This was so wholesome. It’s a bit cheesy and silly since there are some contrived plot devices like in a teen romcom. Still, I enjoyed reading it.

When I was a teenager, I was skipping contemporary young adult fiction in favour of adult fiction or the classics. YA as a genre has come a long way in 20 years. There is a lot more choice and diversity. When I was growing up, there weren’t a lot of young adult books written about the Asian experience in North America or the West. I felt most YA novels did not represent my experiences so after awhile, I stopped reading them. In recent years, there has been much more choice in this arena even with the controversies in the publishing industry.

Case in point, while I’m not Asian or Korean American, I understood and related to these characters a lot more than YA books I read growing up. I got the jokes and the cultural references. While the protagonist Clara was annoying at times and too much of a smartass, she grew through the book. There are some genuine moments of character development and relationships grow believably in a teen book kind of way. I find it so light and almost effortless to see myself in Clara’s LA. It helps that I’ve gone and spent a holiday in Koreatown, LA. I liked all the characters with the exception of some of Clara’s old crew who read as being very two dimensional.

I am looking forward to reading more from the author. It’s been awhile since I’ve found an author who delivers light, breezy, and enjoyable fluffy novels.

Read Aug 27-28, 2020.

This is the final instalment to the Arc of the Scythe trilogy. I quite enjoyed this Young Adult trilogy. I feel like in some aspects it’s not that objectively good, but it was entertaining. I do not think I would recommend it to most people though given how dense these books got at times. It’s hard to describe why I liked them so much in some ways.

I think there are some interesting and entertaining ideas. I liked the cast of characters which involved mostly equal split of women and men. There is even a non-binary character in this one. I’ve found the character development relatively good for books mostly centred on world building, ethics, and action. I have to say that with the expanded universe and cast of characters, Citra and Roman are not really developed in this book. Maybe it’s because their development seems to have been mostly finished in the last book. I felt Roman should have had more development time in this. I missed Faraday as well.

All the books in this series are long and this was one was over 600 pages. The author adds a lot of details and it all comes together by the end which is satisfying. I do feel that some things were padded. Too many characters and time spent on plots here and there.

The first book in this series is being adapted to a movie. I do think it is better than Hunger Games and some other YA novels, but I can’t see how they can adapt it easily. There is a lot of violence in these books. I also feel most of these characters have deep internal lives and motivations that would not be easy to translate on to the screen given the world building.

I am glad to have read and finished this trilogy. While the books are long and padded, I don’t feel like it was dragged out. I enjoyed this series.

Read March 1-5, 2020.

Honestly, this book is required reading. I wish I had read this book when I was younger. It covers so many complex issues of race, culture, activism, and socioeconomics in a nuanced yet candid and genuine way.

Everything in the book felt real and sincere. It felt more authentic than a lot of teen fiction I’ve read in the last ten years. To be fair, I have not read a lot of teen novels, but this is one of the best I can recall in recent memory.

The dialogue is wonderfully crafty. There were definite moments in this book when I felt I was watching a TV show. I knew the characters so well by the last third that I could imagine it playing on screen. It is being adapted into a movie and I wish it could be a longer limited TV series. The amount of real character interactions and time spent with the protagonist Starr should warrant more than a two hour movie.

The book discusses some very deep and complex issues in the USA and the west today. At no point did it feel corny or trite. A couple of things were so messed up (such as Seven’s parentage) that makes me wonder if Thomas had taken it from real life. A lot of the other stuff on gangs, drug dealing, police brutality felt very real and familiar based on what I’ve read and heard.

It was a sad read a lot of the times. It was uncomfortable and upsetting too. I am not black and I could not completely know how Starr felt but her emotions, her thoughts, and her actions were believable. Very good storytelling.

This is the kind of young adult book I think most teens should read. I wish I knew of a teen I could give this too!

Great read.

Read March 28, 2018.

Yet another young adult novel set at boarding school! I’ve been attracting them this year. I’m starting to wish I could have gone to boarding school. Apparently, they make for interesting and intense upbringings. Of course, being a teenager is an intense and weird experience. I must say that young adult fiction is better now than when it was when I was a teenager. I read more adult novels from age fourteen onward than young adult novels.

This novel is very similar to Winger, and if I were to pick the two, I think Winger got to me more. It had more humour, but this one had some light moments too. I felt the rawness of youth with it. I also questioned mortality a lot when I became a teenager. A lot of the questions on religion an the after life posed in this novel affected me when I was thirteen and fourteen.

This was my first John Green novel and I chose to read this before his even more acclaimed The Fault in Our Stars. I liked the experience even though I find it a bit too dark and intense for me at times. I definitely think Green can write.

Recommended if you enjoy raw and honest young adult fiction.

Read December 29-30, 2013.