Book Thoughts: Lola and the Boy Next Door

Title: Lola and the Boy Next Door
Author: Stephanie Perkins

I fell in love with Stephanie Perkins' first novel, Anna and the French Kiss (which I'm sure I'll post about at some point), and so I didn't doubt for a second that I would fall just as much in love with Lola. I wasn't wrong.

The stories are very different, and I think I honestly prefer Anna just because she's more like me, but Lola is such a fun and quirky character. I loved reading about her life, and her emotional struggles felt so real. (I won't lie - I cried.)

Also, Cricket! Wow! I love him. Okay.

I liked the way Lola's hot-rocker-boyfriend situation was handled, the way their relationship was portrayed so honestly. Relationships aren't always perfect and don't always last. And they leave emotional damage that can affect future relationships. And they can be hard to leave even when they're not healthy, because when you care about someone, it's easy to justify their flaws. All of that was handled so honestly and it was just excellent.

Also. Okay. Love love love Lola's friendship-enemyship-relationship situation with Cricket. Actually Cricket may be my favorite character in this book. (I mean, obviously I love Anna and St. Clair and they have more than just a passing appearance, but they're not main characters.) But Lola is worth reading just for Cricket, not to mention all the other fabulousness.

One other thing and then I'll shut up: Lola is the pseudo-adopted daughter of two gay dads (her birth mother is one dad's sister, if I remember right) and they play a large part in the story, but the novel is not about how Lola is the daughter of two gay men. It's so refreshing to see a story where homosexuality makes an appearance without the novel being ABOUT that, because that's how life is.

So, yes, definitely read this one, and also Anna and the French Kiss because it's (if possible) even more fabulous.

Book Thoughts: If I Lie

Title: If I Lie
Author: Corrine Jackson

Wow. I skimmed the first few pages of this one just to see what it was about and ended up reading the entire thing. (Also, I bawled like a baby. So many feelings!)

Quinn's from a military town, being shunned because she got caught kissing someone who isn't her active-duty boyfriend Carey, and she can't tell the truth about the situation because she's promised to keep Carey's secret.

Some of the events in this story seemed almost too extreme or dramatic to be real, but that's why it's so powerful. The novel is fictional but the events in it are so real. It's hard to believe the kind of verbal, emotional, and physical abuse people suffer just for being who they are and loving someone other than who everyone expects them to love.

I absolutely recommend it, but wow, have a box of tissues ready.

Book Thoughts: The World According to Garp

Title: The World According to Garp
Author: John Irving

The world according to Garp apparently consists of nothing but gratuitous sex and death. So, the jacket-flap said it was a comedic novel about the son of a famous feminist struggling to become a writer in the post-WWII era. And I guess it was about that, so the jacket-flap didn't really lie...

Still, I wish I'd had a warning of some sort. At one point in the novel, Garp's editor, John Wolf, describes some of Garp's work as "an X-rated soap opera." I'd pretty much apply that to the novel as a whole. The plot in a nutshell (spoiler warning): Jenny Fields rapes a dying soldier so she can have a kid without having to deal with a man in her life. Then she gets a job at a boarding school where her son, named Garp after his father, eventually goes to school. Beginning in his senior year of high school, Garp starts having sex with practically every other girl he meets. He eventually gets married and has children, but still has several affairs. People die. There's a lot of sex. More people die. His life sucks. There's some more affairs. Then he realizes that he still loves his wife, and instead of having sex with everyone he meets, he (spoiler).

That said, I didn't hate the book. I thought there was entirely too much unnecessary sex, and I disliked that it was always "f*** this" and "f*** that" when there was really no need for it, but on the whole it was okay. It was just...really tragic, and really X-rated. Not something I would have chosen to read, personally, but I know people who would probably like it if they picked it up on their own. I also think I'd've enjoyed it a lot more if it hadn't been keeping me from the books I really wanted to read. School requirements do not often do much to endear books to me.

Not my kind of book, perhaps, and not, in my humble opinion, one of the best books out there, but there were certainly parts that were laugh-out-loud funny and parts that were undeniably true. I'm going to put it out there as something that you might pick up if you don't have anything else to read and don't mind a tragedy - and I'm going to put a huge huge huge "X-RATED CONTENT" label on it.

Book Thoughts: The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Title: The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Author: Emily M. Danforth

When Cameron's sleepover with her best friend is interrupted by an ominous phone call, she fears that she's been caught kissing a girl. The news is much worse: her parents have been killed in a car crash.

Now an orphan, still struggling with her sexuality, Cameron takes up residence with her fundamentalist Christian Aunt Ruth. Just when she begins to feel confident in her maybe-relationship with gorgeous cowgirl Coley Taylor, Aunt Ruth finds out about Cameron's *look both ways and whisper* homosexuality, and just like that, Cam is shipped off to God's Promise boarding school for "sexually troubled teens."

This was a tough book to read from an emotional standpoint. Watching Cameron struggle with her identity and find those around her telling her that it's Wrong to be this way even though she didn't choose it -- it's painful. It's even more painful because it's true. Cameron may be a fictional character, but camps that "pray the gay away" are real, and the belief that homosexuality is inherently sinful is real, and seeing the effect it has on Cam's life is incredibly powerful.

It's scary to know that such extreme hatred and intolerance exist in the world, and The Miseducation of Cameron Post provides a heartbreaking yet wryly funny look at exactly what that can do to a girl trying to grow up in a world that doesn't accept her. It would be a gritty and realistic look at growing up for anyone, let alone a gay girl in a Christian community.

This is a pretty intense read, but so, so powerful. I definitely recommend it.