PAPER TOWNS Book Review.

Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life–dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge–he follows.

After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues–and they’re for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew.

I'm going to be blunt. I didn't like it.

IMO, Paper Towns is the most over hyped book I have read. For me, it certainly didn't live up to my expectations.

I know that many may disagree with me, but I just didn't find myself gripped with the book. (Tbh, I pushed myself to finish reading it because:

1. I wanted to see if anything good actually happened (hint: it didn't)

2. I needed to read a book because I'm seriously falling behind on my goodreads reading challenge)

Basically, I'm going to just insert my goodreads book review for Paper Towns because it basically sums up how I feel about the book:

((All my own opinion))

I never normally read books before the movie comes out, but in this case, I did.

In all honesty, I didn't find this a gripping book in many ways. The beginning was fun and all, and the ending was simultaneously fulfilling and disappointing, but I felt that there was something missing from this book. I don't think I would read it again.

Good points:

1. Q, the main character, is quite relatable and likeable in the way that he is very nerdy and just normal in every way, without fitting into a crisp stereotype. 

2. I quite enjoyed the metaphors throughout the book, although at times they were a bit excessive. I found some of the metaphors to be quite clever.

3. If you conveniently forget the extremely slow paced middle chunk of the book, this book is quite an easy read with a youthful feel about it.

4. There are some laugh out loud moments in this book, especially the road trip towards the end.

5. It makes you think about moving on and journeys and growing up and sentimental SHIZZ.

Bad points:

1. The character of Margo Roth Spiegelman was not likeable AT ALL. I disliked her from the get go, and even after this whole trajectory of discovery and blah blah blah throughout the book, at the end of the book, if anything, Margo annoys me even more. The constant reinforcement of Margo being an unattainable idea throughout the book gets tiring very quickly.

2. Q's obsession with the 'idea' of Margo is annoying. Full stop. I find his love for everything Margo as simply stupid. I mean, Q is meant to be intelligent and all, but devoting very spare second you have to finding Margo (a girl with whom you have barely talked to in many years) is unnecessary and just dumb.

3. This book is LITERALLY saturated in metaphors and pretentious waffle. This is the first John Green book I have read, and I think it will be the last one for a loooong time.

4. In general, this book was quite slow paced, and there weren't many interesting developments for a good 200 pages, I'd say. It took me 3 days to read it, and I put the book down about 10 times in favour of doing something more interesting.

5. You start the book, expecting so much more from its' 320 pages, but the end, especially, leaves a lot to be desired.

This was my first ever John Green book, so maybe I'm just not accustomed to his writing style and plot developments, but I just don't think that this book is worth the hype (sorry!)

- Cherryvizz (review posted on July 20th, which incidentally is my birthday xD)

Thanks for reading, I hope I'm not the only one who thinks this way about Paper Towns!
NB: sorry for the awful formatting and weird colour of the post - my laptop is broken, and however hard I try, posting a decent looking blog post from my iPad has proven to be impossible!:)

ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS Book Review.

Can Anna find love in the City of Light?

Anna is happy in Atlanta. She has a loyal best friend and a crush on her coworker at the movie theater, who is just starting to return her attention. So she's less than thrilled when her father decides to send her to a boarding school in Paris for her senior year. But despite not speaking of word of French, Anna meets some cool new people, including the handsome Étienne St. Clair, who quickly becomes her best friend. Unfortunately, he's taken—and Anna might be, too. Will a year of romantic near misses end with the French kiss she's been waiting for?

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins was one of the first, if not THE first, Romance novel I have read - and boy, did I like it.

I read this book in two sittings, one at night and one in the morning, and when it came to an end I was disappointed.

There are several things I liked about the book:

1) Some of the characters themselves were very relatable (for example, Anna is an awkward soul, as am I) and it was interesting seeing how Anna and the other characters reacted in the situations in the book. I sort of felt like I was growing up with them in their final year of high school.

2) I'm not going to lie, parts of this book were laugh-out-loud funny. The way Stephanie Perkins writes dialogue is just genius. I think at one point I was snorting with laughter, which is something that just doesn't happen when I read my dystopia novels.

3) The plot line was progressive and Perkins knows how to write a romantic novel. I felt gooey inside when I was reading it, and even when I just think about the book and cough St. Clair cough, I feel the a little bit mesmerised (in a good way, of course)

4) ETIENNE ST. CLAIR. Hands down St. Clair is my new fictional crush. I mean, he's funny, kind, caring, intelligent, adventurous, clever AND he speaks fluent french. I mean, I hate french because I endured three years of hell 'trying' to learn it at school. Luckily I've dropped it now and I feel a lot happier with life. BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT ETIENNE SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE OF LOVE FLUENTLY IS NOT AMAZING. I BASICALLY LOVE HIM I DON'T KNOW WHY

Some criticism that I have is: 

1) some of the English 'slang' or ways of saying things were a little bit off but (?)still amusing(?)
2) Sometimes I found that the *characters* overreacted at times

If you have just read a really depressing or dystopia-esque book and just need a lighter book to read then just read this. NOW. Jks. But read it. I think i could read this everyday for a year and not get bored. Basically, I've bought all of Stephanie Perkins' books now.

I tried to keep MY FIRST(!!) review (lol it was basically me just rambling) as spoiler-free as possible :)

Introduction.

HI! This is my new blog specifically for anything and everything about books. The books I read are mainly:

• Dystopia (GONE series etc. - I've bought a lot of dystopian novels that I need to start reading pronto, for example: Nowhere + Anywhere by Jon Robinson, The Maze Runner Series, The 5th Wave etc.)

• Teenage Spy centred (Alex Rider, CHERUB and other bits and bobs - although I tried Gallagher Girls and never really got into it)

• Romance (okay, this is sort of a lie - I've only recently gotten into Romance after reading ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS and now I have bought basically every Stephanie Perkins novel that has been published as of yet)

• Books set in WW1 or WW2 (e.g. Henderson's boys series, Auslander, Private Peaceful... sometimes I just try to look for books set in the world wars)

• I'm willing to try new genres and after watching some BookTube videos (namely I watch BooksandQuills and Readbyzoe) I really want to read some of Cassandra Clare's books with like supernatural stuff or whatever it's about. Her books seem good. Also, I read V for Vendetta a week ago (my first graphic novel ever yay!) so I suppose that's a new (genre?) type of book. I found it really hard to follow but I enjoyed it nonetheless

• I can't think of any other genres because it's late but I've probably forgot something

I'm from England and I am an avid bookworm. My goodreads challenge is at 40 books for this year (I set it at the end of this month aka march) and I'm 2 down, 38 to go. I'm hoping to write reviews of books on this blog (probably more like me just rambling about books and then putting my thoughts down as a post). I think it would be fun to do.

So I hope this is an adequate enough introduction to me and my blog. Hopefully.