Book Review: All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

*SPOILERS*

My immediate thought was that I hated it altogether completely so I wanted to give myself time before I reviewed it but now I just want to get it over with.

The Fault in Our Stars meets Eleanor and Park. What do you expect?

While I’m reading the book I literally go like “One of them is going to die.” The thought depressed me then and it depresses me now.

That’s the thing with tragedies such as these, it’s all clear with the ending and everything, yet you long for closure and you want ‘that’ alternate ending so bad.

I don’t really understand the comparison with E&P and TFIOS, it’s nothing like either of those as it surrounds a different tale, a distinct theme altogether.
The theme was unfamiliar, the first of its kind that I read a book (a love story) revolving around. But it meant something and it conveyed loud and clear what it was trying to say. I get it and I believe it. So yes, in a way it was an eye-opener but did it change me? I’m yet to find out.

Finch’s sense of humor aside, which was from the start the best thing about this book but his suicide was rather a bit sudden despite all the suicide texts rolling in (I know). It was only after the funeral that I realized what had happened and somehow I still refuse to believe it. I simply hated the use of this perfect story for just one particular message to be delivered. It really caught me off guard and it was not at all what I was expecting. I wanted to hate this book but couldn’t because the book itself is explicitly written. From the very start there’s a punch, there’s all the stuff I love so much and many other different things going on and then after a while it’s all ‘love is in the air’ until it suddenly progresses to a tear jerky and depressing end as I’m stunned and just that transition from all my favorite stuff is what I actually really hated. I simply would’ve loved it for those same cords and values to have remained till the end.

The book itself was a fine blend of all my favorite sugars and spices. It was really witty. It actually made me smile more times than I can remember. Absolutely loved the sarcastically true and relateable analogies. It was almost poetic. I loved how the story began from the first line of the book and was not dragged at all and also did not die somewhere in the middle which is a rare commodity.

As much as I hate how so tragically tragic it was, I’d still give it a pretty good rating of 4 out 5.

Book Review: Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

*SPOILERS*

I know enough Anatomy to understand that Will can’t miraculously get better but a part of you cannot come to terms with that until the 6 month thing is revealed after which you just bloody want him to be alive by the end of the book.
The end. Coincidentally, by the end of the book I was literally thinking to myself, “If now a goodbye letter emerges somehow, I’d be pissed like anything”

Yes, the ending could’ve been different. Would it have been better? I honestly don’t know.
But yes, I’d have liked if Will had given this love story a chance. Yes, he could’ve responded better to Lou’s confession at the beach. He could’ve made an effort but that’s what makes this book all the more tragically beautiful, his will and determination at one end. Her will and determination on the other.
Yes, I wouldn’t have minded an alternate ending where Will possibly extends his decision for an invariable period of time for Lou. That would’ve been a win-win situation for both, a middle ground perhaps. He refused flat on which really got me. It seemed all too one-sided. But seeing how what I’m suggesting would’ve affected what the writer had planned for Lou in the epilogue and the next book After You, I guess it’s couldn’t be much of a possibility.
The ending did make me feel like it was a lot more about money and class difference right from the beginning.

That’s the thing with these books, you think you won’t be okay with the ending that you won’t be able to accept it but strangely so there isn’t even a point in accepting it, you kind of know all along this was going to happen and it does and you are wrecked and depressed but also surprisingly alright after a bit.

All in all, it was a pretty intense read, addicting from the start.
I do love a book brimming with quotes on every page so that bit was a downer.
I loved how all at the same time, Will was trying to change Lou and she was trying to change him. The best thing about this book, really.

Reader’s code

 

You wanted to liberate
All your previously bottled emotions
To mend the broken bonds
And taste a nip of freedom
To scrape the past
And heal the wrongs
To silence your demons
And feel the collapse of internal mayhem
To end the frustration of having to ignore
The emotions that knocked your door
You wanted relief
From the darker workings of your mind
To let imagination run wild
And the tears to flow all night
So you ended up in bed
With another tragedy to be read

Originally published in Us Magazine, The News International (24 June ’16)
https://www.thenews.com.pk/magazine/us/130115-POETS-CORNER