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eesh25's review against another edition
2.0
First of all...
These two stars are me being generous.
Now, short review:
I hated it. It started off okay but then there was a whole lot of insta love and then boom! they in love.
The rest of the book just dissolved into overdramaticness, srying, panicking, being stupid and then it ended.
Thank fuck.
And, in the end,
Honestly, I don't understand what happened to Stephanie. Book 1 was good, book 2 was okay, what happened with this one?
Very disappointed...
These two stars are me being generous.
Now, short review:
I hated it. It started off okay but then there was a whole lot of insta love and then boom! they in love.
The rest of the book just dissolved into overdramaticness, srying, panicking, being stupid and then it ended.
Thank fuck.
And, in the end,
Spoiler
Etienne and Anna got engaged! They're 19!Honestly, I don't understand what happened to Stephanie. Book 1 was good, book 2 was okay, what happened with this one?
Very disappointed...
faeriesparks's review against another edition
4.0
Loved it so much! Isla and Josh were so adorable and the ending was really cute
_reading_with_kate_'s review against another edition
4.0
It made me laugh, it made me cry, and it made me want to mail something. This statement is some of the highest praise I can give a book. I felt that way about Anna & Lola, and I'm glad Isla followed suit.
yodamom's review against another edition
5.0
I love, LOVE this series, these characters, and their settings. I hope this isn't the end.
4.5
The story is back in Paris, the school for Americans. Our adventure begins with one red headed short girl, Isla, who is high on medication from having her wisdom teeth removed. She walks into a cafe only to see her crush for the last 3 years sitting in a booth. Her drugged mind finds the courage to talk to him, flirt and make him laugh. This is the beginning of a sweet, hot and heartbreaking romance.
Isla is shy, set in her life style and a bit insecure. She has issues about her body's height challenge and wears high heels even if it makes her feet hurt. She loves with her whole being, but she also fears with her whole heart. This fear, and her giving into it will break your heart.
Josh is the man of her dreams. He was the one she watched love another girl in their circle at school. He is an artist with a reputation of not living by the rules of the school. He gets in trouble, spends a lot of time in detention and seems aloof. He has many little secrets, and some issues of his own to grow through. He is also deeply romantic.
Together these two slowly develop their story. It is paced maidenly slow sometimes and too fast at others. Life steps in and their path is disrupted. He opens his soul to her and the magic happens. There is no violence, no disrespect, no abuse, no typically written High School rudeness. This is a good story/series that needs none of the shock gimmicks to hold it up. They all end in a HEA, and this one was even more deserved than the others IMHO.
4.5
The story is back in Paris, the school for Americans. Our adventure begins with one red headed short girl, Isla, who is high on medication from having her wisdom teeth removed. She walks into a cafe only to see her crush for the last 3 years sitting in a booth. Her drugged mind finds the courage to talk to him, flirt and make him laugh. This is the beginning of a sweet, hot and heartbreaking romance.
Isla is shy, set in her life style and a bit insecure. She has issues about her body's height challenge and wears high heels even if it makes her feet hurt. She loves with her whole being, but she also fears with her whole heart. This fear, and her giving into it will break your heart.
Josh is the man of her dreams. He was the one she watched love another girl in their circle at school. He is an artist with a reputation of not living by the rules of the school. He gets in trouble, spends a lot of time in detention and seems aloof. He has many little secrets, and some issues of his own to grow through. He is also deeply romantic.
Together these two slowly develop their story. It is paced maidenly slow sometimes and too fast at others. Life steps in and their path is disrupted. He opens his soul to her and the magic happens. There is no violence, no disrespect, no abuse, no typically written High School rudeness. This is a good story/series that needs none of the shock gimmicks to hold it up. They all end in a HEA, and this one was even more deserved than the others IMHO.
soulsbooks23's review against another edition
4.0
Una vez más he quedado enamorada de la pluma de la autora y de su capacidad de crear historias románticas. En este libro conocemos a Isla y a Josh quienes en un principio no me agradaron mucho pero al ir avanzando la historia me iban gustando.
Es súper enganchante, a través de las descripciones que nos da Perkins vamos conociendo diferentes partes del mundo como son New York, Paris y Barcelona.
