P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
Publisher: Recorded Books
Audible Release Date: January 14, 2020
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
*****This review may have tiny spoilers for To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the first book in this series.*****
Publisher’s Description:
Lara Jean didn’t expect to really fall for Peter. She and Peter were just pretending. Except suddenly they weren’t. Now Lara Jean is more confused than ever. When another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?
P.S. I Still Love You is the second book in the To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy. It picks up right where the first book left off. Laura Jean and Peter are dating for real and things are going great. Except that he still keeps in touch with Genevieve, his ex-girlfriend. He says it’s because she’s going through a hard time but won’t give Lara Jean any details. Is he telling the truth or is he cheating on her?
To complicate things, one of the other boys she wrote a letter to, John Ambrose McClaren, is back in her life. Does she still have feelings for him? Does he have feelings for her? Will she have to choose between him and Peter?
I liked P.S. I Still Love You just as much as I liked To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (read my review here). I especially liked how teenage sex is handled. The characters have honest conversations about whether or not to do it and why. It’s clear that the author is advocating for kids to make responsible choices but it doesn’t come off as preachy. It’s authentic and sounds like real thoughts and discussions teenagers would have about it. I mean, teenagers are doing it whether we like it or not. I think it’s weird when characters who have been going out for a really long time haven’t had sex yet or even talked about it.
I’m definitely listening to the third and final book, Always and Forever, Lara Jean, as soon as possible. Then I’ll watch all the movies!
August 8th, 2022 in
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Class Mom by Laurie Gelman
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Release Date: July 24, 2018
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Jen Dixon is not your typical Kansas City kindergarten class mom―or mom in general. Jen already has two college-age daughters by two different (probably) musicians, and it’s her second time around the class mom block with five-year-old Max―this time with a husband and father by her side. Though her best friend and PTA President sees her as the “wisest” candidate for the job (or oldest), not all of the other parents agree.
From recording parents’ response times to her emails about helping in the classroom, to requesting contributions of “special” brownies for curriculum night, not all of Jen’s methods win approval from the other moms. Throw in an old flame from Jen’s past, a hyper-sensitive “allergy mom,” a surprisingly sexy kindergarten teacher, and an impossible-to-please Real Housewife-wannabe, causing problems at every turn, and the job really becomes much more than she signed up for.
Jen Dixon has somehow found herself in the position of class mom (what some call room mother) of her son Max’s kindergarten class. This isn’t her first rodeo – she has two young-adult daughters fathered by two different men in her wilder days traveling the world as a groupie. Her irreverent emails and management style don’t sit well with the younger, more traditional kindergarten moms.
I could totally relate to Jen. She’s the oldest mom out of all the kindergarten moms. I’ll be 50 when my youngest starts kindergarten! She has two grown children as well – my other kids will be 19, 17 and 13 when my baby is in kindergarten. (All four have the same dad though – I’m not quite as wild as Jen in that respect!) If I’m my baby’s room mom when he starts school, I can totally see myself being just as cynical as Jen. I’m pretty sure I already am. That’s probably why I found her emails to the parents so funny. She writes what I would want to write if I was in her position.
There isn’t a huge conflict driving the plot – it’s more a bunch of little things, just like real life. There are the annoying moms she has to deal with and the big race she’s training for. Also, her high school crush’s son is in her son’s class, which could get complicated if she lets it. I found all of it entertaining.
A bonus for me is that this book is set in my hometown of Kansas City. There aren’t many novels set there – in fact, I don’t know of any others off the top of my head. Although she doesn’t get everything right about my city, it was still fun when she mentioned real-life restaurants and other things. I guess it must have bothered other Kansas Citian’s that she didn’t get everything perfect because there’s an author’s note in the second book in the series, You’ve Been Volunteered, where she says she had to take some artistic license with the setting to advance the plot and please “no more hate mail”. Geez, Kansas City – lighten up!
Class Mom was a quick, fun and relatable read. It’s the first book in a series of four – so far. I’m definitely going to read the other books in this series!
August 4th, 2022 in
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The main idea of the Paper Towns movie is the same as the John Green book that it’s based on. (See my review of the book Paper Towns here.) High school senior Quentin is in love with Margo Roth Spiegelman, an enigmatic girl in his class that lives next door to him. After she convinces him to go with her on a night of epic adventure, she disappears. Quentin is determined to find her and enlists his other friends to help him. Like the book, they go on a road trip to track Margo down. The movie’s timeline has been switched up quite a bit from the book and there are five people on the road trip, not four like in the book.
