[Book Review] Stephen Chbosky ~ The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Author: Stephen Chbosky
Book: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Rating: 

Synopsis: Charlie is a freshman. And while he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting to navigate his way through uncharted territory: the world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends; the world of sex, drugs, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when all one requires is that perfect song on that perfect drive to feel infinite. But Charlie can't stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.


Review:


I went through stages with this one.
When I first started Perks, after all the good reviews my mind was set on liking it and I had pretty high expectations.
Halfway through the first fifty pages, though, I realized I wasn't liking this in the least. The writing sounded so impersonal, and flat. I just couldn't relate to Charlie at all, which is a pity because he was telling of things we've all got to go through at some point.
Also, Charlie was really naïve. Which would be good, if that was done realistically. But honestly? I cannot imagine a fifteen-year-old boy who's that naïve. I myself wasn't that naïve at fiteen. Not even at thirteen, to be honest.
He constantly cried. Constantly! Who cries that much?
Although in the end the reason was kind of was explained so I sort of relented on that point.

One character I really liked is Patrick. He was great! I enjoyed getting to know more about him. He looked so tough at the beginning but actually he was just a scared little boy. He was definitely more realistic than Charlie, to tell you the truth.
The thing with Charlie is that he's supposed to represent all of us teenagers. And in a way he kind of does. But there was this sort of wall between his thoughts and his actions.
Sometimes he would say something and I'd be like, "wow. That happens to me a lot." But then he'd go out and do things NO NORMAL TEEN would ever do. Like breaking down in front of all his friends for such stupid reasons?
He really did look like a little kid. It would've just been better if the book was centered on a ten-year-old or something.

What made me like the book a little more, though, was the ending. Finally, at the end of the book, Charlie realizes he can't always be a wallflower. He's got to stand up and hold his own ground. Not always be pushed around by others.
So finally there's some growth on the main character's side, which is what I'd been waiting for all along.
Also, all Charlie's break-downs were kind of explained which is why I can say that The Perks of Being a Wallflower kind of reedemed itself at last.

Also, there was this scene in which Patrick (or Sam, I can't remember who) asks Charlie was his favorite book is. And when they ask the reason of Charlie's choice, he's like, "Because it's the last one I've read." I really liked it because, as a bookworm, I can relate to that. I especially appreciated it because it meant that he liked books so much that each of them was his favorite. It made me smile.

So my final opinion on The Perks of Being a Wallflower? I'd say 3.5 stars.
I do think it's a bit overrated, but all in all it was pretty cute.
I wouldn't say Perks is one of my favorite books, but if you get through all of it I believe you can definitely learn something from it.

This review can also be found at: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/364629229

[New Read] Wendy Higgins ~ Sweet Evil

And I've finally gotten my hands on this book!
I've been meaning to read it for MONTHS. But for some stupid reasons I never actually did.
Until now.
To be honest, I was reading Arcadia Awakens by Kai Meyer. It doesn't really have good reviews but the storyline sounded so cool that I wanted to try it anyway and shove in everbody's face how much I loved it.
But unfortunately everybody was right.
I've reached the half book line and things still haven't gotten better, so I decided to start Sweet Evil, too, because I was dying to read it and getting stuck on that other one wasn't in my plans.

So, about the book. So far it's good, but I haven't really read much of it yet. I just met Kayden, the male MC, and he doesn't seem to be bad. Anna is kinda cool, too, although she freaks me out a bit.
The storyline sounds about as fresh as you can get with the billions of PN books coming out these days, so I'm quite satisfied. It does have some pretty high reviews on goodreads, so I do have some expectations.
I just hope SE will do it for me.
I like the cover, although from what I've read so far the models don't really match up with the descriptions.
But oh well, that dress is adorable.

[New Read] The Perks of Being a Wallflower!

I have made it. I finally have.
I have started reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

This book has been advertized so much I don't think I could've seen more of it if it hung outside my front door day and night. Seriously.
I'd been wanting to read this for months, waiting to find out what the fuss was all about, and now I've finally started it.

What bugs me about this book, though, is that I didn't find out about it myself.
Now you have to know a peculiar thing about me: I like finding things on my own. I like being able to say, "oh, no one told me to watch/read this. I found it by myself and loved it."
I guess I kind of like the pride I take in saying that.
And now I can't.
As I've said, Perks has been advertized and commercialized very much in the last months. I guess it has to do with the movie coming out (which I'm going to watch as soon as I finish the book).
And that's the thing about things going mainstream.
That they kind of lose a bit of that sparkle they had before. I'm not saying a movie makes a book worse, but somehow it takes the imagination out of it. And it attracts those people who wouldn't be interested in it otherwise.


