3.5 AVERAGE

emotional sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

🎶gift to me foreverrrr ‘cos I’m kissing you, ohhhh I’m kissing you 🎶

I just watched the Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation, so I was inspired to reread this. Baz did a beautiful job! 😭 

I also had the realization that I’ve been watching the modernized version since I was 5! 😆
dark emotional sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
emotional funny fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
emotional funny sad fast-paced
emotional reflective fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes
emotional sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
emotional

Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven, 
Having some business, do entreat her eyes 
To twinkle in their spheres till they return. 
What if her eyes were there, they in her head? The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, 
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven 
Would through the airy region stream so bright 
That birds would sing and think it were not night.

Beautifully written passages, I know now why everyone quotes it so much
But it makes it all sadder to know how young these two children are. 13 years old. Puts it all in such a different context again

I must say, I was really expecting better from this play.
There is a lot of "hype" around Romeo and Juliet, and I thought I would like it a lot. I'm a sucker for romance, and I thought that I'd really enjoy seeing a "true love" dynamic between the two before everything went south. I felt safer armed with the knowledge that things really did go wrong in the end, and wasn't left thinking that everything would be okay but there were still 70 pages left in the book like in Lovely War...
However, none of my expectations were really met. Romeo annoyed me to no end, and was over-dramatic for no reason other than to express his naïveté. Juliet was much more sensible, but became completely hysterical in the end. Mercutio was temperamental and hotheaded, and although he is many people's favorite character, I disliked him greatly. I think the only character whom I remotely liked was Benvolio. The Friar's soliloquies were long-winded and a pain to read; the Nurse just made me cringe; the metaphors, on their own, were beautiful—but when there were five of them in quick succession, they lost their sheen. The language was really heavy going, and I would say that I have experience with older writing. Actually, Macbeth—which I read last year—was much better.
There were some interesting themes and things to point out, which I do want to include in my review. One thing I found particularly touching was how tired and disillusioned with life both Romeo and Juliet (but particularly the latter) were at the end of the play. The shortened time period made the rapid change in them particularly notable—they went from idealistic, lovestruck youths to exhausted and grief-stricken in the span of just a few weeks (perhaps just one). There were some really lovely metaphors and conceits which make me want to finally pick up Starlight and Moonshine, which is a collection of Shakespeare's poetry about nature. There were some moments where I laughed when Mercutio said something funny—or, more often, when Mercutio tried to be funny and Benvolio just reacted with total confusion.
Overal, I didn't hate this book by any means, but I had higher expectations for it. I think it's hard to criticize too much because this play is just *s0* famous, so expectations will always be a little inflated—but this review is just my honest opinion and this is what I thought!

so good. so so so so good.

3.5