Jenni from the book

No, you're not having a weird sense of deja vu - I've managed to get through another 5 books since my last book review blog post and you all seemed to love the last one so I thought I'd do another! Again, I'll do my best not to ruin the whole plot but I will be giving away some details so a spoiler alert is needed here.

For every Christmas and birthday, my mum always hunts high and low for a good book by an author named Jenni or Jennifer (hugely successful in the case of the summer books by Jenny Han, which are still my favourite trilogy ever). When I first read the blurb to this book, I thought it was a fantasy (which I'm not really so keen on). It's about Libby, a teenage girl who was once the "fattest teen in America" and has lost a lot of weight but is still bullied for her size, and Jack, a teenage boy at the top of the social hierarchy who is adored by everyone. But Jack secretly can't recognise faces and he's too afraid of what it will mean if he admits this, so he keeps it hidden. That's the part that made me think it was supernatural or something but it is an actual known condition, which I thought was interesting. The story follows the two of them as they meet and then inevitably change eachother's lives. For me, they seemed to fall for each other way too quickly. It went from 0 to 100 in about one chapter (similar to in A walk to remember, which I think is corny and overrated rather than romantic and heartbreaking as everyone else describes it), but I do think that the build-up until then was really good. A lot of authors fall in to that trap though. They get two people from 0 to 80 really well, with a slow and considered build-up and then they just rush the last 20% and ruin everything. However, even though the pace was a bit off for me, I did think the book executed a lot of important messages really well. About how you never really know what's going on in someone else's life, about how inner strength and popularity usually have a high negative correlation, about how you're always stronger than you think you are and can survive more than you imagine and about how people (and life) are always full of surprises. Even though it was aimed at a teenage audience, I (as a young adult) didn't find it too juvenile and a lot of the messages would ring true with all ages.

I was immediately intrigued by this book because it's written from two different perspectives; a writing style which I love and have done since I read Secrets by Jacqueline Wilson. It's the classic story of boy meets girl; Ben is the boy next door with 10/10 boyfriend skills and absolutely no idea what he wants to do with his life, while Rebecca is a driven and successful ice queen with her emotions on lock down (who reminded me of myself). Instead of the story being about how they met and got together, that part is covered in chapter 1 and then the story fast forwards a year. They're in a happy relationship and ready to move in together and as far as everyone (including them) is concerned, they're a perfect match. But all relationships have secrets and the truth always comes out in the end. So when their relationship (and lives) have been blown apart, the story then becomes a very honest and realistic account of what happens in the year of the aftermath that follows. The secret was pretty predictable and I guessed both parts of it within the first few pages, but this book definitely surprised me. I was losing enthusiasm with it about 2/3 of the way through but stick with it because it gets seriously good after that! I won't totally spoil the ending or explicitly say whether they get back together or not, but I will say that this isn't so much a love story as it is a story about life. But the ending was done perfectly and I would definitely recommend reading it.

After enjoying The night that changed everything so much, I hunted down another book co-written by the same two authors (they actually wrote this one first) and I enjoyed it just as much. It's practically the opposite though; instead of being about two people who start together and then spend a lot of the story apart, The best thing that never happened to me is about two people who spend the whole book narrowly missing out on each other. Holly and Alex were best friends at sixth form and both secretly had feelings for each other but neither had the balls to admit it. They go their separate ways and Holly becomes a girl who never quite reached her potential or chased her dreams of travelling the world with enough ferocity, while Alex becomes an English teacher (as planned) but finds that their small home town doesn't give him the sense of reward that he's looking for. So he sets off for a new life in London, which is of course where Holly lives and the two slowly become friends again. And then they both remember why they wanted to be more than friends. This book at times was agonisingly frustrating, riddled with missed opportunities and people not saying how they feel or what they think but I think that's what was so good about it; the message that fate can only get you so far and that you have to do part of the work in achieving your destiny. It also highlights the importance of having confidence in yourself, in being honest, in chasing your dreams and about how you should never wait until it's too late. Also, the last couple of chapters almost gave me a heart attack when it seemed not to be ending the way I hoped, but it was perfectly written and kept you on edge until the very end.

I didn't actually read Me before you but I did see the film (if I see the film first, I will never go back and read the book afterwards; I have to have read the book first) and it was heartbreakingly beautiful. So I was looking forward to the sequel, After you and intrigued to see which direction they steered Lou's life in next. Although it's nice to believe that Me before you ended happily (with Lou travelling and seeing the world as Will wanted her to), this book showed that grief isn't quite as simple as that. After travelling for a year, Lou felt lonelier than ever and no closer to coming to terms with the loss of Will or her part in everything. So she works a bar job and lives in a flat in London that she is yet to decorate or make in to a home and seems to still be putting off letting her life truly begin. And then Will's secret, troublesome, 16 year old daughter (who he never knew anything about), turns up on Lou's doorstep looking for the side of her family that she never knew and Lou's world is once again turned upside down by Will. Like Will, his daughter Lily is frank and honest and moody and always trying to live her life to the fullest - something that slowly starts to rub off on Lou. This book is beautiful because it's a very honest account about grief and love and loss and about how putting your life back together again is not a straight forward path, but a roller coaster journey. And most importantly, that everything happens for a reason, and life has a funny way of working out okay in the end.

Another book on my favourite subject - fate. Natasha is a logical, scientific and intelligent girl who doesn't believe in magic or destiny or 'meant to be' and Daniel is a poet who is struggling with whether to do what his strict Korean parents want and go to medical school, or whether to chase his dreams. On a day in New York City, the two of them meet and Daniel is convinced they are meant to be. Natasha on the other hand is definitely not - especially since that's the day her and her family are due to be deported to Jamaica. But after what seems like the longest day ever to have existed (the whole book), the two have changed eachother's lives irrevocably - but does that necessarily mean they are meant to be together forever? This book is written perfectly because not only is it written from both Natasha and Daniel's perspectives, but it also has chapters from Daniel's brother, Natasha's dad, a lawyer, a BMW driver, a security office and loads of narrator parts here and there about various cultural or historical facts (which I actually learned some interesting stuff from). It was really well written as well because it spoke about where the characters were destined to end up like 'charlie would become a politician and marry a pretty blonde' so it was a very multi-dimensional story. I loved it as well because I am both main characters; I'm a hopeless dreamer who believes in fate and destiny but I'm also a realist who thinks logically and I'm not controlled by my emotions. This is a book about fate on so many levels because it not only details all the ways in which Daniel and Natasha are brought together, but it also details the effects of choices made by them and other characters (major or minor). About how something seemingly insignificant can totally alter the life of a person you don't even know. The interlinking was all done perfectly and I was worried that the book might succumb to a romance cliché and end happily rather than realistically but the author did a perfect job. And after all, if you're meant to be then you'll find your way in the end...