Example.
Twilight.
Don't booh me now, please. Listen up. Twilight was not an exceptional book, but it's not as bad as some make it sound, either. The thing about it, though, is that going mainstream it also aquired some of those fans that I personally would not be proud to call fans. What I mean is that now there's a bunch of people who fake themselves literary experts, and at the fatidic question, what's your favorite book? (which, by the way, is a very stupid question, if you ask me), they answer TWILIGHT without a shadow of doubt.

And the readers community is all one big, fat facepalm.


But why was I saying this? Oh, yeah, The Perks of Being a Wallflower being made into a movie.
No, I am not in any way saying this book is as bad as Twilight (principally 'cause I haven't even finished it yet so I can't say). What I'm saying is that with the movie coming out it will aquire a lot of fans who do not actually like the book for the right reasons, but because it's just the movie.
I don't know if you get why I mean so I will try to say it more clearly.
People will like it because its popular and they will not get the true meaning that's behind it, and the geniality of it all.
It happens.
A lot of times, it happens.
But that's the way things goes, so I guess I can't complain much. I should just be glad that a nice book is receiving attention, I guess.


So yeah, I have currently just the passed the half book line and I'm nearing the ending. I'll tell you in a new post what I thought about the book! and if you have read it, or if you plan to, or even if you don't, comment or say something and tell me what you think about it. :)

Thank you for reading,


Elena

[Review] Chelsea M. Cameron ~ My Favorite Mistake

Author: Chelsea M. Cameron
Book: My Favorite Mistake
Rating: 

Synopsis: Taylor Caldwell can't decide if she wants to kiss her new college roommate or punch him.

On the one hand, Hunter Zaccadelli is a handsome, blue-eyed bundle of charm. On the other, he's a tattooed, guitar-playing bundle of bad boy. Maybe that's why Taylor's afraid of falling in love with him, or anyone else. She doesn't want to get burned, and even though her other roommates adore him, she wants him gone before it's too late.

Hunter himself has been been burned before, but the fact that Taylor calls him out on his crap and has the sexiest laugh ever make him decide maybe love isn't a lost cause. They make a bet: if she can convince him she truly loves or hates him, he'll leave the apartment--and leave her alone. The problem is, the more time they spend together, the less she hates him, and the more she moves toward love.

But when the man who holds the key to Taylor's fear of giving up her heart resurfaces and threatens to wreck everything, she has to decide: trust Hunter with her greatest secret, or do everything in her power to win that bet and drive him away forever.




Review:
(guys, there may be a few spoilers ahead)



Oh well.
This one took quite a lot of my energies, didn't it?



I first read of My Favorite Mistake on goodreads, because it was supposed to be similar to Beautiful Disaster, by Jamie McGuire, a book I personally love.
Which such a premise, I already knew it would be hard for this one to beat BD, not to count that I couldn't help comparing the two of them.
Result: I am sorry, Chelsea M. Cameron, but you lost.



My Favorite Mistake is the story of Taylor, a sophomore girl with a traumatic past attending UMaine college, and Hunter, a sophomore boy with a traumatic past attending UMain college.
Oh wait, did I repeat myself?
Oh dear, yes I did.
In fact, my darlings, our author here exceeded herself. You know how some readers are continuously lamenting that the guy with a traumatic past is so clichè and needs to be given up? Well here, guys, we've got BOTH OF THEM with a traumatic past.
That makes for a pretty messed up storyline.

First of all, I would like to state a few points about our main character, Taylor.
Taylor is nuts.
Not as in, "oh, she's a bit nuts, but in a cute way."
No.
She's nuts.
When Hunter makes his first appearance, the girl pretty much has a neurotic crisis (it's a lot that she didn't faint or anything!).
Here you already undersand that she's had some kind of trauma that prevents her from getting to close to people (or guys). I got that. I even pretty much figured out what her trauma was, although I wasn't sure at the time.
However, she was definitely out of line in that. She didn't just fear Hunter, she treated him like shit. For about a quarter of the book, she insults him (both saying it to us and saying it to his face) and tells him to fuck off, because she hates him.
Now. I do not know this girl personally (since she doesn't exist and all), but I highly doubt this was the first boy she saw in eight years. True, he was the first one to have to sleep in her same room, but hating him like that? The guy had done absolutely nothing wrong.
It didn't make sense.
And I'm blaming this on the author. Whatever made YA writers think that teens hating on each other are hot..

