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2.5 AVERAGE
2.5 AVERAGE
I was so very excited to read this book because it was compared to the likeness of Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles! But it wasn’t.
I had a hard time feeling anything toward the main character Leah. She is a girl that has everything that she could ever want and more. Sure her parents have expectations for her, I feel so bad that her parents loved her enough to want the best for her. In case that didn’t come across as sarcastic, it was meant to be. Leah’s parents weren’t perfect but I didn’t feel like that was enough to justify her actions. Her boyfriend, while he wasn’t perfect, didn’t deserve to be lied to and cheated on. Had Leah grew as a character and redemmed in herself by the end of the novel, I would have felt totally different about her, but she just didn’t have any character growth.
Her love interest Duffy, who is he? We didn’t really learn much about him. Their relationship had no substance.
The premise of the novel could have been a wonderful one, unfortunately the whole thing just fell flat for me.
I had a hard time feeling anything toward the main character Leah. She is a girl that has everything that she could ever want and more. Sure her parents have expectations for her, I feel so bad that her parents loved her enough to want the best for her. In case that didn’t come across as sarcastic, it was meant to be. Leah’s parents weren’t perfect but I didn’t feel like that was enough to justify her actions. Her boyfriend, while he wasn’t perfect, didn’t deserve to be lied to and cheated on. Had Leah grew as a character and redemmed in herself by the end of the novel, I would have felt totally different about her, but she just didn’t have any character growth.
Her love interest Duffy, who is he? We didn’t really learn much about him. Their relationship had no substance.
The premise of the novel could have been a wonderful one, unfortunately the whole thing just fell flat for me.
This book was such a disappointment. Cold, shallow characters and sparse conversations made for a very blasé read. The main character's family - especially the mother, single-handedly made me want to quit reading altogether. My anticipation for this book was through the roof and I'm annoyed that it didn't even come close.
Leah Johnson has everything going for her; wealth, looks, intelligence, perfect boyfriend - she doesn't have to work hard to achieve anything she wants. But dissatisfaction and boredom bubbles near the surface as she slowly realizes that her life is not even close to the life she wanted but is nothing but copycats of her sisters'. It would take doses of a boy on the other side of the tracks and an over-achieving nemesis for her to rip the blue print of a life drawn by her over-bearing mother.
Pretentious characters. Check.
Whiny, why-doesn't-he-like-me girl. Check.
Unrepentant, cheating girl. Check.
Misleading cover. Check.
Kiss, Crush, Collide has the perfect recipe for a rant review. But I couldn't, for the life of me, bring myself to do it. This book managed to keep my interest from page one to the last, albeit I was impassive for the most part. And considering how much I wanted to gouge my eyes with a dull knife every time any of the Johnsons was in the scene, I say, this was quite a feat. There is much to be said about an author's ability for keeping a reader's attention in their book regardless of the reason. For me, it was because I wanted to find out if Leah could redeem herself in the end. I wanted to know if she was going to let her mother roughshod her way until all that would become of her was a shadow of her sisters. I also wanted to know if my wish for her mother's bloody and gory demise would come into fruition but because life doesn't work out that way, one of these three wishes didn't come true. Read this book to find out.
Anyway, the characters were one dimensional. But somehow, it worked in this book. After all, if you're trying to paint the most insipid, ostentatious group of people, this was the way to do it. What got to me was Leah's inability to finally get rid of the grabby boyfriend when she clearly hated being with him. This guy salivated over her sister, Fred and yet Leah was so nonchalant about it all. Minor details. I fully expected a steamy romance. Sad to say, it wasn't even close to lukewarm.
Lesson Learned: Take your anticipation down a notch. Life is too short for disappointments. Incidentally, this wasn't the lesson in the book but just life in general. :D
Leah Johnson has everything going for her; wealth, looks, intelligence, perfect boyfriend - she doesn't have to work hard to achieve anything she wants. But dissatisfaction and boredom bubbles near the surface as she slowly realizes that her life is not even close to the life she wanted but is nothing but copycats of her sisters'. It would take doses of a boy on the other side of the tracks and an over-achieving nemesis for her to rip the blue print of a life drawn by her over-bearing mother.
Pretentious characters. Check.
Whiny, why-doesn't-he-like-me girl. Check.
Unrepentant, cheating girl. Check.
Misleading cover. Check.
