The Geography of You and Me - Jennifer E. Smith

RATING: ★★★☆☆

I’ve been having a drought. I’m a single, young girl reading books and looking for nice, attractive guys in those books. I like to think about them - about how I’ll find my own Gus someday. Or Henry from The Time Traveler’s Wife. Just a great guy and not a guy like all the boys walking around here that I would never date in my life.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve hit a cute guy drought in my books. Let’s Get Lost featured the most annoying guy I’ve read about in a while and the books before that didn’t even feature any guys.

This cover might be in my top 10 favourite covers of all time. It's gorgeous.

So I was super excited to pick up The Geography of You And Me by Jennifer E. Smith, which is boasted as a “magic, magic book. It will take you to a place where we all want to live, where true love overcomes any distance”.

You know what that sounds like? Like a Disney World advertisement and I love everything Disney.

Plot

The Geography of You and Me is the story of Lucy and Owen. They both live in NYC when suddenly all the power in the city goes out. Lucy, rich penthouse girl, is stuck in the elevator with Owen, the son of the caretaker of the building. The two have noticed each other before, but never really talked - until this night filled with darkness.

After that night, Owen makes a road trip all over America with his dad while Lucy moves to Europe with her parents. How do you keep in touch when the world is literally in between you?

Boy Drought

Owen was a nice enough male lead. The chapters alternated between the point of view of Lucy and Owen, so it’s nice to really get insight into the boy’s thoughts and feelings. However, I think Owen still believed he lived in a 1950s Disney movie. 

After moving away from NYC, he decides to send postcards to Lucy. Owen believes e-mails are too direct. Great, very romantic Owen, but postcards take forever to get delivered and you can’t really write personal things on postcard. A+ for effort, F for practicality. 

However, Lucy is charmed enough by the idea and replies to his postcards with e-mails, like every normal person living in this century would do. I liked that Lucy was critical of Owen and his intentions. She definitely liked him, but also played the field when living in Europe. It made the book more realistic than if it was a “I saw him and I want to marry him” kind of story. Yet, I couldn’t really relate to Lucy. I’m not sure if she didn’t have enough depth or that she just wasn’t my kind of person - something just didn’t click.

But I could relate to Owen even less. It was the postcards, it was the way he thought about certain things (turns out, he never keeps in touch with anyone), it was his constant lack of spontaneity and then suddenly, and unexplained, an impromptu trip somewhere.

I know plenty of Owens, so he’s realistic enough. But I don’t want to read about all the guys I already know.

Life is more than boys

A book is not all about the male lead. It’s about the storyline and the setting and the characterisation,…. In this case, the description was great. I’ve been to both NYC and London and I can guarantee you that the author wrote the places exactly like they were. Jennifer E. Smith describes the smells, sights and feel you get from a city in a perfect way. This made the book enjoyable to read, especially since I recognised most things she wrote about.

But Lucy and Owen were still only so-so. They weren’t awful, but they also weren’t amazing. I like to relate to at least one character in the book, to really feel what they are feeling. And I feel like the alternated narrated chapters would have been perfect to connect with both of them - it just didn’t work out for me that way. I can’t pinpoint it, but then reading is always really personal, so who knows exactly what it was? All I know is that the setting didn't make up for it.

Conclusion

I don’t want to break this book down, because the building blocks were all there: there was characterisation, setting, tension, a good plot,…. It just didn’t come together for me. Maybe if I hadn’t read it in the middle of my boy-book-drought I would have liked it better. 

3 and a half stars for the book at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Let's Get Lost - Adi Alsaid

RATING: ★★☆☆☆

In case you couldn’t tell you from my previous reviews, I am a feminist. A proud gender studies student, who is not very extreme or loud in her beliefs, but very convinced that men and women should be on the same level and who believes society’s view on women (as just beautiful, quiet, “they have to love me” dolls) is very unfair.

So when there is a book that is well-written and has a charming and endearing female lead in it, but an entitled, rude guy who is not called out at all on the way he treats this girl, I’m done. 

