Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira

Losing someone is hard. Losing a family member is especially hard. For Laurel, losing her sister was extremely hard because she was there when her sister May died. Add in the fact that she’s not only starting high school, but also a new school all together, and she has hit the extreme angst teenager scale. Her first assignment in English class though, throws things over the top. Write a letter to a dead person

Understandably, Laurel has a little trouble with the assignment, although you wouldn’t know it when she keeps writing letters to get her feelings out. Through these letters, everything that has happened since even before her sister’s death starts to come out, especially that she feels responsible.

I wanted to like this book. Seriously. It was written really well. The characters were fantastic. The story line was just the right amount of depressing and uplifting while still being a coming of age story. But…the whole time I was reading it I had this feeling that I had read this kind of story before. Person writing letters after a tragic event, trying to fit in with new friends, and at a new school…

It was The Perks of Being a Wallflower, just instead of having Charlie writing letters to some unnamed person it was a girl writing letters to dead people.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. This book was good, I just felt like it was too much a duplicate of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library!

Now & Forever by Susane Colasanti

Like Sarah Dessen and Meg Cabot, I have a soft spot in my heart for Susane Colasanti’s books. So when she announced that she was coming out with a new book this year, I was so excited, especially when I read the summary of the book. Sterling has the perfect boyfriend. Ethan is the lead singer in a band whose about to hit it big and he only has eyes for her. But sometimes fame can change a person, and Sterling has to decide if being a rock star’s boyfriend is worth it.

Okay, so like I said when I first heard about this book I was really excited to read it. A girl dating a rock star that just got discovered? Sounds fantastic and in some ways it was. But in other ways… Yikes. Sterling is a very insecure character, and when she’s put under the microscope by the media those insecurities are multiplied. I get where Sterling is coming from, compared to those other girls and celebrities that are out there, how is she supposed to compete? But on the other hand, Ethan has said many times how she’s the only one for him, and yeah, he’s changed since the band was discovered but he still loves her.

Until he changes for the worse. Fame starts to get to his head and it shows. He becomes more self-involved and I totally agreed with Sterling when she realized that he was more about his dreams then about hers. Like when she revealed to him her idea about the cooking videos, he was so down on them, like how are these cooking videos supposed to help my career? Self-obsessed much? Even in the beginning, before he got signed, I didn’t really care for him. What was the harm of adding someone else’s song to the mix?

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. Although I didn’t care for Sterling and Ethan, it wasn’t too bad of a read. I liked the ending the best, when she realizes that she’s better off without Ethan – granted it’s after she finds out that he cheated on her – and she does her own thing.

Bookshelf worthy? Colasanti is another one of those author’s who if I had more bookshelf space I’d own everything.

The Moon and More by Sarah Dessen

One year and two months after the release of The Moon and More, I finally got around to reading the latest from Sarah Dessen. I’m not sure if it was the build up of anticipation, or knowing what I was expecting from a Sarah Dessen novel, but for the first time I found myself not really caring for the novel, at all.

Emaline works at her family’s realty company. They rent out houses to those families visiting Colby. It’s the summer before she takes off for college, and after many pages of back story you find out why she isn’t really thrilled. Her mother, Emily, met this guy in Colby the summer before her senior year of high school. They were in love and promised to try and keep their relationship together even though he didn’t live in Colby. She got pregnant, and although he tried to stay in touch and support her, he lost contact. The only thing he did was have his father send her checks every month. But at ten, Emaline had to do a family tree project and wanted to know her true roots and not her ‘dad’ who adopted her when she was three. This started a chain reaction of content that mostly had to do with her studies. Her ‘father’ promised to help her with her college tuition if she got into a good school.

She did. She gets into Columbia, but due to unforeseen circumstances, her father backs out of paying, so she goes to East U instead. Her father doesn’t even attend her high school graduation and it isn’t until he comes to town with her half-brother to sell his aunt’s house, that the story is kind of revealed. Him and his wife Leah are separating. While this is going on a documentary duo come into town to do a story on a local artist – Clyde from the bike shop in Along for the Ride – and she meets Theo.

