The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai

My rating: 3.5/5 stars

Alright so, this is essentially still the same old meet-cute romance formula we’re used to. Girl meets boy, they hit it off, feelings are suppressed, huge misunderstanding that could have been resolved if one person just waited 2 seconds to hear the other person out occurs, time apart from each other, unable to suppress feelings any longer, inevitable reconciliation and declaration of love.

Okay but seriously you’ve probably read some variation of this story more than once but it’s still so cute especially when it’s what you’re in the mood for. With December/Christmas, I’m really not trying to read anything too heavy right now so this was perfect.

Some things I really liked about this book: diverse characters, portraying the importance of consent and safe sex, highlighting work place harassment and overall did a pretty good job covering the atmosphere of dating today. 

Lost and Wanted by Nell Freudenberger

My rating: 4/5 stars

“You can hear about something for a lifetime, though, even something you know is happening all around you, and still not really believe it—until it happens close enough to feel yourself.”

This perfectly paced novel tells a beautiful story about loss and grief and the universe. When Helen suddenly loses her best friend Charlie, her grieving process is made complicated by random occurring events that seem to relate back to Charlie.

Any other person might take such things as a sign or attach some deeper meaning to it. But Helen is a scientist, she deals with facts and data and she knows that when a person is dead, they’re dead. They don’t turn into ghosts or float around the universe as a subconscious being sending cryptic texts to your phone – when a person is dead they simply no longer exist.

It was the most intriguing thing, seeing Helen’s character navigate the complexity of “reality”. Intriguing for me as the reader as well because, I wanted answers too! I found myself constantly waiting to see how Helen’s character would explain this or that because “surely there’s no way Science can answer that!” (me talking to Helen’s character in my mind).

And the ending? I’m not sure what the ending meant. I was kind of unsatisfied but in a good way because life doesn’t always give you all the answers you’re looking for or it gives you something and you draw your own conclusions out of it and I think that’s what this ending did

Definitions of Indefinable Things by Whitney Taylor

My rating: 3.5/5 stars

“Eventually ‘one day’ would screw us all. But in the present we were alive. Temporarily and chaotically alive.”

This is a good story about depression and love. Reggie and Snake are both teenagers dealing with depression as well as their very complicated lives – they bump into each other at a pharmacy while refilling their respective antidepressant subscriptions, this results in a conversation packed with sarcasm and morbid jokes and ultimately the birth of their friendship/romance

Reading this story reminded me in some ways of All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. I always say that was the first book that really gave me a good insight into what depression is like and how difficult it can be to even attempt to do the smallest things when you’re in the worst stages of your depression.

Whitney Taylor does a great job in this sense as well.

“You feel equally alive and dead and have no idea how that’s even possible. And everything around you doesn’t seem so full anymore. And you can’t tell if the world is empty or you are. That’s how I knew. I realized it wasn’t the world that was empty.”

I think the best way to describe all the things this book gets right is to list all the things it didn’t do?:

– Reggie and Snake’s depression is portrayed realistically and not as an occasional trendy personality trait.

– Reggie and Snake aren’t magically cured of their depression by the end of the book. Both characters do grow as individuals and learn how to manage their triggers and thoughts better but it is very clear that dealing with this will always be a work in progress.

– Realistic depiction of how depression can affect the relationships you have with people E.g Reggie’s mom seriously struggles with how to deal/be there for Reggie. Their relationship is rocky and both are hurt by the other constantly mostly because they haven’t learned to communicate in a way that works for both of them yet. On the other hand Snake has parents that were very understanding from the beginning and so his home life is very different from Reggie’s.

The only reason I’m giving this a 3.5 instead of a 4 is because Snake’s character is sometimes too forward and is very often presumptuous which didn’t always sit well with me but I liked that Reggie acknowledged and pointed this out on many occasions. Overall a good read.

Swear on This Life by Renee Carlino

My rating: 2.5/5 stars

Imagine picking up a book because everyone and their mother can’t stop talking about how good it is. You finally start to read it and realize that the book is about YOU. Your childhood crush/first love has written an entire book about you even though you haven’t spoken to him in almost a decade. You can’t find anything about his real life on the internet because he now goes by his pseudonym but your chance to confront him will be in a few weeks when he’s in town for his book signing? Hello? Doesn’t that sound so good?

Okay in the short time that it took me to write all of that, I realize it now kind of sounds like a Hallmark movie and we all know what the quality of those movies are like…

I try not to write negative reviews so I’m going to keep this short and simple. This was an okay story but a disappointing read (if that makes sense). It’s not that I had high expectations (I’ve never read anything by Carlino before) but the premise of this story seemed SO promising and unfortunately the delivery fell short. The writing felt…flat. That’s the best way I can describe it and I’m not even sure what that means.