Plot

Let’s Get Lost by Adi Alsaid is the story of Leila, a young girl who is making a road trip to the Northern Lights. It’s a long trip and on the way she meets Hudson, Bree, Elliot and Sonia. The story is mostly about them - until the last chapter, where we finally find out what happened to Leila.

I adored Leila, who is very reminiscent of Alaska in John Green’s Looking for Alaska. She’s lost and confused but has a really good heart. She’s also intelligent, a go-getter and has an amazing warmth to her that make people open up to her (I call it warmth, because if it would just be her good looks, I would like her a lot less - she would be another cliché). She leaves her home and goes to a garage to get her car fixed right before the big journey to Canada. The car fixer? Rude, entitled, stuck-up Hudson, who she somehow falls in love with?!

At this part of the book, I was already confused. I didn’t know Leila at all at that point, but Hudson’s true colours shone through pretty fast and I don’t know why Leila didn’t get into her fixed car and thanked her lucky stars that she got rid of him. But she didn’t do that - she actually writes him cards throughout her whole journey and she misses him.

But then came Hudson....

Why do I hate Hudson so much? Hudson is a mechanic/future med student who has the biggest interview on his life the day after he meets Leila. However, Leila is hot so he drops everything to go to an island with her. He falls asleep, he misses his interview and even though he suggested they would go to the island and she offered to go back home, Hudson blames Leila for ruining his future. And not in a silent treatment way, but in a very crude way that makes you cringe while reading it.

The effect of this? Every reader hates Hudson. But maybe a positive side effect was that I instantly became protective of Leila. I felt bad for her and her inability to stand up for herself and I wanted to protect her from Hudson - at least for a bit.

Leila continues her journey and meets Bree, a runaway teen, Elliot, a dumped teen on prom night and Sonia, my second favourite character who has to deal with the death of her boyfriend. And while Leila helps all of them, she’s also thinking about Hudson, which gets old really fast. They spend a day/night together and then he treated her like trash, yet she misses him? I didn’t get it and I must admit that I skimmed over the parts where she was talking about Hudson. I loved Leila and I didn’t want her to be ruined by her silly notion of love. So maybe I didn’t really love her, but certain parts of her. I’m not sure.

I don’t want to get into too much detail about the other characters, since it will ruin the whole book for any readers. All I can say: Stick it out until the end, because there will be a plot twist.

What I can say about them is that I hated how everything always had some kind of happy ending - Leila is only with them for 48 hours max and yet she helps them get their happy ending. As far as I know, not everyone immediately gets what they want and that would have been good to have incorporated in the book. Especially since I feel the author read a lot of John Green and really tried to tap into his audience. Unfortunately, what he missed is that John Green teaches us that life cannot be controlled and you get what you get and you have to deal with it.

Conclusion

So my aching feminist heart cannot give this book more than 2 stars. I hope Leila returns in another story and can be salvaged, but right now, Hudson just ruined the whole book for me. I wish he would Get Lost.

Guardian of the Underworld - Rachel Tetley

RATING: ★★★★☆

No, this is not a review about a new Marvel movie or the latest Percy Jackson book. This is a review of the first book of a new fantasy series by Rachel Tetley. According to Goodreads, this book is for a YA audience - I say screw that: this book is good and everyone should read it.

Plot: worlds collide, but really shouldn't

Jake Summers is your average kid who lives in a small town with a close-knit community and family. As many young boys, he adores his grandfather and playing in the woods. Little does he know that his grandfather is living both in this world and a supernatural underworld. He was the guardian of that world and had to guarantee that earth (is that what we call our world?) and the underworld can exist together. His last goal? To prepare Jake for the job he'll have to do when his grandfather passes away. However, his grandfather mysteriously dies before he has the chance to tell Jake anything. How do you figure out that you are in charge of keeping the earth and underworld at peace? I know I couldn't, but Jake someone manages - with the help of a creepy old lady that lives next door and somehow knows everything (Seriously, I would love to see it explained in the next book HOW she knows everything?!). 

