zilver
did i add an extra star because i love baz luhrmann's film version so much? ... maybe.
this is probably one of my favourite shakespeare plays and while the above comment is kind of a joke, it's also kind of not because i think knowing the scenes beforehand really helped me enjoy the play more. oftentimes with other plays there's a lot of energy spent trying to figure out what the underlying message of everyone's words are, and that wasn't necessary here.
i absolutely love the language of this play. there are so many beautiful and intriguing lines, puns and metaphors. i loved how much i could enjoy and admire the word plays.
also just a side note that it lowkey highkey annoys me that people hate this play because the two kids fall in love too quickly or some shit. yeah they do. they're literal actual children. maybe i just never took this play as being a romantic tale and always focused more on the fact that it's tragedy how a family feud can bring so much destruction onto kids who had nothing to do with their parents' fuck ups. i know that sounds like i'm being pretentious as heck but i just. never understood it to be meant as romantic in the sense that young people thinking dying is their only way out is supposedly “romantic”. anyway.
when the king of france thinks ur a dumb bitch for wanting to invade his country so he sends u tennis balls and you end up winning a sick battle even though u were outnumbered 5 to 1 but u still feel bad abt urself as a human being so u go fishing for compliments from ur soldiers and they end up hating u so u prank ur right hand man into fighting them because ur actually a dumb bitch but at least u got the girl (and the two countries) in the end
it???s a 3.5. i definitely had some issues with this book but the ending so made me feel like 4 stars that i can???t in good faith give it only 3. i???m gonna try and write some more about this later.
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update: okay let's see if i've become any better at writing comprehensive reviews.
what i think is this: this book had a lot of great moments. as a whole, though, it didn't feel like a great story.
in many ways, this book felt rushed. and to be honest, it just kinda is. if i'm not mistaken, it literally only spans a couple of weeks. i don't entirely remember whether simon vs did too (very possible tbh, i have horrible memory) but from what i remember it didn't feel like this. and i'm not a very big fan of rushing things. i'm more a lets-let-this-character-figure-out-their-shit-in-peace kind of person, and i didn't feel like the characters in this book got that.
i'm not even talking about the ending because to be honest: was super cheesy but i also mega loved it and just like simon vs, this deserved a cheesy, over-the-top ending. and yeah, in basically any other book, i would've wanted the scenario that leah describes in her head nearing the end where they figure everything out more slowly and take their time, but with this book, i'm okay. i love cheese.
one thing i read in a lot of reviews is that people found leah too much all over the place and i have to be honest, i didn't have that much of a problem with that. and i think that might be a really personal thing because i totally understand people who do but i think... i'm just a little tired of expecting a teenage girl to be completely in touch with her feelings and be good to everyone around her. do i want her to be, yes? but she wants herself to be too, and i think a lot of teenagers are unintentionally mean or angered or get defensive quickly. it sucks for the people around them and it doesn't excuse that, definitely, but personally i'm just a little tired with getting angry over something like that. teenagers are a mess. so much shit was going on and she clearly wasn't dealing well with a lot of it. i'm tempted to just kind of... let that go.
then i do want to say that i was really disappointed that there was no scene and no space for leah to apologise to abby after that horrifying coming out scene. that was really necessary and for it not to be there... yeah idk. that just really sucks.
another thing that sucks was the fact that nick had the personality of a teaspoon in this book. he was just there to be mopey and shitty and drunk (why??? so unnecessary) and for someone who was so in love with & hung up over abby he suddenly moved on from it so quickly. it wouldn't have been so bad if we'd actually gotten to spend some time with nick and flesh his feelings etc. out a little more complexly, but again, there wasn't space.
having said all that. the ending left me feeling so warm and lovely and happy. i know it was cheesy but shit man. it was good. i couldn't help but be smiling and yelling at julia as we both read it. i wanted that happiness and it made me feel great and i just have to acknowledge that as well. and there were a lot of moments that made me smile like that. basically every line that bram said was beautiful and perfect. simon was lovely and oblivious and adorable. i love roadtrips with crushes. so yeah. there's that as well.
anyway, this got very long and rambling and in the end it comes down the second line of this review sorry if you read all this.
