Tag Archives: YA

Movie Review: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

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to all the boys So I finally got around to seeing To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before on Netflix and it was delightful.  It was every bit as charming as the book was and the casting was truly spot on.  Lana Candor is the perfect Lara Jean. She’s sweet, shy and romantic.  She’s unassuming and comfortable being in the shadow.  Noah Centineo is the perfect Peter.  He just oozes the big man on campus charisma.  You can’t help but fall in love with him, which it seems like everyone on the internet has.  The story is the same.  Lara Jean is 16 and is about to start her Junior year in high school.  Her big sister is going off to college making her the big sister at home.  Her mother died when she was young so it was just her and her sisters and her dad.  Lara Jean has never had a boyfriend but she’s had a few crushes.  She wrote her crushes a letter that was never meant to be read until they were.  Two of those letters went the Josh, the boy next door who dated her older sister Margot and Peter, her former friend from Middle School.  Peter and Lara Jean decide to fake date to make Peter’s ex girlfriend jealous and help her avoid Josh.  All goes well until of course she starts to have feelings for him.  The movie goes by at a pretty clip.  Establishing both Lara Jean and Peter and their relationship.  As they spend more time with each other we see what a great couple they are for each other.  They allow each other open up to each other and be honest about their feelings that they can’t be with each other.  I also love that while Peter asks Lara Jean to do things outside her comfort zone like go to parties, he never asks her to change who she is.  Obviously in the book we see more development of their relationship then we do in the movie because of time constraints it still comes out.  They relationship may have started as pretend, you can see from the beginning that there was always something there. If there is one thing I wished there was more of was Kitty.  Kitty was always my favorite character in the book and I think she needs her own series.  *cough Jenny Han cough*  I can only hope that Netflix greenlights a sequel so we get more of Kitty, Lara Jean and Peter in the future.  The movie is not earth shattering but it is so cute and charming that i feeling it’s going to be on heavy rotation in my Netflix queue for now on.

Review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

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This book hurt to read. It is the story of Finch and Violet, who meet on the top of the bell tower at school when one of them saves the other one’s life. From there, its a love story. But, it’s also a story about dealing with tragedy and with things that have happened to you. It is also a book about mental illness and suicide. The writing is great. Finch is charming and Violet is awesome. The romance is precious. I’m glad I read it. Behind the cut is spoiler city.

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Review: The Waking Dark by Robin Wasserman

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If book two of my Pop Culture Reading Assignment was everything I would want in a vampire novel, book three is full of a ton of my worst fears. It has inexplicable murder, government interventions, mass killing, religious fundamentalism, potential sexual assault, and a whole mess of other scary things. The novel begins with an event that the townsfolk of Oleander, Kansas refer to as the “Killing Day”. Five different people go on murder rampages and then commit suicide (or try to) after they’ve killed. Each one of these incidents leaves behind someone who witnessed the killing and is, unsurprisingly, effected by it. But, that’s not where the real horror is. (I know…the book starts with five murders, one of them a mass murder, and that’s not the real horror? Nope. It isn’t. There’s more to come.)

 

A year later, a tornado rips through town and levels parts of it. It also levels the power plant/military base on the outskirts of town. Following the tornado, the town is put under quarantine and that is when the real trouble begins.

 

The meat of the novel then is part supernatural scariness, part-dystopian nightmare and I couldn’t put it down. The teens who are at the center of the book (its told from their perspectives) are likable and flawed. I was scared for them and horrified by the choices that people made and thrilled the action.

This is a really good book. Beth did a great job picking it!

Review: Head On by John Scalzi

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This book was so good! SO GOOD! In a near future, folks with Haden’s disease are locked into their bodies and interact with the outside world via androids, Chris Shane is an FBI agent and a Haden who has to solve a crime involving a Haden-related sport.

The sport, called Hilketa, is a game in which one player is the goat and the other players have either try to rip their head off and use it as a ball to score points or to defend their teammate and help them keep their head on. At an exhibition game, player Duane Chapman gets his head ripped off and never recovers. This leads Chris and his partner down a rabbit hole of league politics, national politics, and Haden affairs.

This book was so interesting. There is politics, conspiracy, bad business practices, betrayals, characters you love and cheer for, characters you loathe. There is mystery and intrigue. I ripped through this novel. I couldn’t put it down.

Head On is billed as a standalone novel, but it is related to Scalzi’s novel Lock In, which I now feel like I have to look for at the library. And, to think, I wouldn’t have picked it up if the library hadn’t made it seem so enticing with its “no reserves, no renewals, 10-day check outs only) sticker.