Esta trilogía me gustó muchísimo, peor debo reconocer que hay algunas cosas que no me agradaron como que considero que la relación que hay entre los protagonistas no me terminó de convencer. Además, de que cuando la relación se ellos comenzó, Isla no le prestó atención a su mejor amigo que es Kurt.
3,5/5⭐️
Es súper enganchante, a través de las descripciones que nos da Perkins vamos conociendo diferentes partes del mundo como son New York, Paris y Barcelona.
Esta trilogía me gustó muchísimo, peor debo reconocer que hay algunas cosas que no me agradaron como que considero que la relación que hay entre los protagonistas no me terminó de convencer. Además, de que cuando la relación se ellos comenzó, Isla no le prestó atención a su mejor amigo que es Kurt.
3,5/5⭐️
reader4evr's review against another edition
2.0
I'm probably going to be the only person that is going to rate this how many stars that I did.
I had HIGH expectations for this book since I LOVED Anna & Lola. After reading about 5 chapters into this book I thought Isla was super odd and annoying. She was kind of creepy the way she was acting about Josh and I felt like their relationship was pushed and it didn't flow naturally. Overall I just felt like their relationship was too lovely dovey and that drove me kind of nuts, I just didn't feel the same way when I read Anna.
I did however like how St. Clair, Anna, Lola and Cricket were in this story. I didn't even realize but I think Josh and Isla were both in Anna and the french kiss.
I am disappointed to see this "series" end because I really enjoyed it.
I had HIGH expectations for this book since I LOVED Anna & Lola. After reading about 5 chapters into this book I thought Isla was super odd and annoying. She was kind of creepy the way she was acting about Josh and I felt like their relationship was pushed and it didn't flow naturally. Overall I just felt like their relationship was too lovely dovey and that drove me kind of nuts, I just didn't feel the same way when I read Anna.
I did however like how St. Clair, Anna, Lola and Cricket were in this story. I didn't even realize but I think Josh and Isla were both in Anna and the french kiss.
I am disappointed to see this "series" end because I really enjoyed it.
ritasreadingcorner's review against another edition
5.0
Yet another book I fell in love with. I don't really know what to say about this book, because it was just SO DAMN GOOD!
This story about Isla and Josh is really, really cute. It only happens on books, though. What are the chances of being your crush's crush? Yep... Anyways, their relationship is adorable. They've never loved someone so much and that's pretty obvious. It's so not like Josh and Rashmi's relationship. They were always fighting and they were together just because they didn't want to be alone. Josh and Isla are completely different. Even so, there's a lot of crap in the way of their happiness, but they are able to move past it, thank God.
It was great reading about Anna, St. Clair, Meredith, Lola and Cricket again. AND THAT PROPOSAL, OH MY GOD, SO FREAKING CUTE!!!
This story is beautiful, honestly. It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read and I read a lot of them! This is a dream story and I loved it very much.
This story about Isla and Josh is really, really cute. It only happens on books, though. What are the chances of being your crush's crush? Yep... Anyways, their relationship is adorable. They've never loved someone so much and that's pretty obvious. It's so not like Josh and Rashmi's relationship. They were always fighting and they were together just because they didn't want to be alone. Josh and Isla are completely different. Even so, there's a lot of crap in the way of their happiness, but they are able to move past it, thank God.
It was great reading about Anna, St. Clair, Meredith, Lola and Cricket again. AND THAT PROPOSAL, OH MY GOD, SO FREAKING CUTE!!!
This story is beautiful, honestly. It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read and I read a lot of them! This is a dream story and I loved it very much.
yukarin's review against another edition
1.0
Oh god I hated this book. Due to the fact the other two books weren't good for me, I expected to like this more. The beginning was good: Half french girl? Check, so we have a person that can speak french in the School of America in Paris. A not so stupid love interest with interests I could understand? Check. Possibly more logical girl? Nah.
But after 60 pages it all went down the river.