???We are the choices we make.???
Anyone I've talked to while reading this book has heard this already but I'm just going to say this again: after the whole Hunger Games, Divergent, Matched etc. times of dystopian trilogies I became... slightly allergic. It just felt like the arc of all of these books were becoming too predictable and it just made them really boring to me.
So starting this book I was kind of anticipating maybe getting that feeling too, and I know this is still only the first book so things might change and yada yada but, let me just say, that I was really really pleasantly surprised by the different kind of storytelling we get here.
It's not dystopian, exactly. It's kind of sci-fi because it's about a group of people going to a new planet because earth is full and also messed up and trying to build a new life there. So already, we start out not dealing with a controlling government but rather it's exploring what people do when there's no government, and it's about how they make sense of life and power.
Todd was really annoying at times but also like... he's fourteen. So I try to forgive him for being kind of dumb and making stupid decisions. I think Viola is really cool and I hope we're going to get to know more about her and the previous part of her life in the next book(s). Manchee is the freakin best I love animal companions.
Spoiler WHY CAN'T AARON JUST FUCKING DIE?????????????????????????? HE KEEPS SHOWING UP even after they tear his face off it's so ANNOYING. also when manchee died i lowkey died that was so sad.
???It's a curious, wanting thing.???
4.5 stars
lesbian dickens?????????? bithc this was better than any dickens i've ever read
it was totally not what i expected to be honest (i wasn't entirely sure what to expect) but what i got was a thrilling tale about a scam, many gloves, mystery and SNEAKY GIRLS. i loved the way the story was built up, told through multiple perspectives so you never quite knew what was going on. i love my girls both equally they deserve all my love (and also all of each other's love) so. there's that.
I DON'T WANT TO SAY ANYTHING MORE BECAUSE IT'S JUST A WASTE OF SPACE AND I DON'T WANT TO GIVE ANYTHING AWAY SO Y'ALL SHOULD JUST READ THIS OKAY
gdi jane eyre is such a badass. she's just out there in the world, making her own choices, living her own life, super aware of her own worth. freaking Goals. all those weak ass bitches (men)? she doesn't need them. none of them deserve her and she knows it.
(let me also point out that she's clearly the happiest surrounded by smart and cool girls but that's neither here nor there)
you know what, disney's peter pan is way shittier than book peter pan except for the fact that book peter pan like... kills the lost boys when they start wanting to grow up. but that's like. a minor thing.
really enjoyed the lowkey sassy narrator that kept saying everyone was stupid. jm barrie was not fucking around.
3.5-4.0 stars
???Perhaps we were friends first and lovers second. But then perhaps this is what lovers are.???
I think I was expecting a little more from this book than it gave me. I got it in glimpses and fragments and parts but not in its entirety.
I'm a big fan of communication and dialogue, especially in a novel as character driven as this one. That's also more what I was expecting of it and that's not really what I got. This book is very heavily relies on the internal monologue of 17-year-old Elio, who becomes completely infatuated with the house guest staying with their family for the summer.
That part, the infatuation, comes across very well, to say the least. Elio finds meaning in every look exchanged between Oliver and him, finds whole conversations in tiny smiles and heart-stopping significance in that one time Oliver picks up the glass that Elio accidentally knocks over (honestly kid... it's just a glass).
I think the lack of actual communication we got between the two made it difficult for me to really connect to either of the characters. There was so much of Elio's internal monologue that it became a little overwhelming at times and for me, a bit of perspective might have helped. I felt like it stopped me from actually getting to know the characters themselves more, strangely enough, because Elio was constantly so concerned with Oliver. I think there's a very good possibility that that was done intentionally, because he's a teenager in love and the rest of the world can suddenly seem a whole less important or significant opposed to this one, wonderful person. And yet, the recreation of that feeling left me feeling a little unsatisfied.
I definitely enjoyed parts. I liked the vibrant, summer-y feeling it gave me (especially now when the days are getting shorter and more filled with rain), the kind of feeling that you get when summer has just started and everything seems endless and possible. I'm really curious to see the movie, and maybe that will help me bring everything and everyone to life a little more.
ps. peaches are ruined forever don't talk to me about them nothing happened with peaches i hate everything