I really wished that this book had a point. Emaline was an interesting character but the people in her life were just so…I guess the word would be annoying. Emaline’s mother, and stepsisters don’t grasp the concept of personal space, especially Margo trying to make the company better all because she has a degree. Snobbish. Emaline’s boyfriend Luke is very presumptuous and I agree that he was a sex addict. Jeez. Theo is a go-getter, and I normally don’t mind that kind of attitude but he was very snobby about it. I honestly wonder what Emaline saw in him. The only true drama in this book was when Luke cheated on her and when she finally confronts her father about what really happened with the college tuition thing.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. This book lacked Dessen’s usual witty banter and intriguing characters. And while I was happy that Emaline ended up without a romantic interest, I kind of wished it was for another reason other than the boys she had her choice between weren’t total idiots.

Bookshelf worthy? I own a copy, but I kind of wished I had rented it from the library first.  

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

When I was growing up I always wanted a younger brother or sister. After reading this book, I really want to know what I was thinking.

The concept is kind of old school, and I liked the idea of it. Lara Jean is the middle sister and has never had a boyfriend. She’s had crushes and after a while something happens to make her realize that her crush on such a person is ridiculous. To find closure she writes letters and puts them into her hatbox that her mother gave her. At the beginning of her junior year, with her older sister Margot away in Scotland for college, she is blindsides with not only having to take care of her younger sister and father, but that somehow her letters have been mailed to the boys.

What follows is a chain reaction of three of the five boys coming up to her with their letters and asking her what its all about. With all of them it’s awkward. The boys were never supposed to get those letters. But it’s really awkward when one of the boys is her sister’s ex-boyfriend. To avoid the awkwardness she kisses one of the other boys, Peter, and enters into a fake relationship that changes everything.

There were some moments when this book was really annoying. Lara Jean was really ignorant about a lot of things, and although I get where she was coming from with the whole driving thing, she needed to get a grip. Margot was very judgmental about her sister’s interaction with these boys. Kitty was just cute. Peter was so egotistical, but he had his moments. And what was going on with Josh? He’s Margot’s ex-boyfriend, why is he getting jealous about Lara Jean and Peter? What business is it of his?

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. I liked the quick read and short chapters. Peter and Josh getting along with Lara Jean’s family was pretty cool. But sometimes I just wanted to reach through the pages of the book and shake her. The ending was also a problem. It didn’t really have a finished feel to it. So I’m hoping there’s another book?

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library!

What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

Have you ever read a book for the first time and didn’t like it? Then you read a second time, and you liked it a little? And then you read it for a third time and realized that the book was really good? That was my experience with What Happened to Goodbye. When the book first came out in 2011, I was really excited for it, but when I read it, I found that it was different than the previous Dessen novels. I read it again in 2012, and liked it a little bit more than the first reading, but it wasn’t until a few days ago that I realized that this book, although different than Dessen’s previous work, was pretty good.

McLean Sweet has moved again. For the fourth time in two years, she’s starting at a new school in a new town, all because of her father’s job. He’s a consultant for struggling restaurants. He goes in, figures out what’s wrong, and then tries to help turn the place around, if he can’t then the place gets sold. Her father didn’t used to have this job, he used to run his own restaurant with the help of McLean’s mother, but after a tabloid worthy affair and divorce, McLean isn’t really on good speaking terms with her mother these days. She blames her for ripping their perfect family apart.

The ugly divorce is also the reason that McLean creates new personalities with each new town she moves to. A new town, a new clean slate. She’s been Elizabeth, Beth, Lizbet, and in this town she wants to be just Liz. But not everything goes according to plan. In this town, she’s known by her real name, and she isn’t a specific type of person. She just is. She meets some interesting kids – Tracey, Leo, Riley, Ellis, Heather, and Dave – who make her come out of her usual predetermined shell.