For once, I actually liked the changes. The road trip was less zany than in the book and felt more realistic to me. Instead of Q and his friends missing a significant school event to go on the road trip, they are trying to get back before prom. It made more sense to me and was less of a madcap adventure. I generally do not care for madcap. The worst thing that the movie and the book have in common is that it’s hard to understand Margo’s appeal because we don’t get to know her very well. It was a little easier to understand in the movie because supermodel Cara Delevingne plays Margo and she’s freaking gorgeous. And maybe that’s the point – people love Margo because she’s beautiful, not because they know her.
Overall, I thought Paper Towns was a great adaptation of the book, and even teens who haven’t read the book will enjoy it.
Paper Towns by John Green
Publisher: Dutton Books
Release Date: October 16, 2008
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificent Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life—summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. When their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Margo has disappeared. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they’re for him. Embarking on an exhilarating adventure to find her, the closer Q gets, the less he sees the girl he thought he knew.
Quentin has been friends with Margo Roth Spiegelman since childhood. By high school, they had grown apart – she was the most popular girl in school, while he hung out with the band nerds. However, he never stopped having a crush on her. One night, she climbs through his bedroom window and convinces him to take her on a wild ride, playing pranks on her cheating boyfriend and other friends who have wronged her. The next day she’s gone. Quentin won’t stop looking for her – did she run away or did something bad happen to her?
Margo Roth Spiegelman is a damaged, enigmatic girl that reminded me of Alaska from Green’s Looking for Alaska. However, Margo wasn’t nearly as developed as Alaska. When she shows up at Quentin’s window, we know almost nothing about her, and I didn’t feel like we learned much about her later. Quentin is in love with her but I never understood why since I didn’t get to know her that well. A few flashbacks to her at school or something might have helped. I felt like Quentin and his friends were developed more than her, which is good.
The road trip that Quentin and his friends embark on to find Margo is ridiculous but in a good way. I think teens will find it funny and also wish that they could go on a trip like it. It exhausted me just reading about it! Margo leaves behind her copy of Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman and Quentin refers to it often. I think Whitman lovers will appreciate that. I thought of my mom while I was reading Paper Towns – she loved Whitman.
Even though this wasn’t my favorite John Green novel, it’s written by John Green so it was still pretty darn good. Recommended.
Other John Green books I’ve reviewed:
Looking for Alaska
An Abundance of Katherines
The Fault in Our Stars
Turtles All the Way Down
Will Grayson, Will Grayson (co-authored by David Levithan)
July 28th, 2022 in
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The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Release Date: June 2, 2020
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for White, and her White husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?
Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
Stella and Desiree are light-skinned Black identical twin sisters growing up in a small Black community fraught with colorism. One day, Stella disappears. She’s moved to the big city where she passes as a white woman, marries a white man and has a white daughter. Desiree has a daughter with her dark-skinned husband and has very dark skin herself. She stands out in their small town and not in a good way.
I expected this book to be wholly about Stella and Desiree and the contrast of their lives, one living as a white person and one living as a Black person. It is about that, but just as much of the book is about their daughters. There is also an LGBT plotline that is fairly important. It’s strange I hadn’t heard anything about that before I read the book – there was a lot of buzz when this book first came out and I never saw it mentioned. I liked it though and thought it was well-done, I was just surprised.
The author did a great job of weaving the characters’ stories together in an unexpected but authentic way. All of the characters had depth and I was able to empathize with even when they were very frustrating. Stella’s journey was especially intriguing to me. I don’t think I’ve read a book about someone passing before. Passing by Nella Larsen was recommended to me as another good novel on the subject and I plan to read it soon.
This book has a lot of four and five-star reviews and very much deserves them. Most of the negative reviews mention that this book isn’t about what the reviewer thought it would be about. I agree – it wasn’t what I thought it would be about either but that’s not a negative for me. I enjoyed reading it. Recommended.
July 25th, 2022 in
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Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College by Loren Pope
Publisher: Penguin Books
Release Date: 4th ed. edition, August 28, 2012
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Choosing the right college has never been more important—or more difficult. For the latest edition of this classic college guide, Hilary Masell Oswald conducted her own tours of top schools and in-depth interviews, building on Loren Pope’s original to create a totally updated, more expansive work. Organized by geographic region, every profile includes a wealth of vital information, including admissions standards, distinguishing facts about the curriculum, extracurricular activities, and what faculty say about their jobs. Masell Oswald also offers a new chapter on how students with learning disabilities can find schools that fit their needs. For every prospective college student searching for more than football and frat parties, Colleges That Change Lives will prove indispensable.
Fully revised and updated by education journalist Hilary Oswald, Colleges That Change Lives remains the definitive guide for high school students (and their parents) who are looking for more in their college education than football, frat parties, and giant lectures. Building on the foundation of landmark author Loren Pope, Oswald spent more than a year visiting 40 colleges, speaking with students, faculty, and alumni to create these vivid and concise portraits.
