Review: Aristotle & Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Publication Date: April 9^th 2013 (audiobook release)
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Length: 7hrs 29 mins

A lyrical novel about family and friendship from critically acclaimed author Benjamin Alire Sáenz.
Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship--the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be. 

So many people have loved this book, so many people whose bookish overlap mine, so I was expecting to love this book when I finally sat down to listen to it. Unfortunately it ended up being a bit of a rocky road. I don’t know if it was that I didn’t get along with listening to it and would have loved it had I decided to read it instead, or whether I was in the wrong frame of mind, but this novel and I really did not get along until around 80% of the way through. And that was heart-breaking.

I couldn’t connect with the characters, I found both Ari and Dante frustrating. I was irritated by the emotional swings – people crying all the time. The writing style was at times abrasive and abrupt, intermittently littered with truly beautiful prose. It was just such a mix and I couldn’t settle into the story.

Finally at around the 80% mark I settled more into the rhythm of the story and found myself beginning to really care about these characters, so by the end I was thoroughly engrossed in the story, but it was so frustrating for it to have taken that long to pull me in.

There is so much to love about this story though. Like I said, it has some truly gorgeous prose and some really profoundly beautiful phrases and quotes that I loved. I loved the content, the subject matter tackled, the two polar opposites we find in Ari and Dante. I loved their parents. Too often in young adult fiction parents are portrayed as awful, absent, or ignored completely. Here both Ari and Dante’s parents are complex individuals who round out the story and complete it in ways that would never be achieved if the focus was purely on the two boys. Their love for each other shines through, and each of them is individual bringing their own fears, hopes, and personalities to the narrative.

I think part of the problem for me was that the story is incredibly slow. There is no driving force to the plot to really propel it and keep the momentum going. It ambles, it pauses, it takes tangents, and at times that can be incredibly frustrating. I think that would have been less of a problem for me had I been reading this, but listening to someone else take these narrative rambles didn’t hold my interest.

I can see why people love this book. I can see why others have found it frustrating and hard to engage with. It isn’t a favourite for me – yet. I think this is one of those times I need to go away and forget it for a few years, then come back and read it rather than listen to it. 

Review: Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Publication Date: October 8^th 2015
Publisher: MacmillanLength: 522 pages

Simon Snow just wants to relax and savor his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him. His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest, and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where maybe he’ll be safe. Simon can’t even enjoy the fact that his roommate and longtime nemesis is missing, because he can’t stop worrying about the evil git. Plus there are ghosts. And vampires. And actual evil things trying to shut Simon down. When you’re the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savor anything.
Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story — but far, far more monsters.

I’m still catching up with the rest of the world when it comes to Rainbow Rowell’s books, so when I started reading ‘Carry On’ I had no idea until a friend told me when I was a third of the way through that it was in fact a book that had been a fictional book in one of Rainbow Rowell’s other books ‘Fangirl’ where the main character wrote fanfiction about the character’s in ‘Carry On’. Confused yet? I was, but I was also highly entertained at how meta Rainbow was deciding to go with her latest novel.

Considering ‘Fangirl’ takes a fictional look at the real life Harry Potter fan-fic extravaganza, it is no surprise that the easiest way to sum up this book is to say that it’s like Harry Potter on crack.
It’s bizarre, completely insane, brilliant and more than a little crazy, and on the whole I loved it.

Rainbow dumps you into Simon and Baz’s final year at Watford and it feels like there should have been seven books leading up to this where we see all the crazy stuff they got up to and watch the rivalries and relationships develop. Instead we’re given this as a standalone and get constant references back to the various things that have happened in the past seven years. Sometimes that works brilliantly when they’re just casually dropped in and you have a moment of ‘wait, WHAT!?’ but other times I was just left feeling frustrated because I had missed all of this other stuff being referenced. It ends up being a bit of a mixed bag where some of it works and some of it doesn’t and I was left see sawing back and forth between loving it and being frustrated.

The magic is crazy. I adored so much of the insanity and frequently found myself laughing out loud – particularly at the phrases for spells that they use. It was all just so utterly bizarre. I also really loved the relationship between Simon and Baz, that was probably the best part of the entire novel for me. Scrap that, Baz was the best part of the novel for me. He’s snarky and aloof and the banter alone was fabulous. Rainbow plays on so many clichés and turns it into something other, something that you never expect.

However I did have a couple of problems with it, mostly due to the complete lack of surprise at the twists and reveals. I could see them coming right from the start so instead of it eliciting gasps and excitement from me, I was left waiting for the characters to catch on. I also struggled with Simon’s persistent one track mindedness about Baz in the first section of the novel. Once Baz makes an appearance and we start getting his point of view, it wasn’t nearly so frustrating and it didn’t bother me in the same way. However to start with Simon sounds like a broken record and the lack of anything else really driving the plot forward makes it drag a little until Baz shows up.

