So, here I am, more than a month after finishing this novel, trying to write a review. Sigh. First of all, I enjoyed reading this YA outing, as much as you can enjoy a novel where one of the main characters is bipolar but doesn’t seem to fully understand what that means. It’s the story of two very different teenagers, trying to survive high school but for very different reasons. Finch is the classic loner, obsessed with death, smart but unable to fully follow the […]
Blah blah blah…great book…great characters…BRAD PITT CAN’T RECOGNIZE FACES…
Seriously, I’m not sure I can even get past the news that Brad Pitt has a disorder that prevents him from recognizing faces. According to Holding up the Universe, one in every 50 people has this disorder, and I’m overwhelmed with this information. Brad Pitt must be so surprised every time he looks in the mirror! Or when he sees his handsome friends, beautiful children, or gorgeous ex-wives. I really can’t get over this. Like Brad, one of the two narrators of this book has […]
“But hey man, we’ve all got something. We’re all weird and damaged in our own way. You’re not the only one…”
From the author of my hysterical sobbing jag of 2015 (Or as it was sold under, All the Bright Things) comes the sweet, romantic story of Libby and Jack. Libby was once the world’s fattest teen. Now, years later she has lost half of her weight and is about to return to regular school. Jack passes himself off as a normal guy, but has realized that he has prosopagnosia, which means that he can’t recognize faces. Even his immediate family and friends are complete blanks. […]
“You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”
The reviews on Goodreads of Jennifer Niven’s All the Bright Places seem to fall into two camps: either “SQueeeee OMG this book changed my life guys so many FEEEEEELINGS” OR “This book is a lame rip off of John Green/Rainbow Rowell/other YA author”. Y’all seemed to review it fairly well overall, so I gave it a shot, and I’m glad I did. It didn’t exactly change my life, but it did make an impression and I’m glad I read it. “It’s my experience that people are a lot […]
A Wanna-Be Novel that Comes Close
Welcome to the backlog of reviews I’m going to try to start churning out now that I’m back from vacation! Hopefully at least one a day until I’m caught up (and, by then, I’ll have more since I doubt I’ll stop reading any time soon…) First up is All the Bright Places, a YA book which, according to Google, is “The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park.” I’m going to disagree on that. I think it wants to be, it tries to be, […]
Make sure you have a box of tissues ready when you read this one. Because crying.
All the Bright Places has been showing up in a lot of places lately. I saw it at the library. I noticed reviews of it online from people I trust. I saw comparisons of it to other books I really liked — I’ll Give You the Sun and Eleanor & Park, to name a few. So I knew I had to add it to the list. And I’m glad I did. It really was lovely. And sad. Did I mention it was sad? Because it was really, really sad. Violet […]