Description is a skill

Every author and reader knows that it's difficult to describe a realistic new world. We all know earth and will forgive a writer for small inconsistencies. But when there is a new world in a book, we, or at least I, suddenly get way more critical and want 1. all our questions answered and 2. everything to make sense and to be coherent. There are a handful of authors who can actually write a good new world: J.K. Rowling, Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie,... And now Rachel Tetley. I'm not one for the fantasy genre - I don't really believe that there ever could be a good new world out there (like the wardrobe in Narnia, come on). But Rachel had me buying into it. I didn't believe there's actually an underworld that you can dive into through a river, which is what Jake does, but I did believe the world she described and lost all of my criticism so that I could thoroughly enjoy the story. 

The underworld is like our world, but just different enough for it to be enjoyable. If I should compare it to any other world, I would pick Wonderland. It's not quite as crazy, but it seems like everything is just a tad differently than our world. And you can't eat anything in the Underworld, nor is there an evil queen... But there are talking animals, so it sort of works.

Jake has to fulfil Five Challenges to become the new guardian (the reason why exactly is a major spoiler, so I'll stay quiet on that)  and those Five Challenges include dragons, an intense sea/ocean journey and aggressive floors. Not anything we could find on earth, but described in a way that made it believable. The challenges were very reminiscent of Harry Potter and his huge chess game, catching a key amidst hundreds of flying keys,... .You get the idea - it's exciting and thrilling to read.

Jake and Arianna

Jake of course doesn't go on his adventure alone (when does any character?), but he goes with Arianna - his classmate/crush/friend. Jake is the main character and he is the typical "I'm a hero now and don't know what to do - someone help me" at the beginning of the book. And there's Arianna, the Hermione of The Guardian of the Underworld. Arianna is a lot smarter, braver and more realistic than Jake. She thinks of things to bring, she thinks of things to be careful of, she thinks of trusting the right people in the underworld. And then they get to the underworld and she kinda falls flat.

I understand that the Five Challenges are Jake's time to shine and really shrug off the surprise of being the guardian and show that he can handle being a hero. But I loved Arianna, she was such a good role model and I wish she didn't give Jake the time to shine - she could have been a lot better in the challenges than him. But I guess it was a bound to happen, because Jake is the main character. But I loved Arianna's sense of humour and wittiness and I hope she'll remain a major part of this story.

Challenge completed - wait, already?

Besides the thing with Arianna, which I think must be a preference more than a criticism, I must say that I struggled with the length of the Five Challenges. All the challenges happen at the end of the book and it almost feels like they were rushed. The concept is so amazing, the ideas of the challenges are so amazing, but the writing? Some challenges only take a few pages, while I really feel like it could have been more. The story never dragged on at any point, so I don't see why it couldn't have been a longer book. I hope in the next book, Rachel will focus more on the action - and Arianna!

Conclusion

Simply for the fact that Arianna was in this book, I have to give it a good rating. However, as you might have noticed, Jake didn't really do anything for me. He was a decent main character, he wasn't annoying to read, but he also didn't really make me root for him. I would have cried if Arianna died, but Jake? I guess I would have been sad, but no tears for me. 

So I can't give it 5 stars, but I'll give it 4. Because it is the first book of a series and I really hope Jake will develop more and gain a place in my heart. And also because that was the only real flaw I found in the novel.

I definitely have high hopes for book number two, Rachel!

Oh and on a small slightly underrated note, even though I read a pdf document of the book, I loved the design of it. The cover is GORGEOUS, the chapter numbers are, the lettering,... Everything. This book is a beauty from cover until end.

Everything Leads To You - Nina LaCour

RATING: ★★★★☆

I love Hollywood and all books relating to it. The glamour, the stars, the drama - I love it. All my favorite TV-shows are dramatic and glamorous and if they take place somewhere in California: I'll love them even more.

Secretly, I bought this book only for the cover. I'm not even ashamed.

What I loved about Everything Leads to You is that the setting is glamorous - movie sets in Hollywood- the stars on those sets are glamorous, the big houses are glamorous, but the lead character Emi isn't glamorous. She's just an average girl that any European-my-hair-is-always-a-mess girl loves.

