Pink

Pink by Lili Wilkinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.5 stars

It all starts with a pink cashmere sweater.
That's what Ava wants to wear instead of her usual goth all-black attire. Because, you see, Ava is a lesbian and a feminist and does not wear pink. Or maybe she isn't. What is sure is that Ava is in the middle of a crisis, with her girlfriend, with her beliefs, with her sexual orientation.
By applying to a posh private school, she hopes to get a fresh start and be able to experiment being someone else from whom she is usually expected to be.
Things don't work out exactly as Ava expected though, and soon enough she is caught in a spiral of lies, betrayals and humiliations which she will have a hard time disentangling herself from.
Will Ava eventually find her true self?

There is one specific reason why I thought this book was just above ok but could not completely like it: it really, really goes against who I am.

I do NOT like parents (Ava's) who, under a faux intelligentsia liberalism, really mask their snobbish, compartmentalized elitism and constrict their children in this overachieving, supposedly progressive but really just... discriminating lifestyle.

I do NOT like supposedly emancipated lesbian bitches girlfriends (Chloe) who want to stand out so much from the flock, that they fall right back into it as a caricature.

Most of all I do not like a spineless MC, who not only is close to being devoid of personality - actually a natural result of being subjected to the pressure of my two above-mentioned dislikes - but who is unable to stand up for herself and needs to lie, hurt other people and just be hypocritical for a good part of the book.

Much less do I like to read about them.

These were my biggest problems with Pink.

Add to that the fact that the school Ava decides to move to is really a joke, populated by these unrealistically clichéd students such as Ethan and Alexis OR that I found the turn of events with Alexis and the moviethon fairly unbelievable and you got yourself the explanation for my rating.

What I did like though was the writing, smooth and effortless, and some of the characters, namely the Screws, who were the most likable and the most believable, in my opinion.
The dialogues between Ava and Sam were pretty brilliant and I liked Sam quite a lot. Actually, part of my enjoyment started when Ava's castle of lies began to miserably crash and, end in end, she got a - partial - redemption. In fact, I quite liked her closing speech. But it was way, way too late for me to take back my general annoyance.
I don't know if the author made all the characters purposefully so unlikable in order to build a climax and then give us a long-agonized happy ending, but if it is so, it was too stretched and too... agonized, for me at least.

But you know what? In retrospect, I should have known it wouldn't work for me. When I read the dedication at the beginning of the book to David Levithan and then the author pulls a musical in the plot, I should have suspected.

Book, are you Australian? Because I really didn't notice.


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Flat-Out Love

Flat-Out Love by Jessica Park
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Have you ever...

-got a crush on a penfriend you never or barely met?
-pined a whole year - or more - for your summer crush?
-fallen in love with the idea of someone, idolizing him/her and thus making him/her perfect?

In other words:

Have you ever fallen in love with LOVE?

If you've recognized yourself in any of these questions, then this is the book for you.

Julie is from Ohio but she's starting college in Boston. When she arrives to find the apartment she thought she rented to be a total scam, her last resource is to call her mother's long lost college friend, Erin, to help her out and give her a temporary roof while she looks for a solution.
This is how Julie meets the Watkins family: Erin and Roger, the academic and self-involved parents, Finn, the fascinating older brother on a backpacking tour around the world, Matt, the middle brother, a math and physics nerd with a fetish for smartass T-shirts and Celeste, the 13 year old quirky sister of the family.
The Watkinses seem to be a regular enough family on the surface but Julie soon realizes that all is not well with these people's familial dynamics. What irks her the most is that she can't point her finger at the exact cause: everything seems to rotate around Celeste but there's just something that they are not telling her and that she is determined to find out...


This book would have normally received 4 stars from me.
If you're wondering to which genre it belongs, I'd categorize it as a more-adult-than-young YA college chick lit. And a very, very good one. Aside from being well written, it pushed all the right buttons for me.
It made me laugh out loud frequently, and not in a silly way but in a I-wish-I was-there-to-laugh-with-you way.
It took me back in time, wishing I could have back my late teenage years and the butterflies in the stomach feelings of my first crush(es). It really was a trip down memory lane for me.
It's got every good characterization and aside from Julie and Matt, I dare you not to be completely engrossed by Celeste and her personality.
Finally, it's got a very good plot and it's not very often that I can say that I was totally oblivious as to what would be missing piece of the jigsaw to understand the Watkins family.
I would have taken away a star, or maybe half a star, for the ending which I found excessively cheesy and slightly awkward.

That is, if this book were a regular book.
But this book is self published. Now, my - somewhat limited - experience with self published books has been disastrous to put it mildly. Bad editing bothers me a whole lot. There are already many, many published books which are badly edited, I don't really see the point in subjecting myself to books which have not undergone the scrutiny of professional eyes and been polished.
But this is NOT and I was really and very pleasantly surprised. THIS is how it's done. For me, this book is close to perfect and if only for that it deserves the final missing star.

Especially recommended for first crush nostalgics and hopeless romantics.


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Just One of the Guys

Just One Of The Guys by Kristan Higgins


My rating: 3 of 5 stars





Chastity is a tall, big, healthy girl - a journalist, who comes back to her native town of Eaton Falls after a decade of studying and working in New York. She is also part of a big family of firefighters, the youngest sisters of four equally tall, big and healthy brothers. Chastity is ready to settle down, find a husband and start popping out some kids, but her rather domineering looks do not help in her quest. When she starts dating Ryan - a doctor, perfect husband material - she thinks she's found her perfect candidate, if not for the constant nagging thought in her mind of Trevor Meade, her childood friend and sweetheart, whom she's loved forever but doesn't seem to be interested in her romantically.
FOREWARNING: Unfortunately I am not going to do this book any justice. Fate has wanted me to pick this up mere days after having finished Bachelor Boys and they're too bloody similar in so many ways to be objective about it. I'll be honest and say I preferred Bachelor Boys because, aside from being simply chick lit, goes also a bit deeper into the dynamics of family, love and friendship.

Don't get me wrong, this is great chick lit. Of the laugh out loud kind. I really had a good time reading this book and never once I put it down groaning because of some dumb scene - well, except at the very end for the sappiness, but I do that with all books that feature said scenes. It was completely hilarious at times, I even kind of started picturing Katherine Heigl as Chastity, in one of those exhilarating chick flicks she does, like 27 dresses. The characters are really well developed and the dialogues are witty and fun.
The only thing that bothered me - as in Bachelor Boys, by the way - were the premises. The whole plot rotates around the fact that Chastity is desperately looking for a husband in order to reproduce because she is 31 and she feels it's about time.
This is a load of old, backward bullshit, sorry to say. I can't believe an emancipated woman with a master's degree in Journalism who's lived in the big city would actually think like that. And this coming from a stay at home mom with a degree in translation English/Russian. That would be me.

For this reason I had a few issues empathizing with Chastity at the beginning but, eventually, she came through, because she is extremely funny.

If you need to relax and have a good laugh, this is the book for you. I'll be certainly reading more of Kristan Higgins's books for therapeutic purposes.





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