Like I said, this book was really good. I could kind of relate to McLean’s different personalities and I understood where she was coming from. If you could, wouldn’t you reinvent yourself? I think, when I first read this book, the thing I didn’t like was that Dave and McLean didn’t really have a relationship until the last ten pages or so, but now, I kind of like that that happened. And, holy crap! Was the Jason in this book the same Jason from The Truth About Forever and Along for the Ride? If so, wow, did he ever change!

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Compared to previous books, the climax and McLean’s history were tame and not as intense. The ending was also very different, and McLean’s mom was a piece of work until the last twenty pages.

Bookshelf worthy? It’s been on my shelf for years, why isn’t it on yours?

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen

This time around, Dessen takes her readers back to Colby, the beach town that was focused on in Keeping the Moon, with her main character Auden. Auden is very reminiscent of the character Macy in that she tries to be perfect academically but instead of being perfect for a boyfriend – although Jason does make an appearance in this book – it’s for her academically minded parents. Her mom and dad divorced a few years back and because of it, Auden can’t really sleep anymore. She stays up all night focusing on her studies.

She’s not much of a social bird, so when she gets a gift from her Europe travelling brother – Hollis – she wonders if maybe she’s doing her summer before she goes to college wrong. With this in mind, she decides to visit her father, stepmother, and new stepsister. Her arrival is perfect because Heidi – her stepmother – is having a difficult time with her new stepsister, Thisbe. Auden, despite everything her mother has told her, helps her out with the baby and then with her business – Clementine’s – books. During her first night in Colby she has a brief fling with a guy named Jack who turns out to be one of her new co-workers boyfriend.

Feeling like she’s already making such a great start with these people, she goes back to her old ways of staying up late and studying. But in Colby there’s no 24-hour diner where she can sit and drink coffee. That is until she meets Eli, a local in Colby who has a dark past of his own.

Some people find this book repetitive, and I really want to ask why? Other than Keeping the Moon, That Summer, and This Lullaby not all of Dessen’s books take place during the summer. This book does too, and you get to check in with Isabel and Morgan, and Auden really grows while she’s in this town. The only reason I don’t like this book is because her father is a writer who’s working on his next book, and every time those scenes were mentioned I said to myself – “I should be writing too.” I get where some people are coming from with the character of Eli, although he has a dark past with the accident, his character isn’t really that explored.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. I loved Auden’s character development throughout this book. I loved the character of Eli, and the characters of Maggie, Adam, Esther, and everyone else that Auden became friends with while in Colby. They’re the kind of people you want to be friends with in high school.

Bookshelf worthy? I bought mine used, and finally got around to reading it. Wohoo, another book read!

The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith

Back in August 2003, there was a massive blackout that covered most of the east coast and Canada. People were without power for almost two days. I was in a Mexican restaurant when it happened. Other people weren’t so lucky…

The Geography of You and Me takes place, at the beginning, in New York during a power failure much like the one back in 2003. The two main characters, Lucy and Owen, are stuck in their apartment building’s elevator when the power goes out. They’ve never really met, Owen has just moved in with his father who took over as the building’s super. Since they’re stuck together they begin to talk, even when the building’s doorman and maintenance guy get them out, they continue to talk. What else is there to do in a blackout? Especially with Owen’s dad in Coney Island and Lucy’s parents are over in Paris. In that brief twelve-hour period, they develop a connection, which is great because they live in the same building…

Or not. After the power comes back, Lucy’s parents send her a plane ticket to come visit them in London where they have some surprising news. Her father is up for a job that would require the family to move back to England. Owen’s dad gets fired from the apartment building because of his absence during the power failure and a plumbing issue that was mostly his fault, so they decide to go on the road. The two maintain their relationship with postcards and e-mails, and eventually they do meet up. But things don’t go exactly as planned.