What is glamorous is the amazing adventure Emi is thrown into. As a set designer, she goes to deceased people's homes and buys furniture for different movie sets. And sometimes, those dead people are big time movie stars who hide notes to unknown people in the cover of an old record. What do you do when you find that letter? How do you find someone (if they are not on twitter)? These are all questions Emi has to figure out.

Nina LaCour knows how to write

Nina LaCour is a famous YA writer, especially for Hold Still which is on my never ending to-be-read list, and this book once again shows why Nina is famous. The writing is effortless and easy to read. It's like reading an episode of Pretty Little Liars (I never read the books so I have no clue how the writing is in that, sorry!) - there is tension, drama and glamour in a very easy to digest style. It reads like the words just flow out of LaCour's pen, though as a writer, I can recognise all the work that went into writing such an easy style. Now I know that writing style preferences are very personal, so here's the opening of the book - to give you a real feel of what it's like:

 "Five texts are waiting for me when I get out of my English final. One is from Charlotte saying she finished early and decided to meet up with our boss, so she'll see me at Toby's house later. One is from Toby, saying 7 p.m.: Don't forget!  And three are from Morgan.

 I don't read those yet."

See? This little fragment, the first few words of the book already raise a few important questions: Who is Charlotte? Who is Toby? And especially, who is Morgan and why are we not answering her texts?

It reads quickly and easily -with no difficult literary tools - just an easy YA novel, but that's a serious skill that many readers underestimate nowadays. AND it never reads like a dumb novel at any time. Unlike the childlike and basic narrating of Laurel in Love Letters To The Dead, Emi is mature and observant of the world around her - something which shows in the writing.

Can I eat a pizza with Emi?

I didn't relate to Emi - she lives in a too glamorous world with a too glamorous job and too big of an adventure. However, that was totally fine, since Emi reads like she is your best friend, because like I said before, she's not glamorous. She's a tad naive when it comes to love, she's a bit dramatic and totally sweet and loveable, and don't we all have a best friend like that? I wish I could invite Emi over and talk to her about the letter she found and what to do about it. Pizza and a Hollywood movie - what more do girls need? Oh, and I would also invite Emaline from The Moon and More to discuss growing up and sucky relationships/reality. I feel like Emi and Emaline could be best friend too (and we would be Emi, Emaline and Emma - how cool?).

Every Hollywood tale has a flaw

For all the amazing things in Everything Leads to You, there was one thing I didn't like: the predictability. Finding the letter was very original and new - it started a good adventure. However, in that adventure, there are so many things that you know will happen. The only surprise for me was finding out in the beginning that Emi was gay. That shouldn't have been a surprise, because who cares, but due to the lack of diversity in YA, it was. Other than that, a reader can easily predict what will happen and at what point in the story. The ending isn't shocking either, which is something a lot of readers want.

But does that really matter? I guess it depends on the reader. I need good writing and a main character I love to like a book - predictably doesn't really matter. So I loved this book, but I do realise that many people prefer a book which is unpredictable and they might struggle with this book.

Conclusion

I would recommend this book to almost everyone I know, because I LOVED IT. However, as I said, I'm very aware of the flaw of predictability. So maybe I wouldn't recommend it to every single person I know - I can already imagine one friend who would hate it. But I can't live with myself if I don't give this book at least 4 out of 5 stars - it wasn't the best book I've read this year, but it was damn close.

The Moon and More - Sarah Dessen

RATING: ★★★★★

Oh Sarah Dessen, what a curveball you threw me with The Moon and More. I picked up this book, fully expecting a nice, predictable YA book. It was a really hot summer's day and I just wanted a book that was fun and didn't need me to really work to get the story nor really made me think all that much about my own life. My go-to author in those cases? Sarah Dessen. Easy romantic love stories - yes please.

But The Moon and More completely threw me off, in the best way possible. Was it an easy read? Yes. Was it fun? Yes. What is predictable? NO. Was it brainless? NO.

