This was a book for which I harbored a decent amount of anticipation, due to the fact that it was recommended to me based on my love for Stephanie Perkins (!!!), Sarah Ockler and Jennifer E. Smith. The good news: the comparisons make sense. The bad news: it doesn't quite live up to any of the above.
Characters:
- Julia Lichtenstein, aka "Book Licker," strikes me as one of those characters who a lot of amateur reviewers (myself included) may be tempted to write off as "annoying." But I hate that, as it's not a useful description of any character, so I'm not going to do that. My problems with Julia are a lot more complicated than that, anyway. You see, Julia's a lot like me in the sense that we'd both rather stay in and read a book than go to a party with a bunch of strangers. We don't think we're not fun, but we know that other people might see us that way no matter how much we want to convince them otherwise. But Julia is so uptight all the time, I almost couldn't handle her. The perfectly-aligned bathroom supplies. The memorizing of her phone number via Shakespeare's birthday (highly coincidental, too, considering Shakespeare is her favorite author-- that was a real reach)-- oh, and that one number left over that she just couldn't possibly remember was 4 unless she reminded herself that it was her GPA (also a reach-- you're basically just driving home the point that she's a goody two-shoes, which I already got, thankyouverymuch*). The girl is so rule-oriented that you almost fear she might have Asperger's or something-- until you realize that she's also got a boy-crazy streak a mile wide. All the time she doesn't spend perfectly arranging her messenger bag and taking copious notes, she spends thinking about her MTB, which is text-speak for "meant to be." Because evidently grammatical rules don't apply to text messages for this compulsive know-it-all. She constantly texts her best friend in annoying shorthand that no intelligent people have actually used since 2007. She daydreams about a guy back home who seems not to know she exists, texts with a mysterious guy she doesn't remember, and gallivants around London with a boy who might actually be perfect for her-- but she's too busy judging him and all of his friends to see it! She's in one of those situations where she hates the popular girls because they judge her, so she thinks it's okay for her to judge them (hello? How do you not see that you are doing the same thing to them that they do to you?). Only the problem is that their judgments of her are mostly accurate, while hers of them are not. We have talked about girl-hate, right? Because that's what's going on here. She's assuming that these girls are all shallow, vapid label-mongers with nothing inside their pretty little heads, just because she's never seen them read Austen or Shakespeare. Just because they can find something entertaining about a guy who doesn't take himself too seriously. I understand that this frame of mind is what set her up for the character development she would inevitably experience upon realizing that she was wrong about them, but SHEESH. That pedestal she put herself on sure did make it easy for her to look down on everyone else, and it got old.
- Luckily, Julia's character was my main problem with this book. Jason Lippincott was kind of a shining star here. If not a wholly original character (Logan Echolls, is that you?!), he certainly contributed to the overarching message that people are, in essence, complicated. He brought just the right amount of realism to Julia's romantic ideals, and just the right amount of ridiculousness to her seriousness. I mean, she's walking in the park with her supposed MTB (who is not Jason Lippincott) and he's so jealous he starts doing random cartwheels and running into things, causing her to run into people and general havoc to be wreaked. While Julia's combination of structured and idealistic made next to no sense to me, Jason's combination of carefree and cynical actually worked. Also I loved that he did not instantly fall in love with Julia (because honestly, who would?). He tries to help her. He fights with her. He forgives her. He calls her a pain in the ass. He realizes that there may be other girls who make him feel the way she does, and that's okay, but he chooses her. And he makes her realize that that's what it's about-- not soulmates, not destiny, just choice.
Plot:
- Reminding myself that "all stories have been told before," I'm going to ignore the nagging feeling I had that this book was trying too hard to be Anna and the French Kiss (or even a critique of Anna, with its "blegh, Paris" attitude). The plot was decent. It was not earth-shattering, but it kept me reading. Parts of it almost read like a mystery, but maybe that was just my brain trying to figure out how Jason was finding out all the things he knew about Julia. I hope it was intentional, because that was the part that gripped me the most. I wanted to know what he was up to. You've got one text from Julia to Phoebe saying "What's your favorite line from Shakespeare?" and then almost immediately you've got Jason misquoting that very line. [How Julia didn't remember it, I don't know, because later on she states-- without having seen the response from Phoebe-- that they have the same favorite line.] Suspicious, no?
- There were some plot holes with regard to the twist at the end and how it related to things that happened earlier, but at this point in the review I doubt anyone would be like OMGZ NOOOO PLOT HOLES THE TRAGEDY I SHAN'T READ THIS BOOK! If you've read to this point and still think you might want to read it, go for it. The plot holes are not *that* major.
- The pacing was pretty good, too. Definitely no insta-love between the two main characters (between the main character and other characters, though...). It pretty perfectly alternates between lighthearted moments and serious ones, and I love that the characters don't dwell on either too much.
Misc.:
- There were some laugh-out-loud moments for me, though I haven't committed them to memory.
- That scene in the rain, on the grass, in the mud... Yeah. That... that was good. [Though, once again, eerily similar to the Anna scene in the park.]
*an entirely overused phrase/word in the book
Overall Rating: ★★★
Somewhere between "love" and "hate."
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