I had real problems when Josh and Isla were in the finish art exhibit and were super jerks to the artists. Ok, I get that not all art is pleasing for everyone. Did they (including an artist) being so jerky? nope. At this point (1/5 of the book) the "artist" characteristics of Josh died for me. A few chapters later, Isla and Josh are talking about La Louvre and other famous old art galleries and are admiring the heck out of them. Ok, old art is, also in my opinion, more pleasing than the new, abstract art. But then the scenes in Barcelona. Gaudí is an artist in the catalonian modernism. It sound so pretentious that he like one art without reasons other than it's beautiful and hates on other art. I don't get it as an artist myself.
At the point of Barcelona and the shocking not so shocking effects of it afterwards, I almost threw my ereader across the room. Due to the fact that I didn't had my physical copy with me, I switched to my computer so that it was harder to throw.
I feel like Kurt, the only sane person with a brain in this goddamn book. The more I read about him and Isla, the more I questioned why they were even friends.
Other Problems I had:
- even the mild stalking is stalking
- Isla is praised as being smart but she's almost as dumb as Anna
- I didn't understood Kurt's mental health issues as they weren't shown to us. I was not convinced that weekly activities like pizza oder sushi night would make a overly structure
- The french: I am an almost native french speaker since my grand-père is french. So I noticed a few weird sentences. Some were more like textbook or translation french but this one urks me to no end:
in chapter 22: "mon bébés" -> mes bébés it's called plural. If you write french, make sure it is grammatically correct. Or the editor should know french. -.-
- Isla's impulsiveness:
also chapter 22: "It's a freaking soap opera." Like your life isn't one.
- Unbelievableness:
chapter 25: Yeah, totally realistic given the acceptance rates of these both universities are the other way around. Also: If Isla doesn't know what she wants to do in the future for what did she apply for? In France especially Sorbonne, you need to know your "major" before applying. We still don't know what she wants to do in the end of the book as for her major!
- The ending: it was rushed given the 50+ pages of Isla ignoring Josh. The redemption wasn't there. For neither of these characters
- The "couples coming together": I felt that Lola and her boyfriend weren't depicted as they were in the previous book and it was weird
- The constant mentioning of Étienne loving Anna: I felt like this was done to "improve" the not spoken out reasons in Anna and the French Kiss to give reasons for Étiennes behaviour. So why wasn't this in the first book? It doesn't redeem the fact what happened in book one.
- The ironicness of the use of the term "happily ever after" in the middle of the book
I'm done. I love Stephanie Perkins short stories but I find to much flaws in the full length novels.
But after 60 pages it all went down the river.
I had real problems when Josh and Isla were in the finish art exhibit and were super jerks to the artists. Ok, I get that not all art is pleasing for everyone. Did they (including an artist) being so jerky? nope. At this point (1/5 of the book) the "artist" characteristics of Josh died for me. A few chapters later, Isla and Josh are talking about La Louvre and other famous old art galleries and are admiring the heck out of them. Ok, old art is, also in my opinion, more pleasing than the new, abstract art. But then the scenes in Barcelona. Gaudí is an artist in the catalonian modernism. It sound so pretentious that he like one art without reasons other than it's beautiful and hates on other art. I don't get it as an artist myself.
At the point of Barcelona and the shocking not so shocking effects of it afterwards, I almost threw my ereader across the room. Due to the fact that I didn't had my physical copy with me, I switched to my computer so that it was harder to throw.
I feel like Kurt, the only sane person with a brain in this goddamn book. The more I read about him and Isla, the more I questioned why they were even friends.
Other Problems I had:
- even the mild stalking is stalking
- Isla is praised as being smart but she's almost as dumb as Anna
- I didn't understood Kurt's mental health issues as they weren't shown to us. I was not convinced that weekly activities like pizza oder sushi night would make a overly structure
- The french: I am an almost native french speaker since my grand-père is french. So I noticed a few weird sentences. Some were more like textbook or translation french but this one urks me to no end:
in chapter 22: "mon bébés" -> mes bébés it's called plural. If you write french, make sure it is grammatically correct. Or the editor should know french. -.-
- Isla's impulsiveness:
also chapter 22: "It's a freaking soap opera." Like your life isn't one.
