Review: Hello, Goodbye & Everything In Between by Jennifer E Smith

Publication Date: September 1^st 2015
Publisher: Headline
Length: 256 pages

Thanks to Netgalley and Headline for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

On the night before they leave for college, Clare and Aidan only have one thing left to do: figure out whether they should stay together or break up. Over the course of twelve hours, they'll retrace the steps of their relationship, trying to find something in their past that might help them decide what their future should be. The night will lead them to friends and family, familiar landmarks and unexpected places, hard truths and surprising revelations. But as the clock winds down and morning approaches, so does their inevitable goodbye. The question is, will it be goodbye for now or goodbye forever?
This new must-read novel from Jennifer E. Smith, author of The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, explores the difficult choices that must be made when life and love lead in different directions.

I absolutely adored ‘The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight’ so I was eager to get back to Jennifer Smith with her latest novel. Whilst it did have a cute story and I swept through it in one sitting, it never really grabbed me in the way I was hoping it would. In fact, if I’m completely honest the overwhelming feeling I was left with on finishing it was ‘meh’.

It didn’t really feel like there was a huge amount of point to the novel. The entirety of the action takes place over one night as Clare and Aidan attempt to work out if they should break up or stay together and take their relationship long distance. A lovely premise, except Clare gives every impression right from the start of the novel as already having decided she wants to break up and as a result the entire novel feels like one long protracted mope session as she wails and is generally indecisive – see sawing back and forth between the two options.

That might have worked had the characters been remotely likeable or relatable. But Aidan remained flat and one dimensional throughout, and I never particularly warmed to Clare. I wanted to, but she’s so black and white in her opinions – there is no middle ground. As a result I just felt bored by her dramatics and inability to make a decision and stick with it, or to learn to be a little more flexible. She starts to comprehend that the world isn’t built up of yes and no questions towards the end of the novel, but it just felt like too little too late.

So whilst it’s an engaging story, and I did enjoy reading it, and I loved the subject matter tackled (after all it’s a relatable story for anyone going off to college or uni who is faced with the prospect of a long distance relationship) it never really took off for me. I closed the book feeling meh about the entire thing and wondering what the point of it had been.

If you’re a fan of Smith’s other works then you’ll enjoy this latest offering from her, but be warned this is far from her best work. And if you haven’t yet discovered Smith’s heart warming love stories I don’t recommend starting with this one. Instead pick her up infinitely more engaging debut novel ‘The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight’.

Review: Mosquitoland by David Arnold

Publication Date: September 10^th 2015
Publisher: Headline
Length: 336 pages

Thanks to Netgalley and Headline for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

"I am a collection of oddities, a circus of neurons and electrons: my heart is the ringmaster, my soul is the trapeze artist, and the world is my audience. It sounds strange because it is, and it is, because I am strange."
After the sudden collapse of her family, Mim Malone is dragged from her home in northern Ohio to the "wastelands" of Mississippi, where she lives in a medicated milieu with her dad and new stepmom. Before the dust has a chance to settle, she learns her mother is sick back in Cleveland.
So she ditches her new life and hops aboard a northbound Greyhound bus to her real home and her real mother, meeting a quirky cast of fellow travelers along the way. But when her thousand-mile journey takes a few turns she could never see coming, Mim must confront her own demons, redefining her notions of love, loyalty, and what it means to be sane.
Told in an unforgettable, kaleidoscopic voice, "Mosquitoland" is a modern American odyssey, as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.

This was an oddball of a book for me, that ultimately wasn’t quite my cup of tea, but I think will appeal to a lot of other people.

The biggest problem for me was the lack of connection with any of the characters. By the end I had begun to care about Mim, but it was too little too late by that point. She is a very abrasive character, and sometimes that works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. In this case, I didn’t really care for her as I had with some other more caustic heroines, and her voice and personality will definitely divide readers.However she really leaps off the page, full of life and opinions and flaws, and that is a wonderful thing to read.

Mim is most definitely an unreliable narrator. She leaves things out until the end, quite pertinent information so that you are forced to comply with her world view until the truth comes tumbling out and both she and the reader realise that not everything is as it seems.

I did enjoy watching all the pieces start to click into place towards the end of the book, but like with caring about Mim herself, it kinda felt like too little too late. On the whole the rest of the plot fell into place in a rather predictable fashion with some insta love for added fun and a fair few moments where I gave the book the side eye due to Mim’s actions and thoughts. Her ‘war paint’ was problematic, but at least she recognised that it was, but her and Beck talking about Walt (their Down Syndrome friend) being their pet dog, was a little much.
It also felt a little bit too episodic with the detours. Sure we get some interesting characters making appearances, but the arcs felt a little bit too much like they were only in the book to show Mim's growth. Zany and exciting new people who pop up, make a brief impression and then leave. Something about the construction of the detours just didn't quite work for me - add it to the list of many things that sadly didn't.

It was a book that felt as though it were trying too hard to be another ‘HEY LOOK MENTAL ILLNESS’ book, and it didn’t feel like it tackled it particularly well. Certain elements were done well, but there were quite a few that either didn’t work or made me look squinty eyed at the book to make sure I was reading it right. However it does tackle a lot of pertinent issues - the disillusion of her parent's relationship, the grey areas of discovering that your parents are people in their own right who makes mistakes and have problems of their own and a lot of that was really interesting to read. It's just a shame that it was buried in amongst so much else that didn't work for me.

I just felt kinda apathetic about the book by the time I finished. That’s most likely all on me, I wasn’t in the mood for a contemporary, or maybe I was too tired and should have gone to bed already. But for me personally, this book just wasn’t really my thing.