UGH I wish I could give this 0 stars. Like, if [b:Beautiful Disaster|11505797|Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1)|Jamie McGuire|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1358259032s/11505797.jpg|16441531] was 1 star... this is 0. It's the exact same shitty story as Beautiful Disaster, but told from Travis's POV. First of all, there is way too much overlap with Beautiful Disaster for this to be a separate book. And since Travis tends to yell his feelings at any given moment, it's not even like there was a ton of hidden insight. I didn't even really enjoy hate reading it. I skimmed it a lot, and definitely do not recommend this at all. Like, don't even touch it. Don't make eye contact with it. Let's leave it on the shelf to think about what it has done.

“I know we're fucked up, alright? I'm impulsive, and hot tempered, and you get under my skin like no one else. You act like you hate me one minute, and then need me the next. I never get anything right, and I don't deserve you...but I fucking love you, Abby. I love you more than I loved anyone or anything ever. When you're around, I don't need booze, or money, or the fighting, or the one-night stands...” He said that in the first book, from Abby's POV. And again, word for word, in this one. So repetitive. I skimmed this a lot (but still found plenty of bullshit to tweet about, of course).

UGH I just saw this got voted onto a GoodReads list called "Best Book Boyfriends." NO STOP. This book is like 300 pages of domestic abuse red flags. And I'm not talking like Twilight style "breaks into her house to watch her sleep", I'm talking emotionally controlling, short temper, physically drags her off the dance floor when she dances with another guy (AFTER SHE BROKE UP WITH HIM).

It's cuckoo-bananas. Plus Travis thinks of every other girl in the book as a slut. His philosophy: “Did women deserve to be treated like sluts? No. Did sluts deserve to be treated like sluts? Yes.” (Direct quote. GOD I HATE HIM.)

Uh one addition this had was it kept talking about how Abby reminds Travis (and his family) of his dead mom? Sex...y?

FUCKING GROSS, DO NOT EVEN UNDERSTAND THE APPEAL OF THESE AT ALL.

Also I ordered them for our teen collection because they were popular and in that "new adulty" borderline, but after reading these garbage books I'm sending them to adult. The language and sex isn't that explicit, and I could see the case for them being in teen, but I JUST CAN'T. If teens want to read this shit (and so far it seems like they're not, at least not at my library--it's adults who are getting it), they are going to have to walk across the aisle and get them from adult.

Again--I don't generally care for hyperbole like "Twilight will give girls unhealthy relationship expectations!" but I really don't want any teens to stumble upon it accidentally because it is truly next level bullshit.

On a final note, from the epilogue I learned that in the future these two douchebags reproduce and have twins named James and Jessica... TRAVIS AND ABBY ARE TEAM ROCKET'S PARENTS.

I livetweeted the experience of reading this, and I should probably gather those up into some kind of archive for posterity.

But basically how I feel about this book is



Like how people complain about Twilight and say it's so terrible and it's an unhealthy relationship and the dialogue is bad blah blah blah...

NOPE

Twilight is a paragon compared to this.

Like

I can't even

Bad Boy Travis LITERALLY throws Good Girl Abby over his shoulder and carries her out of a party because he sees her dancing with another dude AFTER she broke up with him for being a craycray stalker.

Flames on the side of my face!!!!!!!!

Oh also I have not read 50 Shades of Grey but I've seen people compare this to 50 Shades. Granted I have not read all of 50 Shades but I think 50 Shades might be a BETTER relationship scenario cuz at least that girl got some kind of contract? Also the sex in Beautiful Disaster is very "fade to black" and not sexy.

Guys, I don't even know? I picked this up because I was intrigued by the title, as a comics fan, but... okay. So I liked the start of the story. It's set in Iowa City/Coralville, which I liked, because I like Iowa City. The protagonists are a 17-year-old girl named Sheila, who works at a gas station, and a 20-something dude named Peter Parker, who frequents the gas station to buy cigarettes. Sheila suspects Peter Parker's ID is fake, because who would name their child after Spider-Man, right?