- Unbelievableness:
chapter 25: Yeah, totally realistic given the acceptance rates of these both universities are the other way around. Also: If Isla doesn't know what she wants to do in the future for what did she apply for? In France especially Sorbonne, you need to know your "major" before applying. We still don't know what she wants to do in the end of the book as for her major!
- The ending: it was rushed given the 50+ pages of Isla ignoring Josh. The redemption wasn't there. For neither of these characters
- The "couples coming together": I felt that Lola and her boyfriend weren't depicted as they were in the previous book and it was weird
- The constant mentioning of Étienne loving Anna: I felt like this was done to "improve" the not spoken out reasons in Anna and the French Kiss to give reasons for Étiennes behaviour. So why wasn't this in the first book? It doesn't redeem the fact what happened in book one.
- The ironicness of the use of the term "happily ever after" in the middle of the book
I'm done. I love Stephanie Perkins short stories but I find to much flaws in the full length novels.
bookph1le's review against another edition
1.0
*Sighs. Hitches up ranty pants.*
Settle in, friends, this is going to be a long one, and there will be spoilers.
I'm feeling it now, the part where I'm too old for this sort of thing. Oh, I remember what it was like to be a teenager. I was involved in a very tempestuous relationship at the time, and I felt all the things Isla feels here, but now I see it for what it was: melodramatic wangst. My reasons for disliking this book are numerous, but the never-ending, self-indulgent, relentless wangst of the whole book was by far the most painful part.
In this book, two privileged teenagers mope and fret and fall into a deep depression because they can't have what they want: each other. And why can't they have each other? Why, because of reasons, of course! Reasons, reasons, and more horribly contrived reasons. I'll break it down: none of it makes sense. They aren't together because the story demands that they feel all kinds of torment during a good stretch when, really, all they needed to do was talk to one another and straighten everything out. It could have been over in the matter of an hour, but then the book wouldn't have that long stretch of mopey misunderstanding, would it?
The thing is, I might have cared about all this moping had I cared about the characters, but I didn't. Not one bit. I absolutely adore the previous two novels in this series, which are admittedly just as melodramatic at times. But the characters in those books felt like real, three-dimensional characters with thoughts, feelings, and dreams. By contrast, Isla is THE most annoying female YA character since Bella Swan. She has no personality of her own, no dreams, no drive, no desire. As she dramatically tells us, she is a blank slate. You know what? Blank slates might be full of promise for artists, but for the rest of us they're just boring because they're blank. All we know about Isla by the end of the book is that she reads comics, like adventure novels, has two sisters, and is utterly obsessed with Josh--and, like Bella's, hers is not a healthy obsession. She cyberstalks the guy and moons over him for three years before they start dating. She tells him she's loved him for all those years. What? She doesn't even know him, so how can she possibly love him? What she has is an unhealthy fixation on him, which is made all the more evident by the downward spiral her life takes when he leaves after they've been dating for a grand total of one month. One month, and she's basically ready to chuck her entire life away, but I guess that's a symptom of her nauseating privilege too. She can afford to throw her life away because her parents have all kinds of money, so she'll be fine. Cry me a river. Can I read about a character with real problems now?
Josh is no better. He's an artist. He resents his parents, especially during his father's run for Senator, because they don't pay enough attention to him. Snore. In many ways, he's very similar to St. Clair, but the difference is that St. Clair felt like a real person while Josh felt like a cardboard representation of one. And don't even get me started on his giving Isla his manuscript to read. Huge spoiler alert here: there are panels of his naked ex-girlfriend in them, and panels of him having sex with said girlfriend. And he wonders why Isla is upset. Since she's also been sexually active in the past, I found her reaction a bit hypocritical, but she definitely shouldn't have been exposed to something like that. Who in their right mind would think showing their new girlfriend something like that would be a good idea? I get that it's his opus and all that, but doesn't it occur to him that maybe he ought not to show her graphic depictions of what he's done with his ex, especially since he knows she's crazy jealous of his ex? It's so messed up I don't even know where to begin with it. Then he has the audacity to be angry with her when she offers some constructive criticism? True, her timing sucks, but it should hardly have come as surprise to him that she wouldn't be head over heels for it.