All in all this was a good book, a quick and enjoyable read, and one that has made me even more eager to go and read ‘Fangirl’. I’m proof that you don’t have to have read ‘Fangirl’ first to enjoy and understand ‘Carry On’, although we’ll see how my opinion of this book changes after reading the former. It’s not without its problems, but it’s funny and unique and if you’re a fan of Harry Potter is definitely one to pick up.

Review: Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Publication Date: March 27th 2014 (this edition)
Publisher: Egmont
Length: 239 pages

New York Times  bestselling author David Levithan tells the based-on-true-events story of Harry and Craig, two 17-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record—all of which is narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS. 
While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teen boys dealing with languishing long-term relationships, coming out, navigating gender identity, and falling deeper into the digital rabbit hole of gay hookup sites—all while the kissing former couple tries to figure out their own feelings for each other.

I’ve tried a few of David Levithan’s short stories and ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson’ and hadn’t gotten along with them at all, which meant that I wasn’t in any rush to pick up any other books by him. But then I got talking to a very good friend about how she absolutely adores some of his books and I thought I really ought to give him another go – enter ‘Two Boys Kissing’.

There is no way I’m actually going to be able to adequately put into words just how much I loved this book.
It’s told in one of the most unique ways I’ve ever seen a story narrated – by a Greek chorus of the gay men lost to AIDS. It’s quite an odd storytelling style to get used to, but it didn’t take me long to fall into the style and I now can’t imagine it being told in any other way. It meant that you were able to glimpse all of the characters’ lives easily, skipping from one to the next as easy as thought, and to be granted little pieces of wisdom and thoughts that otherwise would never have found their way into the story.

“Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?” 

It also has a wonderfully diverse cast of characters. Whilst from the blurb you would assume the story would focus on Harry & Craig, I loved that actually all of the boys are given time to develop and we see a very equal amount of all of them.

This is a beautiful story, a tough story, a story that made me cry and filled me with love and hope. It is a story I think everyone should read, that should be studied in school and given to friends and family for Christmas. It is a story that utterly wrecked me emotionally, but left me feeling so, so glad that I read it.

It is a book that I know I’m going to need to go back and re-visit. It was so incredibly written that I kept finding passages I want to go back and re-read, sections that I know would have even more impact the second time around, and whole swathes that were just so beautifully written it brought me to tears.
It is a book that demands attention – that demands to be felt. Stunning, unique and utterly brilliant.

“We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. We make more than dust. That’s all we ask of you. Make more than dust.”

Review: Under the Lights by Dahlia Adler

Publication Date: June 30^th 2015
Publisher: Spencer Hill Contemporary
Length: 312 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley and Spencer Hill Contemporary for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Josh Chester loves being a Hollywood bad boy, coasting on his good looks, his parties, his parents' wealth, and the occasional modeling gig. But his laid-back lifestyle is about to change. To help out his best friend, Liam, he joins his hit teen TV show, Daylight Falls...opposite Vanessa Park, the one actor immune to his charms. (Not that he's trying to charm her, of course.) Meanwhile, his drama-queen mother blackmails him into a new family reality TV show, with Josh in the starring role. Now that he's in the spotlight—on everyone's terms but his own—Josh has to decide whether a life as a superstar is the one he really wants.
Vanessa Park has always been certain about her path as an actor, despite her parents' disapproval. But with all her relationships currently in upheaval, she's painfully uncertain about everything else. When she meets her new career handler, Brianna, Van is relieved to have found someone she can rely on, now that her BFF, Ally, is at college across the country. But as feelings unexpectedly evolve beyond friendship, Van's life reaches a whole new level of confusing. And she'll have to choose between the one thing she's always loved...and the person she never imagined she could.

If you’re after a contemporary romance this summer but you’re bored of all the cliché, boy meets girl and butterflies and tingles ensue, then this is the book for you.

It’s the second in the Daylight Falls books, but don’t let that put you off as I didn’t even realise there was a preceding book until I was well into the story. It works really well either as a standalone or as a sequel and you won’t have to play catch up to get into the story.

Going into the story both point of view characters, Josh and Vanessa were incredibly unlikeable and hard to connect with. Josh particularly is a grade A horror – think Chuck Bass, but worse. But the story was compelling, it swept me up and pulled me in and so despite the fact that I wasn’t sold on either of the characters who were showing me their world, I wanted to know more. And I am so glad I did. The further into the story you get the more you begin to warm to the characters and to relate to them. Vanessa is such a wonderful character once you get past her self absorbed superficial act in the first few chapters. Josh takes infinitely more time and patience to reach a point where you genuinely care about him, but he too is worth the wait.

Like I said this isn’t your stereotypical boy meets girl story, so whilst there is some attraction between these two, it is only a tiny side part of the whole. It is more two viewpoints into these two very different people’s lives and all the confusions and messed up things they’re going through. Both of them are stuck in situations they don’t know how to deal with, and whilst we may not all be actors in Hollywood, they are situations that everyone can relate to.