Anyway, at first I liked Sheila a lot. High school misfit, saving up her money to go to France after high school with no set plan because she doesn't want to go straight to college and she wants to get out of Iowa. So she listens to French CDs and practices while she works at the gas station. Get it, Sheila.

But then she lets herself be voluntarily kidnapped by Peter Parker and goes with him to Chicago? And he gives her a fake ID with the name Gwen Stacy, aka Peter Parker's first girlfriend who dies?? Again... I'm still interested, here. Is Peter going to kill her, or what.

Then... okay, I described the plot of this to a co-worker and she said it sounded like it was written as an exquisite corpse story. (You know, where you fold over the page and pass it to the next person and they write something without having seen your part.) I agree, or maybe like it were part of an improv scene where the author just kept saying "Yes, and."

Spoiler

Yes, and... Peter has accurate visions of death. Yes, and... Peter's long-thought-dead brother is actually alive and well in Chicago. Yes, and... Gwen decides to kidnap Peter's brother. Yes, and... coyotes are taking to the streets of Chicago. Yes, and... Gwen has visions of talking coyotes.

???

Also it seemed like the Spider-Man thing was kind of used as a hook and then dropped?

I'd be way into reading a book that used comic book characters/archetypes as a way to explore relationships but I just found this very confusing and weird.

I'm seeing a lot of great reviews for it so it's totes possible that it just all went over my head. If anyone else I know has read it, I'd LOVE to talk about it.

This was not what I was expecting, and I totally love what it ended up being. I thought it would be like, I don't know, Survivor but with teen beauty queens. But it was more like Lost with teen beauty queens (but without the super annoying ending of Lost).

I loved all the characters and their stories, and Libba Bray shows off some really smart feminist takes on beauty pageants, beauty products, sexuality, virginity, body acceptance, etc... It's kind of like [b:Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics|168484|Feminism is for Everybody Passionate Politics|Bell Hooks|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327933698s/168484.jpg|843092] but performed as a set of desert island monologues. Or something??

The plot about the Corporation weaponizing Lady Stache Off and selling out the Teen Dreamers to preserve their weapons deal/ratings was kind of over the top/dystopia tropetastic but who even cares.

I also loved all the super over the top fake pop culture references. And footnote humor! I LOVE FOOTNOTE JOKES.

I could definitely see where this would NOT be everyone's cup of tea, but I would drink a whole pot of this. So to speak. IDK, metaphors.

I dug this! It was on the Alex list of adult books with teen appeal and I could definitely see nerdy teens enjoying this. But also nerdy adults. It reminded me a bit of [b:The Magicians|6101718|The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)|Lev Grossman|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1313772941s/6101718.jpg|6278977] and also [b:The Da Vinci Code|968|The Da Vinci Code (Robert Langdon, #2)|Dan Brown|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1303252999s/968.jpg|2982101]. (But I don't mean for the DaVinci Code comparison to be a dig, okay???) Fast paced and fun, and deeply rooted in a love of both books and technology. All the references to Google might seem outdated in a few years, who knows? So read it now.

The audiobook was fine, and I thought it was cute that the author read the audiobook-within-the-audiobook.

Subtitle: Piper Kerman unpacks her backpack of privilege.

Oh hmm I think honestly reading this just made me more impressed with how good the show is, how much more complex it is. On the other hand I understand that Piper maybe doesn't really have the right to tell the stories of other inmates, and I know on the show they're fictionalized, but still... I'm overall more interested in most of the other inmates than Piper.

On the other hand I think I'm probably not the target audience for this book and I think there are probably a lot of people who need Piper Kerman to tell them "Hey! Prison inmates are also human beings!" Which is basically the opposite of what a lot of American media tells us, so... that's cool.

I can't stop thinking about that article I read, maybe on Racialicious? about how Orange is the New Black is reminiscent of how slave narratives always needed an introduction by an educated white person to authenticate them. And that's kind of... kind of it, honestly.

But still, she's a good writer and I enjoyed the memoir overall. It would be GR8 if this led to more women of color getting publishing deals for their prison memoirs too!! FINGERS CROSSED.

OK. OK. Who read this? Can we talk about this?

I read a lot of reviews praising this for its realistic teen guy voice (true) and how funny it was (true) and how cute the narrator's cartoon illustrations were (true).