The Moon and More is the story of Emaline (sorry, but just a small note: that's the stupidest name I've ever heard) and her summer before heading off to college. It's obviously a summer full of life deciding moments and as a reader, you get introduced to boyfriend Luke and almost immediately sense that he'll be part of "a life deciding moment". Though not in the way you may expect.

Emaline works for her family's rental company in her small, smalllll beach town, with her two half-sisters, her stepdad (who she just calls dad) and her mother. Her father (note the distinction between "dad" and "father" - something very important to Emaline) conceived her as a part of a summer-gone-bad-teenage-mistake and has been in and (mostly) out of her life since then. Until he reaches out and wants to help her. Again, more "life deciding moments".

This all sounds very predictable and I wasn't surprised at all when Theo appears: hot, from the city and wildly intelligent and ambitious. Cue the drama.

Except, Theo turns out to be the biggest plot twist of this book. Without spoiling it too much, he turns out to be someone you did not expect! And he doesn't go through something traumatic and changes or suddenly shows his true colours - Dessen writes his change in a subtle way. You don't notice he is changing, until suddenly you realise he isn't the Theo of the start of the book anymore. With small actions, he transforms from NYC hottie to... jerk. It's subtle enough to creep up on the reader, but will Emaline notice?

Furthermore, Emaline has to make some important decisions about her future life. As a 24 year old, on the brink of moving to London and starting a new MA and trying to figure out where this website is going, I related to Emaline so much in this aspect. She goes back and forth in her decisions, is unsure whether to follow conventions, ambitions or her heart and surprisingly enough, she kinda doesn't follow any of them at the end. She slowly finds her own way throughout the story in a realistic and reassuring way - we'll all find out what we are supposed to do, where we are supposed to be and who we need for this in our lives.

And that is what makes this book so special - it takes all the cliché elements from a romantic YA novel and turns them completely upside down with the excellent writing of Sarah Dessen. It seems cliché in the beginning, but she drops enough hints and clues for the intelligent reader to pick up where the story is heading early on. 

So actually, this book is a nice, easy, beachy YA book, but with a major twist that will actually make you more interested in the story and the characters. Bravo Sarah Dessen.

A Place For Us - Harriet Evans

RATING: ★★☆☆☆

It seems like authors these days are experimenting more and more with switching point of views in the story. I think it's fair to say that that's what made Jodi Picoult famous. Unfortunately, not all writers are necessarily good at juggling so many point of views and some stories really would benefit from being more simple in their narrative.

One of them is A Place for Us Part 1; a book by Harriet Evans, someone who is known by many and a book I read before the July 31 release date.

(Btw, it is very clearly "Part 1": I did not read a whole story, just the beginning of it. So my review might be slightly off, but the publishers chose to give reviewers just the part one so I'll work with it.)

A Place for Us is about the Winter family and a big announcement that Martha Winter, the matriarch of the family, will make at a party. What is the announcement? The whole family thinks they know, but the reader definitely doesn't. We are told that the announcement will tear the family apart, so that keeps the suspense going. The book follows each characters as they either write the invitation, hear about the invitation or receive the invitation to the party. The announcement is what ties together family members who haven't been that close in the past.

The book starts with the point of view of Martha and then switches to her husband, all of her children, some grandchildren, some husbands and wives,.... Long story short: EVERYONE gets a chapter with their own point of view in it. Which made this book an exhausting read. Not only do you have to keep track of who is talking now and how they fit into the family tree (a drawing of this at the beginning of the book would have been extremely useful btw), but you also don't get the time to connect to one of the characters. When you finally get into the head of one of them, you switch to another character and don't return to the one you liked for a good 5 to 6 chapters. That's too long. I respect the need as an author to tell the story from different points of view, but I really wish she would have just picked three at the most. 

Added to that, there is a time jump at some point in the story - we suddenly see one of the children in an earlier time. I am all for time jumps and it was useful in this particular book, because all the family members talked about how one of the children suddenly "just left and never came back". It's good to find out a little bit about why they left. But add that to the constant switching of point of view and you have one very confused reader.