So this wasn’t my first novel by Jennifer E. Smith. Two summers ago I tried reading The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and I didn’t really care for it – not that I read that many pages to begin with – and school was starting up so I returned it. Last summer I read This is What Happy Looks Like and fell in love. It was a really good book and when I heard about The Geography of You and Me I couldn’t wait to read it. This book didn’t disappoint. Usually I’m not a fan of the switching of POVs between chapters, but with this book it just worked. I loved all the traveling that Lucy and Owen did, and I loved the postcard idea. The only thing I didn’t really like was the ending. Everything just came together a little bit too easily. I wouldn’t mind a sequel to see how Lucy and Owen are handling the long distance thing, maybe more postcards?

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Loved the characters and the plot. Especially loved the flow of the story. I practically read the whole book in one day. Thanks to this book I’m probably going to give The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight another try.

Bookshelf worthy? If only my shelves were bigger. The book design is just amazing.

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen

Ruby Cooper has been abandoned by her mother. This bit of information doesn’t surprise her though, her mother has always been a bit of a free spirit. What does surprise her though, is that after trying to make it on her own for the last few months, she is called into the principal’s office where police officers are waiting for her. Her landlords saw the ‘filth’ that she was living in and decided to intervene. From there, her older sister Cora is called and Ruby is taken to her sister’s home where she has made a lovely new life with her husband Jamie.

The only problem is that Ruby doesn’t feel like she fits in. She hasn’t spoken to her sister since she left for college ten years ago, feeling abandoned even back then. She wants to just make it until she turns eighteen and can live on her own again, but even that plan has problems. So against her ‘better judgment’ she stays with her sister and tries to live a somewhat normal life. It’s sort of hit and miss as Ruby tries to get acclimated to this new living situation. She finds out her sister never truly abandoned her that she has been always looking for Ruby but their mother has been keeping them apart. She makes friends with a girl from her old school Olivia and with her next-door neighbor Nate. But as she gets pulled deeper she realizes that her ‘checkered past’ isn’t the only one out there.

Both times that I have read this book, I always hate the beginning. Ruby is a very stubborn character and doesn’t accept help from others easily, if at all – in some ways, Ruby and I are a lot a like – and that really drove me crazy. Her sister is honestly just trying to help her out, give her the fresh start that she’s always wanted, and here is Ruby just throwing everything back into her sister’s face because she thinks she abandoned her and her mother all those years ago. When it’s revealed that Cora did not in fact do that, that she’s always been looking for her sister that’s when the book really starts to get interesting.

Another thing that I like about Dessen’s books? The cameo appearances by characters from her other novels, not quite sequels, but at least you get a check in every once and a while. This book had a lot of them! You get a mention of Kiki Sparks (Chole’s mom from Keeping the Moon), Barbara Starr (Remy’s mom from This Lullaby) actually turns out to be a client of Cora’s, and you get three mentions of characters from Just Listen; Annabel’s radio show, Jamie’s CD guy for Cora’s Valentine’s Day present is Owen, and Mallory shows up at Ruby’s work (although she isn’t mentioned by name). It’s fun to pick out the references every now and then.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. It seems that the intensity factor has been pushed up since Just Listen, this time instead of rape you have parental abandonment and parental abuse. Because of this, the book was a little intense at times, and made for the whole Ruby/Nate relationship to be quite odd.

Bookshelf worthy? I own the hardcover, but I want to replace it with the paperback since the dust cover keeps ripping by the keyhole.  

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

Annabel Greene starts her junior year of high school as a social pariah. Her and her best friend Sophie had a major falling out over the summer and things have become even bleaker. The rumor mill is swirling with all kinds of accusations, and Sophie is only feeder to the fire. Annabel has no friends, unless you count Clarke Reynolds, who used to be her best friend until Sophie came along, but on the first day of school she makes it clear that she’s still angry about what happened all those years ago.