So I had NO IDEA that... okay IDK, I'm putting this behind spoiler tags but just generally I think people should know that this has a very sad ending?? That is like... um... anyway I guess I would be careful about recommending this to younger teens, due to the unexpectedly upsetting ending, even if they would really enjoy the first 5/6s of the book.

Spoiler

Joeyyy 3

I guess the ending isn't totally out of left field--the violence and slurs and stuff had been escalating throughout the book. But it is a dramatic tone shift? I guess... was this necessary? For Joey to DIE? It's certainly more shocking than if he had been non-fatally beaten. But at the same time it seems like a VERY dark ending for what up to this point had been a relatively light-hearted book. But sometimes life is just like that, I suppose.

It's also interesting and weird that it happens at the end of the book and we don't get much of a chance to see how everyone reacts to his death? Of course, we can IMAGINE, but... kind of unsatisfying?? IDK.

Overall, a funny, honest, and complex look into a teen boy's head & all that goes on in there, for better & for worse.

I might give the print book 4 stars but Jim Dale knocks the audio up to 5 stars.

Normally when I listen to audiobooks on long trips I take little breaks between discs to listen to music or something else, but I listened to this straight through. I also had an anxiety tummy ache for like the last half of it and then I messy cried through pretty much the whole last disc. SO MANY FEELINGS!!

It's about a girl and a ghost and a boy and an alchemist and an adventure but mostly it's about family and grief and acceptance and FEELINGS.

And ghosts.

It's hard to know what to say about this exactly. First and foremost: this book wouldn't exist if DFW were still alive. But he's not, and I'm still super sad about that, and so are a lot of other people, and so we're reading like... the dregs of what he wrote when he was alive, basically. Things that were written for a very specialized audience, or things that are very dated, or whatever.

But the reason so many people are willing to read, like, a review of The Best of Prose Poetry even if you've never read or even heard of any of the best prose poets, is that DFW is a great writer.

There are some total gems in here. I love reading anything DFW writes about tennis even though I'm definitely not a tennis person, just because he was a tennis person and he's so thoroughly in his element. "Federer Both Flesh and Not" is an amazing essay even if you, like me, could not reliably identify Roger Federer from a lineup. If you actually know anything about tennis, it's probably even better.

I also loved "The (As It Were) Seminal Importance of Terminator 2." UGH I wish DFW were still alive and reviewing action movies on a weird blog or something. I WISH IT SO MUCH.

I also loved that in between essays were excerpts from DFW's personal word notes. Like just a list of some of his favorite words and their definitions.

I recommend this book if you have like, already read all of DFW's other stuff and you want more. If you haven't read any of his stuff, or any of his essays... don't start with this. This is the leftovers. And it's the leftovers of a great meal, to be certain, but... start with [b:A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again|6748|A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again|David Foster Wallace|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1344270821s/6748.jpg|574] and/or [b:Consider the Lobster and Other Essays|6751|Consider the Lobster and Other Essays|David Foster Wallace|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1344266666s/6751.jpg|2207382] and then eventually come back to this.

Oh, god, my emotions. I think this might be my favorite of AS King's books. Maybe it hit the closest to home in some respects--small town gossip, stoner parent, etc. (Are there any other YA books that have stoner parents? Well, Ellen Hopkins probably does but not like this.)

UH in summary Astrid Jones may be described as a closested, questioning/queer teen--who has a girl she consistently hooks up with but isn't ready to "come out" as dating a girl, and also isn't sure if she even is a lesbian or if she just likes this one girl. She doesn't feel that she fits in with her family, or most people at her small town school, and she spends a lot of time lying outside watching airplanes go by and "sending love to them" because she doesn't think she needs her love on the ground. IDK, when I heard that part of the book's summary I was like, what a weird emo hobby, but it's kind of beautiful, and I love the interludes where we see the stories of the passengers in the flights overhead.

AS King in a nutshell: WEIRD, EMO, AND KIND OF BEAUTIFUL??

I love all the complexity ascribed to really every character in the novel, and I love the ending, and I just loved it, okay.