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3.63 AVERAGE
3.63 AVERAGE
medium-paced
i think this is 2½ stars?? but thank goodness for whoever at netflix saw the potential in this book and made a tv show because the show is so much better
like this was just so weird in a way that i can't really describe? but i did love the part with the dog-walking and then the getting arrested and being stuck in the interrogation room together and i LOVED the part where lily realised that actually not everyone hates her and gets to have some nice female friends 🫶 and the part where they get trapped in the strand on nye is a bit more fun that it is in the show i think :)
like this was just so weird in a way that i can't really describe? but i did love the part with the dog-walking and then the getting arrested and being stuck in the interrogation room together and i LOVED the part where lily realised that actually not everyone hates her and gets to have some nice female friends 🫶 and the part where they get trapped in the strand on nye is a bit more fun that it is in the show i think :)
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Read this book because I love the show. Now realizing how different they are I can have the enjoyment of them both. Somethings were pretty outdated/didn't age well but overall was a fun read to expiernce the characters that inspired the show. And happy they did make the changes in the show they did
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal death, Homophobia, Sexual content
Such a cute and cozy christmas read! Loved the plot but the only thing missing is that I couldn’t really get that much of a connection with the main characters as I’d liked it. Still amazing for my christmas countdown reads though♥️
3.5 stars. This book is thoughtful (Dash), adorable (Lily), and a touch magical (the red notebook). My two lasting impressions? First, I want to go to The Strand and maybe love there. Second, Lily is 90% Brat with a capital “B”.
It's Christmas time and Christmas time calls for a Christmas book, so Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan was the perfect reading. Dash finds a notebook from Lily in Strand Bookstore and over the Christmas break they exchange the notebook back and forth across the city quickly falling for each other while at the same time wondering if keeping their relationship to the notebook only would be best. When I turned the last page, my overall feeling toward the book is delight. I liked these kids, their love story is quite sweet, and it had some really thoughtful moments. That being said, it was also, a little over the top at times, a little cheesy, and a little full of itself teetering on glib. I still liked it and wish the second book had better reviews because I'd like to spend a few more minutes with these two.
The first time I read this book I was probably 16 years old and I loved it. Rereading it again at 22 I did not love it. Clearly I didn't remember a lot of it or I just didn't have a problem with the things that bothered me when I read it this time. I enjoyed some parts but other parts annoyed me. Dash was super annoying and pretentious. He thought he was better than people because he knew all these big and obscure words and didn't love Christmas and all the traditions and shopping and material things that go with it. The way he talked made me want to roll my eyes constantly, like who even talks like that in real life. Lily was a lot better. She wasn't perfect but she was quirky and sweet. She had her moments where she annoyed me but it wasn't as often as Dash. Other than that it was a cute, quick, Christmas-y book but I will probably never read it again. I probably won't read the sequel either because I can't deal with Dash anymore. I'm kind of disappointed because it didn't live up to what I had remembered.
This really grinch-ified my only Christmas themed read. BUT it was a cute read.
I didn’t really have high expectations for this book, but I have to be honest, it didn’t live up to those either. I don’t think I liked the writing style (like I immediately didn’t like it, but it did get a little better, but can we chill with the overuse of elaborate vocab even if the male main character’s greatest wish is to own a unabridged dictionary). A lot of the pop culture references fell short and let me tell you… there were a lot. It just took away from the story in making you think of all these other references. I mean I know it was published almost a decade and a half ago, but besides this odd Hermione character, none of the references were even nostalgic.
It reminded me of Nicola Yoon’s “The Sun Is Also a Star” and Tahereh Mafi’s “A Very Large Expanse of Sea” with the whole running around New York vibe and I have to say, I don’t think I really like that setting. I know Mafi’s example might be far reaching and doesn’t necessarily fit with that, but it still had a lot to do with New York given it is set one year after 9/11. Maybe I like my American city settings as a “background event” and not so glorified in the book.
I like a weird girl/eccentric guy romance, but I just didn’t connect with these characters at all. It always felt like they were lacking something and that you didn’t really know them at all. Especially Lily and her whole self pity act of having to spend Christmas “alone”. She felt exactly what your first thoughts would be if you were told a childless middle aged man wrote a teenage girl character (this is not a dig at the author, purely factual). And can we talk about the fact that there’s this underlying vibe that the two main characters are depressed because they haven’t found their person yet in life. They. Are. In. High. School. I appreciate Levithan’s hopeful and tragic view on YA love that comes through in his books (this is my first Rachel Cohn, so I can’t comment there), but I just don’t find it relatable or real, now in my life or 10 years ago.
Anyway, I think the coolest thing about this book was that I started it ten minutes into the day that the book starts on. I did like the whole book scavenger hunt in the first chapter though and things did pick up a little past the halfway point. All in all, for me at least, I needed a different setting, better characters, and more focus on storytelling and less on pop culture.
I didn’t really have high expectations for this book, but I have to be honest, it didn’t live up to those either. I don’t think I liked the writing style (like I immediately didn’t like it, but it did get a little better, but can we chill with the overuse of elaborate vocab even if the male main character’s greatest wish is to own a unabridged dictionary). A lot of the pop culture references fell short and let me tell you… there were a lot. It just took away from the story in making you think of all these other references. I mean I know it was published almost a decade and a half ago, but besides this odd Hermione character, none of the references were even nostalgic.
It reminded me of Nicola Yoon’s “The Sun Is Also a Star” and Tahereh Mafi’s “A Very Large Expanse of Sea” with the whole running around New York vibe and I have to say, I don’t think I really like that setting. I know Mafi’s example might be far reaching and doesn’t necessarily fit with that, but it still had a lot to do with New York given it is set one year after 9/11. Maybe I like my American city settings as a “background event” and not so glorified in the book.
I like a weird girl/eccentric guy romance, but I just didn’t connect with these characters at all. It always felt like they were lacking something and that you didn’t really know them at all. Especially Lily and her whole self pity act of having to spend Christmas “alone”. She felt exactly what your first thoughts would be if you were told a childless middle aged man wrote a teenage girl character (this is not a dig at the author, purely factual). And can we talk about the fact that there’s this underlying vibe that the two main characters are depressed because they haven’t found their person yet in life. They. Are. In. High. School. I appreciate Levithan’s hopeful and tragic view on YA love that comes through in his books (this is my first Rachel Cohn, so I can’t comment there), but I just don’t find it relatable or real, now in my life or 10 years ago.
Anyway, I think the coolest thing about this book was that I started it ten minutes into the day that the book starts on. I did like the whole book scavenger hunt in the first chapter though and things did pick up a little past the halfway point. All in all, for me at least, I needed a different setting, better characters, and more focus on storytelling and less on pop culture.
Started reading as I want to watch the netflix version but just wasnt feeling it. It felt too Y of YA fiction.
An captivating book which told a fascinating story that I enjoyed a lot.