Novel Review: Isla and the Happily Ever After (Anna and the French Kiss, #3) by Stephanie Perkins

Rating (Out of 5): ~4.5

Genre: YA Contemporary Romance

Publisher: Dutton (Penguin)

Release Date: August 14, 2014

Spoilers?: No.

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

Teaser Tuesday. Wishlist Thursday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

From the glittering streets of Manhattan to the moonlit rooftops of Paris, falling in love is easy for hopeless dreamer Isla and introspective artist Josh. But as they begin their senior year in France, Isla and Josh are quickly forced to confront the heartbreaking reality that happily-ever-afters aren’t always forever.

Their romantic journey is skillfully intertwined with those of beloved couples Anna and Étienne and Lola and Cricket, whose paths are destined to collide in a sweeping finale certain to please fans old and new.

The Cover:

I really like this cover. Of course, it drives me crazy that it doesn't match the previous books on my shelf, but I still think it's really pretty. It's simple, modern, very pretty to look at. The background represents the setting in the book (which is significant to the books), as well as giving a kind of understated love story feel. The physical books also have that odd (rubbery?) finish on them that I think fits. I think it's lovely.

Quotes:

• "My mouth is painted red. Maman once told me to place the boldest color where I want people to look.” (Hardback, pg. 76-77)
• "'For a certain type of person, high school will always be brutal,’ the head says. ‘The best advice that I can give you is to figure out what comes next, and work toward that.’” (Pg. 221) [The head, as in the principal of the school.]
• "'And it started these ideas in my head about how maybe I wasn’t the person that I thought I was. Maybe I’m not a city girl. Maybe I was only thinking about Paris versus New York, because nothing else seemed real, somehow. Like, everywhere else just seemed like something—‘
  ‘You’d read about in a book.’” (Pg. 298)
• "'Artists are inspired by blank canvases.’ […] ‘A blank canvas,’ Josh continues, ‘has unlimited possibilities.’” (Pg. 329)

Review:

This book was pretty much everything I wanted it to be. I mean, I don’t think anything can beat Lola and the Boy Next Door, but this one was just as good as the first. I loved it. It was everything I hoped it would be.

Isla has been in love with Josh for about four years now, but she’s barely talked to him, and is pretty sure he doesn’t even know she exists. Her best friend, Kurt, has autism, and they’re pretty much loners. But then Isla runs into Josh while high on Vicodin, and thus starts her budding romance with him.

I liked Isla, a lot. She’s shy, clumsy, and doesn’t know how to really make friends. She does some growing up, though. She’s a little angsty over Josh for a while, but not in a way that bothered me even a little (although, I don’t know, maybe it will some people?). But she realizes that she’s her own problem, and she needs to put herself out there and grow. I think I actually related to Isla the most of the three so far. Kurt was great, too, and it was nice to see them grow apart while still being best friends.

Josh is great. I really like that both characters have to do a lot of growing up, together and apart, and that they realize this. Josh has to grow up about his parents and his life, and he has to learn to look at his comic with at least some objectivism.

Similar to in the previous book, the characters realize that they need to know who they are as a person, on their own, before they can really be in a committed relationship with someone else, but that they can also learn and explore who they are with someone else. That’s important, and I like the focus it had.

The writing was great, and the book went by much too fast. The pace was perfect, I think, not too little or too much time on anything. The only reason I would have wanted more would be to have more time with the characters. There were cameos from the other characters, and I loved that. I always want more time with the previous characters (always), but we got enough of a glimpse to really see them, see how they’re doing, along with a very nice update on two of them.

The humor was perfect—I’m always smiling and laughing while reading Perkins’ books. The romance was also very good, with a lot of swoon, a lot of cute and sweet scenes. The ending was fantastic.

Overall, this book was everything I wanted it to be. I’m perfectly happy with it, and of course excited for anything else Perkins publishes next.

Novel Review: White Lines by Jennifer Banash

Rating (Out of 5): ~3 (maybe 3.5)

Genre: YA Historical (Romance)

Publisher: Penguin (Putnam)

Publish Date: April 4th, 2013

Spoilers?: Some (nothing huge).

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

Teaser Tuesday.

Goodreads Synopsis:

A gritty, atmospheric coming of age tale set in 1980s New York City.

