Reviews

Geekerella by Ashley Poston

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mo_reads_more's review against another edition

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This was a cute story. I loved the dual perspectives of the characters. Darien was fun-loving and felt like a teenage boy, which I appreciated. El was such a sweet character as well, and you could tell how her relationship with her stepmother and stepsisters wore her down mentally. I felt terrible for her so many times, but I'm honestly so glad they didn't give either of them redemption stories. Cal was the only one that a redemption made sense for and it was necessary to move the story along as well. Sage was hands down the best character though; she truly was El's fairy godmother.

While I enjoyed the texting between Darien and El, once they met in person their relationship became kind of cringey. The things they were saying in text format that were cute didn't translate well when they were speaking in person. On the other hand, their connection through Starfield was cute! I loved the nerd, fandom perspective the book took because I have definitely obsessed over books and TV shows. I'm not sure I would make it the center of every conversation I have with someone though. But also, their obsession with Starfield is part of the entire plot of the story, so of course they would bring it up a lot. That's pretty much the reason I think this book is a solid 3.

The only other thing about the story I'll bring up is the fact the ending felt kind of all over the place. There was so much going on, especially between Darien finding out the 'mystery girl' was the blogger, who at first he hated then kinda liked, only to find out she was El the whole time, while El had literally no idea Darien was Car, just that he was the actor. It felt like the entire novel was so slow, and then suddenly the pace picked up so much and it was hard to keep up.

There were some post production errors I noticed in the audio version. Sometimes the narrators repeated the same lines twice and I can only assume they were multiple takes that were failed to be edited out. It did take away from the story a bit but I actually got used to it eventually.

jenmangler's review against another edition

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2.0

This is one of those books that I see being carried around quite a bit at school, so for that reason I wanted to read it. Also, it looked like fun. While it's not my cup of tea (although I really did love Sage), I can see how it could be for many students.

ifyoureabirdimabird's review against another edition

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Might try again later! Didn’t like the mmc at first but I did like the vibes, very cute!

zoe_424's review against another edition

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4.0

4.5 stars! I normally don't pick up contemporaries, but after reading the synopsis I had to give this one a go! I'm so glad I did. This book is exactly what you'd expect it to be! It's cute, funny, and diverse!

The only "issue" I had was the pacing in the book, but it wasn't so bad that it still wasn't enjoyable.

ziggymusic's review against another edition

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3.0

More like 2.75 stars. While it seemed like a patchwork of several other Cinderella adaptations and the dialogue was sometimes painfully cliche and melodramatic (in a bad way - I love some well-written melodrama), nevertheless it was a fun, cute read.

blurrypetals's review against another edition

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3.0

This was just about the same to me as Anna and the French Kiss was, in a way. It obviously had a rather different plot, but for the most part, it made me feel the same way. I was also reminded of Eliza and Her Monsters because of the whole "two geeky teenagers fall in love because they're both fans of a really popular thing but one of them is secretly more involved with the content of the thing they're fans of than the other knows" setup. So, take the feelings from Anna and the French Kiss, add a dash of the plot of Eliza and Her Monsters, and of course base it all around the classic Cinderella fairy tale, and you've got Geekerella.

Even though I've compared this to Eliza and Her Monsters, it carries very little of the same sort of depth I felt for Eliza and Wallace when it comes to Darien and Elle.

This is a really fluffy, really predictable story that was okay enough to fill up an evening and a half at work. It wasn't really special or new to me, but it was cute enough to hold my attention and get me to root for the right people. Other than that, not a whole lot else about this book was too memorable. The writing and themes are all very standard, run of the mill things. One could say it's because it's based on a fairytale written hundreds of years ago, but if you look at the entirety of The Lunar Chronicles, that's a series based solely on the same fairytale as this (as well as many other fairytales) and those books are all some of the most exciting, original pieces of work I've ever read.

It all just depends on how you do it and what you do with it and, in the case of Geekerella, there just wasn't all that much that was done with it.