Featuring a new introduction, a new Required Reading section, and a new chapter on learning disabilities, the book is organized into five geographic regions (Northeast, South, Midwest, Southwest, Northwest) to make for easy browsing, and urban, suburban, and rural campuses are all featured. There’s also an alphabetical index of colleges. Each profile includes admissions standards as well as relevant statistics to make your decision easier, including where the school ranks in post-graduate grants and fellowships, what percentage of students go on to graduate school or further education, distinguishing facts about the curriculum, percentage of professors who have terminal degrees in their field, even what activities are available to students and what they’re likely to do on weekends.
My oldest son will be starting his senior year of high school in the fall and has only recently shown an interest in choosing a college. Meanwhile, I’ve been freaking out about it since his sophomore year! One of my friends recommended this book to me. She and her son used it to choose his college a few years ago and he’s been really happy with his choice.
This book explores small liberal arts colleges that you may have never heard of but are still excellent schools. I went to a big state school (Go Mizzou!) so I didn’t know much about how liberal arts colleges worked before reading this book. The book is divided into sections by region – South, Midwest, etc. and there are a handful of colleges included for each. I liked that the write-up for each college was a narrative, not charts and graphs. The author includes quotes from both professors and students about their experiences with the school. I felt like it was a balanced view of the schools with both positives and negatives mentioned.
I learned a lot from this book. Not every college in this book requires a super high GPA or SAT score. Some of them are even “test-optional”, a concept that I hadn’t heard of before. Being smaller schools – it seemed like the average enrollment was somewhere around 3,500 so students get a lot of support at most of these schools. Most have financial aid programs as well. And there are so many different educational philosophies, unlike the fairly standard state school format.
When I bought this book, my son was planning on majoring in linguistics and wanted to study abroad at some point in his college career. Several colleges in this book would be ideal for that. (Note the post-its I used to mark the ones I thought would be the best. There are a lot!) Since then, he’s decided to major in music education and probably will go to a school close to home. However, I have three more kids, including another son who will be starting his junior year in the fall, so I’m glad I read this book. I found it educational and I’m glad I now have a good background on what liberal arts education is all about. Highly recommended.
July 21st, 2022 in
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Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: June 1, 2021
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.
The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.
Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.
And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.
By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come rising to the surface.
Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.
Malibu Rising ostensibly takes place on just one day in 1983 at a party thrown by Nina Riva, a famous surfer and model. However, there are flashbacks throughout filling us in on the Riva children and their parents. Their absentee father is the famous singer Mick Riva. Nina, the oldest, raised her younger siblings – Jay and Kit also surf and Hud is a famous photographer. The party at Nina’s gets wilder and wilder as the night goes on, eventually spinning completely out of control. The Riva children’s lives have been pretty chaotic over the years as well.
This is the first Taylor Jenkins Reid novel that I’ve read. Everyone raves about The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six. I can only assume that they are a lot better than Malibu Rising. This book fell flat for me. I understood what Reid was trying to do but she didn’t quite get there. It was the party that got to me the most. I think it was supposed to be a satirical and perhaps humorous statement on how famous people lack self-awareness and can be quite horrible. But the antics of the party-goers were too over the top for even me to suspend disbelief and I didn’t really find them to be funny. I also thought the dialogue was stilted and simplistic. I did like the plotline about the siblings’ childhoods and their relationship with one another. That could have been developed more and the entire party thing scrapped and it would have been great. All that being said, I will try either Daisy or Evelyn at some point so don’t @ me Taylor Jenkins Reid stans! (Just kidding – feel free to tell me why I’m wrong.)
July 18th, 2022 in
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The book Where’d You Go, Bernadette is mostly an epistolary novel so I wondered how that would transfer to the screen. How do you make a movie out of emails, letters and faxes? In this case, the writers of the movie changed the structure of the plot quite a bit. The book is a mystery – thus the name Where’d You Go, Bernadette. The reader journey along with Bernadette’s family, trying to figure out where she went and why. In the movie, the viewer is with Bernadette the whole time, there is no mystery, no suspense.
My husband, who did not read the book, watched the movie with me. He thought it was pretty good. I thought it was okay. For some reason that I can’t put my finger on, Billy Crudup gives me the creeps. I don’t like him in The Morning Show and I didn’t like him in this. He plays Bernadette’s husband, Elgin. Emma Nelson, who plays Bernadette’s daughter Bee was wonderful – I think this was her first movie – she’s going to have a great career. Cate Blanchett plays Bernadette. Of course, Cate is a fantastic actress but I thought she was miscast. I wasn’t buying her as Bernadette – I kept thinking, “Well, that’s Cate Blanchett in a wig pretending to be a zany woman.” And Kristen Wiig was dreadfully underused as Bernadette’s frenemy Audrey.
