Category: Reviews

It has been more than a year since I graduated college and I still often find myself reflecting on my experience. I think a lot about my regrets including spending too much time obsessing over grades and not allowing myself to open up to people and make friends. I didn’t make any new friends in college—just a string of acquaintances. So I was very excited when I picked up Again, but Better by Christine Riccio, which had a character going through a similar experience.

Shane is a pre-med college student who excels academically, but feels like her social life is extremely lacking. So she decides the best way to shake things up is to study abroad for a semester.  The novel starts with Shane on her way to London, and she makes a list of goals she wants to accomplish during her semester like make friends, do well in her internship, and have a romantic life.

Shane does achieve her goals to an extent. She meets a great group of people at her residence hall—including Pilot, a guy she has an instant connection with and develops a major crush on. She gets an internship at a travel magazine and travels to some really cool places like Italy and Paris.

However things do go south and her semester ends on a bad note. But that’s what magic is for. I didn’t mind this at all, because there were little foreshadowing tidbits throughout the book that pointed to some sort of magical event happening later on.

 In this magical twist, Shane gets to relive her study abroad semester. I liked this part, because it gave me so much to think about. There are times where I wonder if did my college experience all over again, what would have been different? I would have definitely made different choices: in regards to a major, and the extracurricular activities I chose, and how I interacted with people. 

I also love this part of the book, because I think that’s where I see the most character growth for Shane. Sure she met some of the goals I mentioned earlier, but in this part you see her learn new things about people she thought she knew really well. She also discovers what is actually important to her and what her true goals are.

I would recommend this book if you want a bit of a realistic, somewhat relatable escape and like stories that focus on self-discovery.

I devoured Jessica Knoll’s debut novel, Luckiest Girl Alive. I liked the pacing of it and the theme of reconciling with your younger self. When I saw that Knoll had written another novel, The Favorite Sister, I knew I wanted to read it. While this one touched on some important topics, it did not live up to Knoll’s first novel.

The Favorite Sister follows a group of women on a reality TV show called Goal Diggers, which focuses on their lives as millennial female entrepreneurs. The story is told through three narrators: Brett, her sister Kelly, and Stephanie. Two other women, Lauren and Jen, are on the show, but are not narrators in the story.

The novel starts off on a dark note. Brett is dead and Kelly thinks she should take some of the blame. That particular plot point drew me in, because it made me expect this suspenseful story I couldn’t put down like Luckiest Girl Alive.

 But I didn’t find this book that suspenseful. There was enough happening to keep me reading to an extent, but I also didn’t have a problem putting it down. I think it took a long time to get to the events actually leading up to Brett’s death.

I usually like books with multiple narrators, but I don’t know if I liked the way these were executed. Brett’s chapters were okay. You get to learn about her struggle growing up plus-sized and that her mother was very hard on her for it. She owns a fitness studio company while also being a major advocate for body positivity, which is something that is emphasized at her studios.

Stephanie’s chapters were interesting, because she talked about growing up a black woman while being raised by her adoptive white mother. Being the oldest women on the show, she also talked about how society views aging women and how it feels like she’s being phased out of the show due to her age.

Kelly’s chapters just didn’t do it for me. She’s supposed to be in the present day retelling what happened to Brett in a TV interview. There weren’t enough of her chapters for me to really understand her. I think so much time is spent on Brett and Stephanie that Kelly’s point of view gets drowned out.

I really liked how this book made me think deeper about modern day feminism and the sentiment of women supporting other women. While that sentiment sounds good in theory, sometimes it just falls through in real life. Goal Diggers was supposed to be the feminist antithesis to Real Housewives and other reality TV shows that show a lot of drama and fighting between women.

But the producers of Goal Diggers ended up taking a page out of the classic reality TV formula and started stirring up drama and pitting the women against each other to boost the ratings. However the women could be really nasty to each other even without being provoked by the producers. For example, there were a lot of negative comments about Brett’s weight.  

This is all to say I didn’t think this book was a bad read. It was definitely thought-provoking at times, but it’s probably not going to be a favorite of mine and I don’t plan on returning to it. I think this book is better suited for those who love the drama of those modern reality shows like Real Housewives and are interested in what goes on behind the scenes.   

I’ve passed by Leah Konen’s The Romantics, a few times at the library, but I finally decided to buy it several weeks ago. The cover definitely caught my attention. It was cute and described the story as a rom-com about love told by Love. I think Love narrating a story is very unique and quite fitting for a rom-com.

But what I really liked about this book was how self-aware it was about rom-coms while still giving the readers the parts of genre we know and love like a meet-cute, an adorable setting, and quirky characters just to name a few.

The Romantics follows high school senior, Gael, who’s view of love is shattered after he catches his girlfriend kissing his best friend and while dealing with his parents’ divorce. But we don’t have to worry about Gael, because our trusty (and meddlesome) narrator Love is here to help guide him in the right direction to the right girl at the end.

One interesting part of having Love tell the story is the labels he places on the characters that describe how they view love and how they act in relationships. For example, Gael is a romantic, someone who is really into being in love and openly expresses their affection for someone.  The girl he starts seeing after the breakup, Cara, is a serial monogamist. She is someone who feels the need to always be in a relationship. It just made me wonder which label would be most fitting for me?

I also like that the characters are not all in high school and the story doesn’t just focus on high school relationships. Cara and Sammy, the babysitter for Gael’s little sister, are both in college. I just feel like you really have to hunt for YA books that have college characters in them. The story also goes into detail about Gael’s parents’ relationship and what led to their divorce.

So if you want to read something that veers off the path of the typical YA romance (but not too much—we need some hope in this world), then go ahead and give this one a try.