The book tackles friendship, family, sexuality, emancipation and trying to find your place in the world. It’s an incredible book, one that doesn’t shy away from tough subjects and flags up so many things. I wanted to weep and hug this book at times for giving such an honest and realistic portrayal of these problems.

Whilst Josh was a fascinating character and I did even come to like him by the end, this book was, for me, all about Vanessa. She’s determined, she loves her job, she wants to succeed and please her parents and satisfy her agent/fans/public. She works insanely hard and never really does anything for herself. And as well as all that she is Korean and has a major part in a tv show, and she never forgets how lucky she is to have a major role. As well as all her difficulties as a young adult trying to find her way in the world and balance everything in her life she is going in with her eyes wide open about the difficulties placed on her in her chosen profession because of her skin colour and ethnicity. She’s type cast in minor roles and desperately afraid that her career will end with the role on the show. It is a brutally honest look at the acting business and how girls, particularly girls who aren’t straight, white and skinny, have everything stacked against them.

But not only all of that, which is awesome just on its own, she is also coming to terms with her feelings for another girl and her own sexuality. And this isn’t just a book that glosses over the subject and the feelings, Adler refuses to compromise and makes this a wonderfully honest and frank portrayal of the relationship Vanessa begins to build. She gives it as much time and development and detail as you would find in any straight romance book, and I love that.

This book is awesome on so many levels, and it is so bold and brilliant and honest and I flew through it in a matter of hours. I became so invested with the story and characters and I was desperate to see how it would all turn out.

The only reason that this wasn’t a full five star read was because of the unlikeability of both characters in the first few chapters, that was the only thing that knocked down what is otherwise a fantastic book.

If you’re after a diverse read, a book that deals with a female same sex relationship and a whole host of other awesome, read this, read this now. I can’t wait to get my hands on everything else Adler has written now, I’m definitely a fan of someone who has the gumption to write a book like this and to pull it off with such style.

Review: This Book is Gay by James Dawson

Publication Date: September 4^th 2014
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Length: 271 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Former PSHCE teacher and acclaimed YA author James Dawson gives an uncensored look at what it's like to grow up as LGBT. Including testimonials from people 'across the spectrum', this inclusive book explores everything anyone who ever dared to wonder wants to know - from sex to politics, how to pull, stereotypes, how to come-out and more. Spike Gerrell's hilarious illustrations combined with funny and factual text make this a must-have read.

This is an incredibly important book for everyone not just those whose sexuality is covered in the book.

James tackles a breadth of subjects and topics within sexuality so that no matter who you are and how well informed you may already be, you will learn something from this book. It acts like a sort of guidebook for those thinking about their sexuality, coming to terms with their sexuality, and those who may already be out and secure with it. The breadth of topics covered is staggering: common definitions and labels, stereotypes, biological theories, coming out dating, homophobia, sex, marriage, children, religious opposition, transphobia and HIV/AIDS. For such a slim volume it does a huge amount.

He gives clear, honest and open advice on all of these topics as well as pulling stories and thoughts from survey’s he has conducted with people from around the world and the result is a patchwork of support and advice that shows anyone reading this book that you are not alone. It gives snapshots into so many lives and it’s wonderful to see so many different views collected into one book, providing a thought provoking and engaging read.

Sex-Ed is woefully lacking in so many parts of the world, and almost non-existent for anyone whose sexuality doesn’t fall into the straight category. It leaves so many people isolated, confused and ignorant about things that should be taught as freely as straight sex-ed is taught, and this book is a fantastic step in the right direction to right this imbalance.

The only reason that this book doesn’t have a full five stars from me is because there are quite a few topics glossed over – for example I didn’t feel that there was nearly enough page space devoted to Trans, and I think the idea of being asexual was mentioned once? For a book that was supposed to be inclusive I felt that it leaned very heavily on Gay/Lesbian and didn’t look very far outside that circle. That’s fair enough if the book was just going to focus on that, but to act as though the book was all inclusive and then to only focus heavily on being gay or lesbian felt a bit frustrating.

It also felt as though the aimed for age of the reader was a bit all over the place. This is an important book, one that needs to be read by pretty much everyone regardless of their gender or sexuality or age, and there were some points that felt like they were aimed for much younger readers and then others where it shifted abruptly to more adult language. It didn’t quite strike the right balance for me as a book aimed at a wide group of people. It was an admirable attempt at a very tough job, but it didn’t quite hit all the right points for me.

This is a hugely important book, for those needing help, advice and reassurance for the things they are going through. For people who are curious. For people who are willing and open to being educated. The world has been so homophobic for so long that it is a relief to see books like this appearing on shelves. Funny, informative and engaging, this is one that I will be getting everyone I know to sit down and read.