There’s so much going on in the book that had to be left out of the movie. I think the writer did a good job cutting out what wasn’t essential – you can only pack so much into under two hours. Where’d You Go, Bernadette would be an ideal book to turn into a limited series. If all the subplots were included, I think you could easily get several episodes out of it and preserve the mystery. Of course, we would have to recast the entire thing, except for Emma Nelson. I think maybe Sandra Bullock for Bernadette? And for Elgin…who can pull off nerdy, but is also good-looking? George Clooney? Ed Norton? Let me know who you think it should be. Kristen Wiig can stay as Audrey if they expand her role to be what Audrey was in the book. She’s not nearly snobby or annoying enough in the movie.
Overall, this was an entertaining movie on its own merits but if you’ve read the book, you’ll probably come away wishing for more.
(I streamed this movie for free on Hulu.)
Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Release Date: August 14, 2012
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she’s a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she’s a disgrace; to design mavens, she’s a revolutionary architect; and to 15-year-old Bee, she is her best friend and, simply, Mom.
Then Bernadette vanishes. It all began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette’s intensifying allergy to Seattle — and people in general — has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.
To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, and secret correspondence — creating a compulsively readable and surprisingly touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter’s role in an absurd world.
A once-famous Los Angeles-based architect, Bernadette Fox has been living in suburban Seattle, as a stay-at-home mom for many years now, ever since her husband took a job as a big wig at Microsoft. She doesn’t fit in with the pretentious moms, who she calls “gnats”, at her daughter’s middle school. She and her husband promised their daughter Bee a trip to Antarctica as an eighth-grade graduation present and Bee is determined to hold them to that promise. Just the thought of being on a cruise ship triggers Bernadette’s already barely controlled anxiety. Before you know it, Bernadette is gone.
Why did I wait so long to read this book?? Where’d You Go, Bernadette has the satirical humor that I love if it’s done right. And it definitely is in this book. The moms at Bee’s school remind me a bit of the snobby moms in Big Little Lies. The author wrote for the TV show Arrested Development if that gives you an idea of the kind of comedy she employed. It’s not a frivolous book though. There are some heartbreaking moments – there has to be when a child’s mother goes missing. The way Bernadette’s husband reacts when he finds out about some of her antics she’d kept hidden from him made me mad at him on her behalf.
The story is told in modern-day epistolary fashion through emails, faxes and other supporting documents. It’s the perfect format. I don’t think it would be half as good written in a typical narrative.
Once again, there are several reviews on Amazon complaining that this book is not realistic. I really wish people would stop it already. It’s satire! Suspend your disbelief and enjoy. I sure did!
July 11th, 2022 in
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To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
Publisher: Recorded Books
Narrator: Ali Ahn
Release Date: January 14, 2020
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
What if all the crushes you ever had found out how you felt about them…all at once?
Sixteen-year-old Lara Jean Song keeps her love letters in a hatbox her mother gave her. They aren’t love letters that anyone else wrote for her; these are ones she’s written. One for every boy she’s ever loved – five in all. When she writes, she pours out her heart and soul and says all the things she would never say in real life, because her letters are for her eyes only. Until the day her secret letters are mailed, and suddenly, Lara Jean’s love life goes from imaginary to out of control.
When sixteen-year-old Lara Jean Song has a crush on a boy, she writes him a love letter. She never sends them – she tucks them away in a hatbox her mother gave her. Her mother passed away a few years ago and now her older sister Margo is going off to college out of the country, leaving Lara Jean in charge of helping her dad with her younger sister Kitty.
One day at school, when Peter Kavinsky, the hottest boy in the junior class, tells her he received a letter from her, she realizes that all of her letters have been sent! Including the one to her sister’s boyfriend Josh. When Josh confronts her about her letter, she tells Josh that Peter is her boyfriend and she’s over him. Luckily, Peter wants to make his ex-girlfriend Genevieve jealous. Lara Jean and Peter decide they can each get what they want if they pretend to be boyfriend/girlfriend.
I watched the Netflix movie based on To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before a few years ago and thought it was cute. For some reason, it popped into my head last week and I decided to listen to the audiobook. Since it’s been so long since I watched the movie, I can’t really make any comparisons between the two other than to say that I enjoyed the book as much as the movie. I liked that the high school kids had the same maturity as real high school kids. I have two high-schoolers right now so I’m familiar! Lara Jean is sweet and naive, as some kids are, without being cloying. I loved her character. Her sister Margo could be an overbearing pill but aren’t all older sisters? (I’m an oldest child so I can say that!)
The only part that’s not entirely believable is that someone could send all those letters out. How did they know all the boys’ addresses? Unless Lara Jean addressed them even though she wasn’t going to send them? Anyway, just let that part go and enjoy the story. There are two more books in the series and I plan to listen to both. Yes, this is a young-adult book, but I think it appeals to all ages.
July 7th, 2022 in
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