The point of views (yes, I know I'm rambling on about it, but it is the main device of this story) also caused the book to be slow. Especially the start. We meet all the characters in their own chapters and we get loooong descriptions about who they are and why they are like that. Not a lot of action, but a lot of description. It just didn't hook me into the story like I would have wanted to. For example, Mr. Winter is in a café in London to meet someone. When he actually meets that person, it becomes very interesting (and a spoiler), but we first have pages and pages of him thinking back about the war and how he made drawings of the war and how he suffered. It's interesting, but I would have loved for these elements to have been dispensed throughout the story, not just cramped into chapter two all together. Show me what he's like, don't just tell me.

Is it all bad? No, it isn't. There is some lovely description in there about London, which made this London-lover excited to move back there. The characters are also realistic and filled with potential: each of them would be a good candidate to be the real main character of the story. And the announcement! I still don't know what it is, but the clues you get throughout the story definitely make you very curious to read part II.

This book could have been amazing if the author would have stuck with one of the characters. I would have loved to have learned more about Florence, the daughter who lives in Florence (this is not a typo), teaches Art History and is madly in love with the biggest prick out there. How did an English country girl get into that situation? I'll never know. 

Sometimes less really is more.

To All Boys I've Loved Before - Jenny Han

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Some books are just impossible to not read - they are all over social media and everyone is talking about how amazing and life changing they are.

Usually, those books end up as one big disappointment: they are too hyped up and just can't live up to the expectations. Which makes it hard to review these books - were they really not that good or was the hype so big that no book can ever live up to it?

Isn't this just the most gorgeous cover ever? This scores points for To All The Boys I've Loved Before

That's the question I'm struggling with after finishing To All The Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han. It was a good book, a quick read with an original plot, but was it the best book of the year so far? Meh. I don't know.

Lara Jean is the middle Song sibling, in a household with two other sisters and their dad. The book starts off when Margot, the oldest sister and the "mother" of the family, moves to Scotland to go to University. As if that was not life changing enough for Lara Jean, who suddenly has to take care of her dad and younger sibling Kitty, her love letters unexpectedly get send to five of her former crushes. 

Love letters? Yes, love letters and not your regular love letters - these are letters she wrote when trying to get over the guys. They were never supposed to be read by anyone, let alone the guys they are talking about (would you want a guy to read how you had a big crush on him when you were 11, but "he's not all that anyway" - awkward). But they mysteriously are delivered to the five guys and suddenly she has to deal with the consequences of these letters.

Lara Jean is a nice character, but I didn't fall in love with her. She's the typical YA girl that is "so quirky and special", but in a really cute and attractive way. I never really buy that - if she was that quirky, why does everyone love her? She's obviously just really cute and smart and maybe a tad clumsy and insecure, but that's about it - I would have loved to have seen more flaws in her. What makes her so different from Harper, Laurel, Emma...? Nothing really as far as I could tell.

The real saviour of this book is the plot - the characters are all kind of bland and predictable, but the plot is not. The idea of these love letters getting send already scored points for me - it's something I've never read about before, but it was realistic enough to really imagine it. As a writer, I've written many rambling notes to people and I would die if they would actually ever read it. So props for Lara Jean to live out everyone's worst nightmare.

Even more so, the book doesn't turn out the way you expect it to. You start reading and think "Oh Lara Jean will totally *SPOILER* *SPOILER* *SPOILER*", but she doesn't! There are many twists and turns that, again, are unexpected yet realistic. And added to that, YA fans will know that Jenny Han is an amazing writer. She writes in such an easy way that you'll finish this book in one sitting.

But can a good plot save a boring lead character? Not usually- I love books driven by characters and in this case, it just isn't. Lara Jean is the only character who is really explored, which is totally fine since she is the main character, but she's flat and unrealistic.

Still, I finished the book and had a happy feeling - I kinda enjoyed reading it. So maybe in this case, the plot and good writing can save a book. But not enough to make it the YA release of the year in my opinion. (For books I think could be the YA release of the year, look at We Were Liars and This Song Will Save Your Life) It's perfect though for a hot summer's day, like today, for which you want a fun and easy read.