So Annabel is alone, unless you count sitting with the other social outcast Owen Armstrong for lunch…  Anyway, after an altercation with Sophie’s boyfriend Will Cash and then Sophie, Annabel has a ‘meltdown’ and Owen out of all people comes to her aid. From there a friendship begins that makes her into a different person – or at least the person she could be – and things are good for a while until another ex-friend of hers – Emily – begins to have rumors spread about her…

I think this Dessen book – so far – was the most intense one that I’ve read by her. The main character has so many issues not just with her personal life and what happened the summer before, but with her family too – her older sister Whitney’s eating disorder. The reveal of what happened to Annabel that summer kind of reminds me of Speak, since Annabel doesn’t tell right away and everyone just assumes that she hooked up with Will willingly. I also like – with all Dessen’s books really – the gradual ease into a male/female relationship. All her narrators don’t right away end up dating the guy they’ve been talking to, they form a friendship first which is just amazing. However, I do wish that Dessen would leave just one couple as friends and not something more and that the guy screwed up more, the last four books (Keeping the Moon, This Lullaby, The Truth About Forever and Just Listen) have all been the girl screwing up the relationship. Mix it up a little!

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. I loved how strong Annabel’s character was, it couldn’t have been easy keeping all of that inside, and I loved how gradual her coping was. Owen was pretty badass too.

Bookshelf worthy? The old print, not the new one.

The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen

As I have previously stated with my reviews for Sarah Dessen books, I absolutely adore them – except for Dreamland and That Summer – but I feel like I need to amend that statement. Now, before you think ‘wait, does that mean she didn’t like this book, too?’ No. I loved this book, it’s just that The Truth About Forever and Just Listen have some minor plot lines that I am not too big of a fan of.

Macy is trying to be perfect. She has the perfect boyfriend, the mother who has high expectations of her daughter, and a summer job where if she’s not perfect they will eat her alive. But she isn’t perfect, no matter how hard she tries to be. Her cracks start showing the summer that Jason decides to go away to Brain Camp and gives her the responsibility to cover for him at his library information desk job. His other two co-workers hate her and don’t understand how Jason can be with a girl like her. After complaining in an e-mail to him (and signing it with I love you), he sends her one back that suggests that they take a break for the summer and see how things stand when he comes back. Not sure how to handle this, she goes for a drive and comes across the WISH catering truck that had been at her house earlier in the summer. She takes another job with them and starts an interesting summer…

Okay, so obviously I really hated Jason, he was just so controlling and I really don’t think he cared too much for Macy at all, he just believed that he did. Like when he does come back from Brain Camp and tries to get back together with her, he’s like ‘let’s make a list of what we want out of this relationship.’ A guy like that doesn’t need a relationship with a human being, he needs one with a robot. The character of Wes was just…there are actually no words to describe this amazing character. Especially the way that Macy and his friendship grew into something more. Perfection. Still, another YA book where the parent was annoying, although with this one I could somewhat see where she was coming from. She was a grieving parent, who had a business to run, and a daughter who she thought was trying to be perfect is sort of breaking out of her shell and she doesn’t know how to handle all of it at once. But still, I liked Deborah better after her meltdown than I did throughout the rest of the book.

So what’s the plot line that I’m having issues with? Macy’s dad’s death. Not the best book to read during Father’s Day weekend, and because I’m really close to my dad any book that has the dad dead kind of makes me cry.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Another perfect summer read by Dessen, just wish that the dad hadn’t been dead.

Bookshelf worthy? I finally read my copy after two years of having it on my shelf!

Where She Went by Gayle Forman

Confession – I knew that there was a sequel to If I Stay before I actually read it, so in a way I already knew that she was going to live. However, what I didn’t expect was Where She Went actually was.

Three years is a long time, I know because I like using the number three (days, months, years) in my writing, but for Adam it’s an eternity. The man who narrates this novel is not the guy who you saw during If I Stay. Things have changed. His band has become huge. He’s fighting with the band. He’s smoking. He’s got anxiety issues. And what a lot of readers will probably find the most important change of all, he’s dating a woman named Bryn who is a famous actress.

