Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

My rating: 4/5 stars

“If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything — what a waste!”

This was such a beautiful story about love and self-discovery. Really enjoyed Andre Aciman’s writing style. I love when a writer can make the most mundane of sentences sound incredibly poetic, which is exactly what Aciman does here. Call Me By Your Name is essentially one giant love letter worth reading.

 

The Great American Whatever by Tim Federle

My rating: 3/5 stars

“There is a whole wing of positive psychology -my therapist told me- that says the greatest way to affect your outlook on life is to consider what you already have more than what you don’t have. And so I might not have a cell phone on me, or a sister at home, or a dad at all, or a future, but holy shit I have the sky.”

They say never judge a book by its cover but that’s exactly what I did when I picked up The Great American Whatever’. I thought the cover was pretty effing cool + it was on sale at my local library for 25 cents. So, how could I not.

I went into this book with no expectations and for the most part, I enjoyed it.

Liked:
– warming coming of age story
– supportive best friend
– surprisingly funny dialogue in the most unexpected moments, mostly because Quinn is so awkward and it’s the cutest thing

Didn’t like so much:
– the screen plays
(Okay so the main character Quinn does this thing where, when he’s in a situation he starts to visualize how it’ll play out, and so the author Tim Fiderle writes out his thought process as a screen play, and its a little annoying).
– i felt the ending was kind of abrupt.

 

All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

My rating: 5/5 stars

“Stars in the sky, stars on the ground. It’s hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins. I feel the need to say something grand and poetic, but the only thing I come up with is “It’s lovely.”

So this is probably my favourite book that the YA genre has produced. I first read ATBP back in 2015 and fell in love with the characters then. I have never once forgotten them, and I love this story so much that I decided to read it again. And, if I’m being honest, this probably won’t be the last time.

Reading the story of Theodore Finch and Violet Markey was just as wonderful and heartbreaking as when I first read it, if not more.

I still can’t quite describe why I love this book so much or why the characters are so dear to my heart. But I do, and they are.

I want to yell at Finch, I want to yell “you are loved” a thousand times, until he believes it. I want to tell him to wait. Wait one more day. Or one more hour even.

I want to tell him I can no longer look at a clear blue sky or stare at a large body of water,  without thinking of him.

You were all in the colours in one at full brightness, Theodore Finch. You were.