Worse yet, their relationship is all kinds of unhealthy. The minute they start dating, neither of them cares about anything else anymore. They engage in all sorts of reckless behavior that results in his getting booted from their spoiled kid prep school, and they have the nerve to be angry with her sister and with Kurt. What? Sure, later in the book Isla comes to the realization that, guess what, she and Josh are responsible for what's happened, but I vehemently disliked her when her illicit trip to Spain with Josh was first discovered. Even when she has him, Isla can't do anything more than obsess about Josh. She combs the Internet looking for more detail on him, she stops caring about her grades, and she can't be bothered to figure out on her own where she should go to college. Again, these are horrible, privilege-soaked problems. She all but throws away her entire future for a boy she's dated for four whole weeks.
I hate that message. I hate that these books, in many ways, promote the idea that young love like this is the be all and end all. It's not healthy. I know it feels that way at the time--I really, really remember how viscerally I felt it when I was seventeen--but that doesn't make the way it's portrayed here right. Now that I think about it, in every book in this series, the couples end up building their whole future around one another. Instead of pursuing the things they want in the best places to pursue them, they make compromises. Yes, compromises are necessary in love, but NOT when it's your whole future you're talking about. And while it's sweet that St. Clair and Anna get engaged in a significant spot in Paris, they are NINETEEN. Nineteen. No. I'm tired of YA authors equating young love with destiny. I know this is hardly a new thing, but that makes it even worse. Shouldn't we be more enlightened by this point? Shouldn't we be emphasizing to young people that, while their relationships are important, so are their futures? Shouldn't we encourage them to explore, to set goals to try to get all they want out of life? Shouldn't we tell them that if the love is real, it will wait until those important goals are met? Instead, books like this gloss over the fact that permanently altering the course of your life for someone will have lifelong consequences and may lead to lifelong regrets.
I'm sure by now it's obvious how vehemently I dislike this book. I'm sorry that I read it. It's left a bad taste in my mouth for the entire series. I keep returning to a blurb from another YA author, Tahereh Mafi, who calls Perkins the "Jane Austen of our generation". Are you for serious? You must not be reading the same Austen novels I've read, because in those books Austen's heroines are firmly and always true to themselves. They make mistakes, they act badly, but never do they compromise their own hopes, dreams, and beliefs. Elizabeth Bennet would shudder at the thought of being compared to a character like Isla because, unlike Isla, Elizabeth knows that believing in her own convictions, in staying true to her own character, is the most important thing a person can do. I think I need to go read Jane Eyre to purge myself of this book.
Settle in, friends, this is going to be a long one, and there will be spoilers.
I'm feeling it now, the part where I'm too old for this sort of thing. Oh, I remember what it was like to be a teenager. I was involved in a very tempestuous relationship at the time, and I felt all the things Isla feels here, but now I see it for what it was: melodramatic wangst. My reasons for disliking this book are numerous, but the never-ending, self-indulgent, relentless wangst of the whole book was by far the most painful part.
In this book, two privileged teenagers mope and fret and fall into a deep depression because they can't have what they want: each other. And why can't they have each other? Why, because of reasons, of course! Reasons, reasons, and more horribly contrived reasons. I'll break it down: none of it makes sense. They aren't together because the story demands that they feel all kinds of torment during a good stretch when, really, all they needed to do was talk to one another and straighten everything out. It could have been over in the matter of an hour, but then the book wouldn't have that long stretch of mopey misunderstanding, would it?
The thing is, I might have cared about all this moping had I cared about the characters, but I didn't. Not one bit. I absolutely adore the previous two novels in this series, which are admittedly just as melodramatic at times. But the characters in those books felt like real, three-dimensional characters with thoughts, feelings, and dreams. By contrast, Isla is THE most annoying female YA character since Bella Swan. She has no personality of her own, no dreams, no drive, no desire. As she dramatically tells us, she is a blank slate. You know what? Blank slates might be full of promise for artists, but for the rest of us they're just boring because they're blank. All we know about Isla by the end of the book is that she reads comics, like adventure novels, has two sisters, and is utterly obsessed with Josh--and, like Bella's, hers is not a healthy obsession. She cyberstalks the guy and moons over him for three years before they start dating. She tells him she's loved him for all those years. What? She doesn't even know him, so how can she possibly love him? What she has is an unhealthy fixation on him, which is made all the more evident by the downward spiral her life takes when he leaves after they've been dating for a grand total of one month. One month, and she's basically ready to chuck her entire life away, but I guess that's a symptom of her nauseating privilege too. She can afford to throw her life away because her parents have all kinds of money, so she'll be fine. Cry me a river. Can I read about a character with real problems now?