Seventeen-year-old Cat is living every teenager’s dream: she has her own apartment on the Lower East Side and at night she’s club kid royalty, guarding the velvet rope at some of the hottest clubs in the city. The night with its crazy, frenetic, high-inducing energy—the pulsing beat of the music, the radiant, joyful people and those seductive white lines that can ease all pain—is when Cat truly lives. But her daytime, when real life occurs, is more nightmare than dream. Having spent years suffering her mother’s emotional and physical abuse, and abandoned by her father, Cat is terrified and alone—unable to connect to anyone or anything. But when someone comes along who makes her want to truly live, she’ll need to summon the courage to confront her demons and take control of a life already spinning dangerously out of control.

Both poignant and raw, White Lines is a gripping tale and the reader won’t want to look away.

Something Specific:

Quotes!:

• "Who really needs to do advanced algebra in everyday life? It's not like I'll be at the supermarket someday and suddenly need to solve some complicated algorithm just to figure out whether or not I have enough change for a box of Fruit Roll-Ups." (ARC, pg. 4)
• "'See something you like?' He raises one dark eyebrow and I feel like I'm going to spontaneously combust, which is what always happens when someone potentially interesting talks to me in the real world." (ARC, pg. 24)
• "All I am is myself. I am myself so fully from such a young age that it is painful to watch as she tries to remake me in her own image. I fight from the very beginning..." (ARC, pg. 198)

 

Review:

I started this book, for some reason, not knowing that it was going to have a heavy drug plot. After I started the book and looked back at the synopsis and title, I was a bit dumbfounded on how I had missed that. I think, maybe, that I saw abuse and zeroed in on that alone.

The drug bit made me slow down at first, just because I don’t tend to really enjoy drug related things, including storylines, and I must say that I am definitely biased in that, but I got through the book. It had some good parts. And some not so good parts.

Cat, who is seventeen and living in the 1980’s, is living on her own because her mother is abusive and her father doesn’t want her. While going to school during the day, some of the time, she works at this club downtown at night, where she also does drugs and parties all night long. She’s still trying to deal with the after-effects of the abuse from her mother, both physical and emotional, while also trying to deal with the drugs and school work and her friends and how alone she feels.

I was not a huge fan of Cat. For one, I’m not a fan of partying and doing drugs so irresponsibly, particularly when you know you shouldn’t be doing it and are not even really enjoying it at times, but I’m biased in that. Maybe other people won’t be so bothered by that. My biggest problem with Cat, I think, is that I, personally, didn’t really connect with her. I didn’t like how she reacted to her mother at first, or how she didn’t really try very hard with her father, or how she acted to her friends, or with what she did with her boss, a forty-ish year old man. I did like when she kind of angsted over her past, and I did like her near the end of the book, when she finally stepped up and decided to do something about her life. That made the book’s rating jump up about a half star.

A problem that I had with the book was that I didn’t really feel her addiction to the drugs. I think maybe she just was trying to take her mind off of everything, which is true, but not that it had to be drugs that did it. Because there was a part during the book that she was so busy with other stuff that she wasn’t even really doing any drugs, or thinking about them at all. And even though she says at the end that she’s fighting her addiction, her addiction didn’t really feel real to me in the first place.

I also didn’t really like the romantic parts of the book. I didn’t like the thing with her boss, as I said above, because he was a creepy jerk and it was all around dumb, but I also didn’t really feel anything with the boy from her school. Their romance just didn’t really connect for me, and they didn’t really hang out a whole lot, even though they were supposedly still together at the end of the book.

The main part about the romance, though, was how both men tried pushing her into sex, and then when she said no, they got all pissed, like they deserved it and were expecting it just because she agreed to go out with them/invited them inside. And that’s crap. Especially how she didn’t even really acknowledge how they acted or that it was wrong of them to do that. But it might have been purposeful, and because of the time that the book is set in, which, if so, then okay. If not, then that’s crap.

I mostly liked her friends. Particularly Sara and how she pushed Cat, but also Giovanni, because I felt bad for him. He just needed someone to be there for him, and it seemed like his life was looking up by the end of the book. I also felt like Cat’s father should have done something more, but think that their relationship was a lot better, and still getting better, by the end of the book.

The ending was my favorite part. Because everything had rounded up and was getting better, was looking much brighter for all of the characters, and I’m happy about that.

 A review copy was provided by Cuddlybuggery's Little Blogger, Big Ambitions project and Christina of A Reader of Fictions. Thank you so much!