I finally decided to join the party and read Anna and the French Kiss. It’s one of those books I read because I wanted to know what the book was about. It keeps popping up everywhere online—in the blogosphere, on Instagram, as well as Twitter—and all the online bookstores seem to have it under their recommendations right now. At first I did mostly enjoy the book. For the most part, I liked Stephanie Perkins’ writing style, which was well-suited towards a sweet romance. Sadly, towards the last third, prominent cracks started appearing for me.
BEAUTY QUEENS by Libba Bray
One thing to be said about Beauty Queens is that it’s way over the top. As much as many have referred to the book as satire, I think it got lost in trying too hard to be funny. Some events were just so ludicrous, they were too far removed from social commentary. Maybe it’s because of that that I was hard pressed to enjoy Beauty Queens. “Give it a chance. Things will get better after a while,” I kept thinking. Things didn’t get better—at least not in my opinion.
EVERY DAY by David Levithan
If there is one thing I adored about Every Day, it’s the prose. The prose was so fluid, it bordered on poetic. It captured many of the ideas so beautifully, it was nothing short of thought-provoking.
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS by John Green
I braved the hype and finally read The Fault in Our Stars. Before I read this book, I knew surprisingly little about it, considering the massive popularity and the release of the movie. Of course I knew that John Green wrote it and that it was about cancer. For the most part, I managed to skip past all the spoilers, especially on Tumblr. Although I didn’t manage to escape the metaphor of the cigarette. Then again, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, so it didn’t matter in the end.
ANGUS, THONGS AND FULL-FRONTAL SNOGGING by Louise Rennison
There were a lot of things about this book that I didn’t particularly like but to be fair, I did smirk and laugh a lot. Georgia was hilarious, if a little neurotic. She obsessed about some of the weirdest things and there were only so many times I could gloss over a character flippantly saying…