Yeah, that’s right. Bryn. Not Mia, but Bryn. After getting through the twenty pages that make up the first chapter, I had to wonder: what the hell happened to Adam? Answer? Well, you have to read the rest of the book to figure it out.

Adam is stuck in New York, a layover day to take care of some last minute business (plus he hates to fly now, because of his anxiety) and he needs a break from everything. So he wanders the city and as usual, Fate intervenes, sending him past a concert hall where Mia is playing. He goes in and listens to her concert and afterwards she calls him back to meet with her; starting the longest night of his life.

I loved this book, possibly even more than the first one, which is probably really odd. The original is always supposed to get the most love, right? But this one…this one was amazing. I loved the fact that after the events in If I Stay there wasn’t a happy ending…at least not right away. I loved that Adam and Mia went through so much, it made it somehow sweeter when they did finally get together at the end of this book. Did it happen a little too quickly? Possibly, but after the lengthy conversation that they had that night and morning… Well, I’m not sure what else there was to say.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Another quick read. Another amazing book about pain and loss and how what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, even if you don’t realize it right away.

Bookshelf worthy? Support your local library.

Paper Towns by John Green

After reading this book, I only have two questions (okay, it might be more than that, but bare with me here). 1. Where was this book when I graduated college last year? Or better, where was this book when I graduated high school five years ago? And 2. Why the hell was this book so freaking long? I mean, I get that a story had to be told here, but did it really need that many pages?

Some of the reviews for Paper Towns on Goodreads haven’t been kind. A lot of people said that John Green continued the storyline of An Abundance of Katherines and Looking for Alaska in this book, and in some ways I get where they’re coming from, but in others I feel like a new story was told here.

Quentin or ‘Q’ for short is going through the last month of his senior year in high school. One night he goes on an adventure with his next-door neighbor Margo as she exacts revenge on her boyfriend and some of her friends who knew that he was cheating on her. It’s an insane plan – one that involves breaking and entering (but not breaking and entering the felony), vandalism, hair removal, and various other things. When the trip comes to an end, Q is left wondering by things that Margo has said. His wonderment continues when she goes missing…again. Her parents are fed up and change the locks refusing to look for her. But Q notices clues and starts to put things to together.

Most of the second part of Paper Towns I could have honestly done without. Q thinks that he’ll never find Margo alive. That she has gone off for the last time to off herself. But it’s the last four or five chapters in the second part, that I absolutely adored. Q’s wittiness with his friends, them hosting parties like usual high school seniors, was fantastic. And when Q does finally figure out where Margo is twenty minutes before graduation – or so it seems – Ben, Radar, and Lacey come with him for an epic road trip.

The ending was sort of disappointing. Q doesn’t get the girl. Margo never wanted to be found. At least she wasn’t dead and she’s been planning this since Q and her found that dead body in the park when they were ten years old.

Final Rating: 3 out of 5 stars. Compared to Looking for Alaska and The Fault in Our Stars it was okay. A little too long for my liking, it did drag on in some parts. I kind of wished Q’s friends Ben and Radar had been in it more.

Bookshelf worthy? I’m passing on this one, so support your local library.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last few years, you know that this is the story of a girl who falls in love with a boy for the first time. The catch is that both of these characters have cancer. The girl’s cancer is Stage IV and is placated for the moment thanks to some miracle drug, while the boy’s cancer is in remission.

A lot has been said about this book since it came out a few years ago, so I won’t bore too much with the details. And those who’ve read my review of If I Stay know that I spent four days back in 2012 reading not only this book, but also 13 Reasons Why as well, and for about a week afterwards I was a complete wreck.

