Book Thoughts: Just One Day

Title: Just One Day
Author: Gayle Forman
*Imported from tumblr*

This book taught me three things about myself: 1) I want to be the kind of person who says yes. 2) I’m lucky to be studying something that I actually love. And 3), I always knew I wanted to travel Europe, but now I extra-special want to travel Europe.

In Just One Day, good girl Allyson Healey is in Europe for a student tour. On the last day, instead of heading back to London with her best friend, she spends just a single day in Paris with a Dutch actor she’s just met, and she falls a little bit in love with him. It’s just one day, but it turns into a year of self-discovery, finding out who she truly is and who she is capable of being. Also, some seriously cool tie-ins to Twelfth Night and As You Like It, but not hitting you over the head with it.

Europe and sassy friends and adventures and well-incorporated Shakespeare and a deeper understanding of life. Definitely, definitely read this one, guys.

Book Thoughts: The Fault in Our Stars

Title: The Fault in Our Stars
Author: John Green

Grab a box of tissues and this book, sit down, and prepare to bawl your eyes out and then want to go back to the first page and read it again and again.

This book is freaking fantastic and it's also an emotional train wreck. Hazel and Augustus are both teenaged cancer patients trying to figure out how to live with their circumstances. I mean, when an author as talented as John Green is writing a book about a subject like cancer, you know it's going to be a tear-jerker, and TFiOS does not disappoint.

Very rarely can a book make me laugh out loud, cry, laugh some more, and then sob through the last eighty pages. Even rarer is a book that can do that and then make me want to pick it up and start right back over again. TFiOS does that and more.

I don't know how much I can say without spoiling too much, but: Swedish hip-hop, Amsterdam, the Literal Heart of Jesus, and a cast of characters that is entirely unforgettable -- you NEED to read this book.