Josh is no better. He's an artist. He resents his parents, especially during his father's run for Senator, because they don't pay enough attention to him. Snore. In many ways, he's very similar to St. Clair, but the difference is that St. Clair felt like a real person while Josh felt like a cardboard representation of one. And don't even get me started on his giving Isla his manuscript to read. Huge spoiler alert here: there are panels of his naked ex-girlfriend in them, and panels of him having sex with said girlfriend. And he wonders why Isla is upset. Since she's also been sexually active in the past, I found her reaction a bit hypocritical, but she definitely shouldn't have been exposed to something like that. Who in their right mind would think showing their new girlfriend something like that would be a good idea? I get that it's his opus and all that, but doesn't it occur to him that maybe he ought not to show her graphic depictions of what he's done with his ex, especially since he knows she's crazy jealous of his ex? It's so messed up I don't even know where to begin with it. Then he has the audacity to be angry with her when she offers some constructive criticism? True, her timing sucks, but it should hardly have come as surprise to him that she wouldn't be head over heels for it.
Worse yet, their relationship is all kinds of unhealthy. The minute they start dating, neither of them cares about anything else anymore. They engage in all sorts of reckless behavior that results in his getting booted from their spoiled kid prep school, and they have the nerve to be angry with her sister and with Kurt. What? Sure, later in the book Isla comes to the realization that, guess what, she and Josh are responsible for what's happened, but I vehemently disliked her when her illicit trip to Spain with Josh was first discovered. Even when she has him, Isla can't do anything more than obsess about Josh. She combs the Internet looking for more detail on him, she stops caring about her grades, and she can't be bothered to figure out on her own where she should go to college. Again, these are horrible, privilege-soaked problems. She all but throws away her entire future for a boy she's dated for four whole weeks.
I hate that message. I hate that these books, in many ways, promote the idea that young love like this is the be all and end all. It's not healthy. I know it feels that way at the time--I really, really remember how viscerally I felt it when I was seventeen--but that doesn't make the way it's portrayed here right. Now that I think about it, in every book in this series, the couples end up building their whole future around one another. Instead of pursuing the things they want in the best places to pursue them, they make compromises. Yes, compromises are necessary in love, but NOT when it's your whole future you're talking about. And while it's sweet that St. Clair and Anna get engaged in a significant spot in Paris, they are NINETEEN. Nineteen. No. I'm tired of YA authors equating young love with destiny. I know this is hardly a new thing, but that makes it even worse. Shouldn't we be more enlightened by this point? Shouldn't we be emphasizing to young people that, while their relationships are important, so are their futures? Shouldn't we encourage them to explore, to set goals to try to get all they want out of life? Shouldn't we tell them that if the love is real, it will wait until those important goals are met? Instead, books like this gloss over the fact that permanently altering the course of your life for someone will have lifelong consequences and may lead to lifelong regrets.
I'm sure by now it's obvious how vehemently I dislike this book. I'm sorry that I read it. It's left a bad taste in my mouth for the entire series. I keep returning to a blurb from another YA author, Tahereh Mafi, who calls Perkins the "Jane Austen of our generation". Are you for serious? You must not be reading the same Austen novels I've read, because in those books Austen's heroines are firmly and always true to themselves. They make mistakes, they act badly, but never do they compromise their own hopes, dreams, and beliefs. Elizabeth Bennet would shudder at the thought of being compared to a character like Isla because, unlike Isla, Elizabeth knows that believing in her own convictions, in staying true to her own character, is the most important thing a person can do. I think I need to go read Jane Eyre to purge myself of this book.