In honor of the movie coming out, and because it’s been two years since I’ve read the book, I decided to reread it and I completely forgot how much of a quick read this book is. The only reason it took me three days to read was because I always, always get stuck on what happens after Hazel and Augustus come back from Amsterdam. It is just…

Okay? Okay.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. Another John Green book that is just amazing, and another YA book where the parents didn’t get on my nerves. Hazel had amazing parents. Augustus did too.

Bookshelf worthy? I’ll confess, I own two copies. One is the one pictured above the other is the digital edition for my iPad.

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

A note to the wise: if you’re ever in need of a good cry and don’t feel like crying for no reason, or you need to prove to yourself that you’re not a robot do either one of the following: A. Read 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher and then The Fault in Our Stars by John Green in four days or B. Read Looking for Alaska by John Green and then If I Stay in less than three days. If you haven’t cried after doing one of the above, more power to you. I’ve done both of the above and have yet to find a way to stop the tears. Any ideas?

In retrospect, I guess it was a good idea to read Looking for Alaska and then If I Stay, together. Since If I Stay has to deal with aftermath of a car wreck for the seventeen-year-old girl Mia. Her whole family perished in the car accident except for her, and she is experiencing an outer body experience as she tries to decide whether or not she wants to continue life or move on.

In a lot of books, I am not a fan of flashing back and forth between the present and the character’s back-story, I feel that it takes away from the overall plot, but for this one I think it works out. You learn a lot about what Mia was going through before the car accident, who the major people were in her life and why they are fighting so hard for her now. The only thing I didn’t like about the flashing back and forth was the fact that a lot of the story focused on Mia’s parents and her little brother, who are dead. This just makes the tears fall harder. I really loved Adam’s character and how hard he fought to see her, especially considering the problems that they were having before the car accident. They made such a cute and awkward couple.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. Quick and to the point, the character development was smooth and almost flawless. The only question I have is how exactly did Mia survive the car wreck if everyone else in the car died? Or is it just one of those freak things? Curious to see how things end up in the next book.

Bookshelf worthy? Either electronic or support your local library!

Looking for Alaska by John Green

So about 8-9 years ago (I can’t remember when in freshman year I picked this book up) I was at the library and I came across this book. I had never heard of John Green and his reputation for telling stories. I read the book and fell instantly in love. It wasn’t until I reread it this week, that I realized how relatable this story actually was. Between readings of this book, I lost my aunt unexpectedly so I guess I get where Pudge and Colonel are coming from… But I’m jumping ahead of myself again.

The book begins with Myles (Pudge’s real name) going off to a private school in Alabama. At this school he meets his roommate Colonel and his friend Alaska. The two take him under their wing, give him the nickname Pudge and start off a journey that sort of resembles self-discovery as they try to deal with the big questions of life. Alaska is beautiful and eccentric, her moods changing in an instant and it’s no surprise when Pudge falls for her, but she already has a boyfriend. Colonel is cunning and has a superior attitude. He doesn’t like rich kids because he thinks they’re snotty and believe that they’re above everyone else. Everything is going like high school should be, until one night after some heavy drinking and an interesting game of Truth or Dare that leads to Alaska and Pudge making out. Alaska comes bursting into the room at three in the morning in hysterics asking Pudge and Colonel to help her get off campus. They do and go to sleep.

The next morning, the principal announces to the school that Alaska Young died in a tragic car accident. This sends her friends into a tailspin asking questions and trying to figure out what happened to her. What caused her to be so hysterical? Where was she going on three in the morning? And most important of all, how can they cope with their friend’s death?

This book never makes me cry until the pieces all start to click together and they figure out what Alaska was really doing out that late. My favorite part is when Pudge is writing the answer to his final exam and realizes that they may never figure out truly why Alaska did what she did. That everyday without her, her friends are starting to forget, their memory of her is disappearing and after losing my aunt I get that. Your memories sort of get fuzzy until you just remember the best parts and nothing in between.

Final Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. John Green is a masterful storyteller and I’m glad I read this book twice.

Bookshelf worthy? I’m going to pull an Alaska Young one of these days and just start piling books on the floor.