that her father was always putting her down and she was always fooling around with a lot of guys she didn’t love. She was mostly just forgettable, though.

The other half was about Jo and Maddie. Jo is a tomboy, her father runs the camp they’re at, and her mom wants her to like makeup. Jo likes boys, and she’s a bit insecure at times, but she likes herself and wants to have her friends back. I liked Jo a lot, especially near the end. Her father was super sweet, and I liked her romance a lot. I also liked her friendship with Maddie, and how even though Maddie had been lying, they were still close. Maddie as a character was all right, sweet and getting over a breakup, better than Emma.

The last quarter of the book was exciting, when everything had finally come out and the girls were fighting and arguing and then overcoming their issues. But the rest of the ending, and the whole beginning, I just didn’t care much for. I was bored a lot of the time, and then I didn’t like Emma, and at least half of the book was her. I could have done with the entire book being in Jo and Maddie’s point of view. Adam was a jerk, and I did like how the friendship message was pushed all the way through.

Overall an all right book; I liked some parts more than others.

Novel Review: The View From the Top by Hillary Frank

Rating (Out of 5): ~1

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Dutton (Penguin)

Release Date: 2010

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Powells.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Eighteen-year-old Anabelle?s last few months in her coastal hometown are bittersweet. Instead of the quiet precollege summer she expects, Anabelle makes some surprising discoveries about herself as she navigates romantic entanglements and changing friendships. Through shifting points of view in seven interconnected stories, we glimpse the limits of how well her friends really know Anabelle . . . and how little she grasps about the way they see her. With wry observations and quirky humor, critically acclaimed novelist Hillary Frank gives voice and depth to six unique characters whose stories intertwine to form a complete picture of one shared summer.

The Cover:

I honestly love this cover. I think it's beautiful, the colors and the image of the Ferris wheel, and it even fits a scene inside the book. I do think it's beauty is misleading, though, because the book was not nearly as good or symbolic as this picture portrays.

Review:

"'That they can stay together. That they can be high school sweethearts and stay together. I just thought, if you’re devoted enough, if you never stop showing each other that you’re totally, completely in love, you can get through anything.’” (Hardback, pg. 121)

I’m honestly just disappointed in this book.

I thought it sounded really good, and I love multiple point of view stories, and the cover is really pretty. I felt like this was going to be a good book. And then it really wasn’t.

It starts out just kind of boring, as we meet the first character, the one who entwines all of the other stories. But then we meet the other characters, and find out that pretty much all of them are in love with her, even the other girl character, and then we get to the end.

I was just expecting so much more, so much more complications and twists and plot. Instead it’s all kind of boring. Nothing big happens. I didn’t understand why all the characters loved this girl, whom I didn’t really care for, and it didn’t even seem like she loved herself. The ending was okay, but nothing really happened. It didn’t feel deserving or satisfactory, and it kind of just ends.

I was just disappointed. I was expecting to like it, and instead I really didn’t.

Novel Review: A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall

Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5

Genre: YA/NA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Swoon Reads (Feiwel and Friends)

Release Date: August 26, 2014

Spoilers?: No.

Buy it here: Amazon. Barnes and Noble. Book Depository. Powells.

Wishlist Thursday. Teaser Tuesday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

 The creative writing teacher, the delivery guy, the local Starbucks baristas, his best friend, her roommate, and the squirrel in the park all have one thing in common—they believe that Gabe and Lea should get together. Lea and Gabe are in the same creative writing class. They get the same pop culture references, order the same Chinese food, and hang out in the same places. Unfortunately, Lea is reserved, Gabe has issues, and despite their initial mutual crush, it looks like they are never going to work things out.  But somehow even when nothing is going on, something is happening between them, and everyone can see it. Their creative writing teacher pushes them together. The baristas at Starbucks watch their relationship like a TV show. Their bus driver tells his wife about them. The waitress at the diner automatically seats them together. Even the squirrel who lives on the college green believes in their relationship.

Surely Gabe and Lea will figure out that they are meant to be together....

The Cover:

I really like this cover. I think it's cute, the colors work really well and the image represents the book perfectly. It gives the right feel. And the physical book even has a nice texture.

Quote:

• "'Though I don’t know, I feel like something gets lost in translation by not waiting until you’re twenty-one.’” (Paperback, pg. 120) [Commented on using a fake ID to drink before legal age.]

Review:

I enjoyed this book, don’t get me wrong, but I kind of expected to love it a lot more.

This is a love story about Gabe and Lea, two college students who seem to have a lot in common. Only it’s told from fourteen points of view, not including theirs, but starring Lea’s roommate, Gabe’s brother, Gabe's best friend, a squirrel, their creative writing teacher, among several others.

I do think their story was told rather well. You got to see some of their thoughts, as well as see how everyone else was reacting to them, including everyone believing they belong together. I enjoyed meeting all the other characters, seeing their sides of the story, although I think I was hoping to see more of their own lives intermingled with their thoughts on Lea and Gabe’s. And while I do think that Lea and Gabe’s story was portrayed pretty well, I do think that not including Lea and Gabe’s own thoughts on what was happening was a missed opportunity. It could have given the story a more rounded view, I think.

Still, I thought this was a cute story. I enjoyed Lea’s roommate, Gabe’s brother and best friend, the Chinese delivery guy, and the squirrel was cute. I thought that the way Gabe’s past was hinted at before being revealed was pretty well done.

I wanted to like this more, but I still think it was pretty good, and it was a neat way of telling the story. I look forward to reading the other Swoon Reads books set to be released. Some of them sound very interesting, and I’m intrigued by this new label, to see what kind of stories come from it.