Next, there's Hunter.
Now here's a cool guy. I liked his character, as a person.
But as for his background.. eh. Could've been better. I don't know what exactly I was expecting, but.. ugh. Whatever. I'm a bitch. Get on with it.

It's not that I don't get these guys' traumas. I do. But I just feel they're not <i>enough.</i> Enough of an excuse to behave the way they did. Hunter was kind of okay, 'cause he hadn't that many problems in the end, but Taylor..
it just felt like everything was too forced to suit the author's wishes. Semi-rape so the MC would still be a virgin and we could have this really good first time with the tattoed guy.
Aaagh, it's really hard for to write this review. Because I know I'm being a bitch and I'm being stupid.
When I think about it, there's nothing wrong with this book. Nothing at all. It's kinda good. But I just didn't like it.
I told you, I couldn't help comparing it to BD and it didn't live up to Beautiful Disaster's standards.

Even the ending bothered me. What happened to Taylor was eight years ago. I know that Travis (ha! Travis! BD reference again) really hurt her and pretty much killed her innocence, but still. There should be space for redemption, shouldn't it? This guy had spent eight years of his life in jail. He had to have thought and considered what he'd done. Maybe he really had repented. Maybe he'd understood the weight of his actions and he was really sorry. But they didn't even give him the benefit of the doubt.
This wasn't a book about growth, it was a book about moving on. Taylor just moved on in the sense that she abandoned what had happened to her. She didn't try to analize it. She didn't go up to Travis and say, "are you even sorry?" She didn't go up to him and tell him what she really thought of him. She just let the tribunal do it for her with no second thoughts.
I didn't like that, people.

Also, two questions that've been bugging me every since I finished the book:

1) Hadn't Taylor said at the beginning of the book that she couldn't move out of the house because she had, like, a special scolarship that made her stay there? So why at the end of the book happens what happens?

2) How can Travis have a girlfriend if he spent eight years in prison? Was she in jail too or what?



In the end My Favorite Mistake wasn't a bad book, but it didn't even hook me the way I expected and hoped for. I love the title, I hate the cover, the book's a mix of the two.
Three stars to make it a tie.

IN MY MAILBOX. :)

Helloooooooooo!
Whhhhaaazzzup.


I haven't posted on this blog for about a week? So sorry. School keeps me busy and.. yeah. Life's hard.
So what have you been reading these days? As you can see in the right sidebar overe here ----->
I am currently reading When Summer Ends by Isabelle Rae and My Favorite Mistake by Chelsea M. Cameron. My honest opinion? They both suck. Bad. I'm at about half of each one of them, and so far none has hooked me up. Much.
The thing is that My Favorite Mistake was supposed to be kind of like Beautiful Disaster, by Jamie McGuire, which is one of my favorite books (despite all the critics it got), but MFM just aint' got anything on BD.
I'm sorry.
I can see the author trying to make it out, but it's just not. I'm surprised because MFM has received a lot of positive reviews on goodreads, but I just can't bring myself to like it. It did have strong competition, since I've mentioned how BD is one of my fave books, but still. It could be a whooole lot better.



Anyway, I wasn't going to talk about this, was I?
Recently, in my mailbox came three really cool books. Two of them I've already mentioned multiple times in my posts ('cause I just love the series), and they are Obsidian and Onyx by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I'd read them both on my kindle and finally the paperback copy arrived so that now I can gaze lovingly at them anytime I want.
And the third book.. *drums rolling* is The Ring by Danielle Steel.
It IS kind of a funny story, because at first I was looking for The ring by Koji Suzuki (you know, the one the horror movie is based on?) 'cause I'm a freak like that. But then I saw this one which had a sort of nice synopsis and it only cost three euros because there was some kinda special discount (dunno why).
So yeah, I said, 'why not?' And now here the baby is. And the more time pass, the more I'm eager to start it. I've always been obsessed with stories set during the World Wars, 'specially number two. And this one is about number two.
Also, I'm kind of a sucker for all this romance/affair that's going on here, so I'm definitely woohoo-ing for this one. I just hope it's worth it!

So yeah, this is what came in my mailbox and I'm soo excited for all of these babies.
I'm so awkward, seriously, when I'm talking about books, btw. My friends always look at me weird when I start 'nerding' about them, ahahah. Thank God I have a friend that's just like me with 'em so we get each other ;)




Elena