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3.38 AVERAGE
3.38 AVERAGE
yesss! cute, adorable, super awkward.
your typical teenagery friends-fall-for-eachother starring:
girl-with-weird-family-and-social/sexual-issues featuring guy-we-all-love-bc-oh-so-handsome-and-nice except this time it’s a naive boy and its all gay and i loved most of it.
i do find it problematic that every female is either sex-obsessed or a sex-object. and also the way they talk? it sometimes feels like they are stuck in the fifties.
noah is the weirdest, most awkward teen i‘ve ever met and where others might be bad in reading situations he just flat out cannot and it can be hilarious! (even though i wonder how he could turn out that way given his upbringing. defense-mechanism?)
but i feel like any teenage boy might pick this up and feel represented. like all us awkward teenage girls were. i support that. sequel here i come!
your typical teenagery friends-fall-for-eachother starring:
girl-with-weird-family-and-social/sexual-issues featuring guy-we-all-love-bc-oh-so-handsome-and-nice except this time it’s a naive boy and its all gay and i loved most of it.
i do find it problematic that every female is either sex-obsessed or a sex-object. and also the way they talk? it sometimes feels like they are stuck in the fifties.
noah is the weirdest, most awkward teen i‘ve ever met and where others might be bad in reading situations he just flat out cannot and it can be hilarious! (even though i wonder how he could turn out that way given his upbringing. defense-mechanism?)
but i feel like any teenage boy might pick this up and feel represented. like all us awkward teenage girls were. i support that. sequel here i come!
Finished this purely because I am a stubborn mule that got too far in to give up.
This book was pure cringe. I understand it was meant to be funny but it tried waaaaay too hard on many occasions.
Also too much was going on for the author to be able to dedicate enough time to the plot points. Several things could have been taken out to clean up the storyline and make it more streamlined and palatable. At points it felt like the author just put in whatever he pleased just for the purpose of complicating Noah's life, not for any plot reasons.
Now Noah. I understand some teenagers tend to be quite stupid, but Noah is a whole other level. The stuff he says and does is just so unbelievably ridiculous that it was hard to empathise with him because he's so fucking stupid. In fact pretty much all the characters are intolerable, stupid assholes. The only two I didn't dislike were Harry and Sophie but they were hardly in the story so I'm not even sure they can be counted as characters.
Overall, I did not enjoy this story. I have read a lager SJG book which was far better (until the ending) so I'm glad he improved.
This book was pure cringe. I understand it was meant to be funny but it tried waaaaay too hard on many occasions.
Also too much was going on for the author to be able to dedicate enough time to the plot points. Several things could have been taken out to clean up the storyline and make it more streamlined and palatable. At points it felt like the author just put in whatever he pleased just for the purpose of complicating Noah's life, not for any plot reasons.
Now Noah. I understand some teenagers tend to be quite stupid, but Noah is a whole other level. The stuff he says and does is just so unbelievably ridiculous that it was hard to empathise with him because he's so fucking stupid. In fact pretty much all the characters are intolerable, stupid assholes. The only two I didn't dislike were Harry and Sophie but they were hardly in the story so I'm not even sure they can be counted as characters.
Overall, I did not enjoy this story. I have read a lager SJG book which was far better (until the ending) so I'm glad he improved.
It was a fun read but that was about it. The book felt very 'jumbly', almost as if the author had eight different novel ideas but didn't quite feel like writing eight different novels. The characters were fun, the storyline was okay, it just wasn't anything out of the ordinary.
I am just going to quietly DNF this.
I was enjoying it immensely in the beginning and then the ghost of 2017 me came back and I started to recognise all the reasons I once rated this two stars. With the main one being , Noah is.... a difficult character to like and he doesn't seem to grow as a character at all - minus realizing he does love redacted- and even then, he is still so mean!
I was enjoying it immensely in the beginning and then the ghost of 2017 me came back and I started to recognise all the reasons I once rated this two stars. With the main one being , Noah is.... a difficult character to like and he doesn't seem to grow as a character at all - minus realizing he does love redacted- and even then, he is still so mean!
Noah Can't Even by Simon James Green is a young-adult contemporary novel told from the third-person POV of Noah Grimes a fifteen-year-old who literally never has anything good happen to him. It follows Noah as he navigates familial issues, bullies at school and his best-friend Harry coming out to him as gay.
Noah is extremely annoying as a central voice. Rather than awkward, he comes across as obnoxious and self-centred and never once thinks about the feelings of other characters. This book is marketed as Noah navigating his sexuality after Harry kisses him, however, the majority of the book is just Noah voicing his internalised homophobia and not confronting any of his feelings until he forced to do so.
However, this book, in all its ridiculousness, is exactly the kind of read I needed during this period of self-isolation and I am grateful to it for that. I will be reading the sequel, for sure.
Noah is extremely annoying as a central voice. Rather than awkward, he comes across as obnoxious and self-centred and never once thinks about the feelings of other characters. This book is marketed as Noah navigating his sexuality after Harry kisses him, however, the majority of the book is just Noah voicing his internalised homophobia and not confronting any of his feelings until he forced to do so.
However, this book, in all its ridiculousness, is exactly the kind of read I needed during this period of self-isolation and I am grateful to it for that. I will be reading the sequel, for sure.
How was this book so cute? Sophie, Harry and Noah are my children - even though Noah is a disaster, I love him with all my heart.
On page 359 of [b:Noah Could Never|38117293|Noah Could Never (Noah Can't Even, #2)|Simon James Green|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1516570312l/38117293._SY75_.jpg|59801828] (the second book of the series, so far), one of the characters asks Noah, the eponymous hero: "Aren't you supposed to be one of the clever ones?"
It is a question I've kept asking throughout my reading of those two volumes. Noah is supposed to be clever. We are told as much repeatedly. But he in fact comes across as rather stupid and idiotic, and, let's face it, a bit of a moron too (a realisation Noah himself can't escape by the end of that second book, when he calls himself a 'dickhead').
I understand that Green is writing this for laughs, and that's that reason why he contrives all sorts of self-inflicted messes for his main character, each more ridiculous and unbelievable than the previous one, simply for the comedy value he can derive from them.
Unfortunately, despite some amusing bits, this only ends up being, most of the time, cringe-inducing, and it certainly gets in the way of empathising fully with what could otherwise be a cute love story.
(one review for both volumes)
It is a question I've kept asking throughout my reading of those two volumes. Noah is supposed to be clever. We are told as much repeatedly. But he in fact comes across as rather stupid and idiotic, and, let's face it, a bit of a moron too (a realisation Noah himself can't escape by the end of that second book, when he calls himself a 'dickhead').
I understand that Green is writing this for laughs, and that's that reason why he contrives all sorts of self-inflicted messes for his main character, each more ridiculous and unbelievable than the previous one, simply for the comedy value he can derive from them.
Unfortunately, despite some amusing bits, this only ends up being, most of the time, cringe-inducing, and it certainly gets in the way of empathising fully with what could otherwise be a cute love story.
(one review for both volumes)