Kiss, Crush, Collide has the perfect recipe for a rant review. But I couldn't, for the life of me, bring myself to do it. This book managed to keep my interest from page one to the last, albeit I was impassive for the most part. And considering how much I wanted to gouge my eyes with a dull knife every time any of the Johnsons was in the scene, I say, this was quite a feat. There is much to be said about an author's ability for keeping a reader's attention in their book regardless of the reason. For me, it was because I wanted to find out if Leah could redeem herself in the end. I wanted to know if she was going to let her mother roughshod her way until all that would become of her was a shadow of her sisters. I also wanted to know if my wish for her mother's bloody and gory demise would come into fruition but because life doesn't work out that way, one of these three wishes didn't come true. Read this book to find out.
Anyway, the characters were one dimensional. But somehow, it worked in this book. After all, if you're trying to paint the most insipid, ostentatious group of people, this was the way to do it. What got to me was Leah's inability to finally get rid of the grabby boyfriend when she clearly hated being with him. This guy salivated over her sister, Fred and yet Leah was so nonchalant about it all. Minor details. I fully expected a steamy romance. Sad to say, it wasn't even close to lukewarm.
Lesson Learned: Take your anticipation down a notch. Life is too short for disappointments. Incidentally, this wasn't the lesson in the book but just life in general. :D
I wanted to love this. I really did. That cover!
I actually tracked down the photographer who took that photo and he has a few other photos he took of them (but they aren't YA friendly...so only hunt it down at your own discretion) but...I love that cover.
And there were so many cute moments in the book that, if that was ALL the book was, I would have loved it. The banter with Leah and Porter and I could have read a whole book about a chance meeting between them where they drove around all night, confessed secrets, got to know each other and joked around. Porter had a way to see inside Leah and there was a great connection between them.
BUT, that's not what the book was. The story veers left and right. It jumps back in time and goes over memories of childhood, memories of first meeting people and moments with parents and just - bleh! Nothing I enjoyed as much as the cute connection between my two Main characters....
so it ended up being something I didn't love......
I actually tracked down the photographer who took that photo and he has a few other photos he took of them (but they aren't YA friendly...so only hunt it down at your own discretion) but...I love that cover.
And there were so many cute moments in the book that, if that was ALL the book was, I would have loved it. The banter with Leah and Porter and I could have read a whole book about a chance meeting between them where they drove around all night, confessed secrets, got to know each other and joked around. Porter had a way to see inside Leah and there was a great connection between them.
BUT, that's not what the book was. The story veers left and right. It jumps back in time and goes over memories of childhood, memories of first meeting people and moments with parents and just - bleh! Nothing I enjoyed as much as the cute connection between my two Main characters....
so it ended up being something I didn't love......
¿Os ahorro la lectura si os digo que este libro no tiene ningún sentido? De nada.
¿Os ahorro la lectura si os digo que este libro no tiene ningún sentido? De nada.
I thought this book will be something similar to Perfect Chemistry..but oh boy was I wrong...
I just coudn't fall in the story...when I thought..hm..things are getting interesting...blah..next scene...
And the end...no sparks...
I just coudn't fall in the story...when I thought..hm..things are getting interesting...blah..next scene...
And the end...no sparks...
I really hesitate to state that I didn't enjoy a novel, especially since this is Christina Meredith's first novel and I really don't want to discourage her. Her writing style isn't bad, but I disliked this book for specific reasons that have to do with character development. The main character and narrator is Leah Johnson, the youngest of the three gorgeous, wealthy, high-achieving Johnson sisters. Meredith does not make her narrator an easy one to sympathize with. Other authors have made the supermodel-like blonde teen their heroines, including L.J. Smith in the Vampire Diaries series - but while everyone in Smith's series universally loves Elena Gilbert, Leah Johnson is universally hated by her (jealous) classmates. Yet she's far from a sympathetic underdog. The biggest problem in Leah's privileged life is the pressure she feels to conform to the expectations of her shallow, self-centered mother. This is the primary motivator of the action in the novel. Yet, even as she complains about her somewhat overbearing older sisters being clones of her mother, Leah's actions toward others show her to be every bit as shallow and self-centered as the mother she supposedly opposes. The pivotal moment of conflict in the novel calls for Leah to go against her mother's wishes. Once Leah decides to do that, she becomes a tiny bit more sympathetic to her rival, Valerie, but there's no sense that either Leah or her mother are changed in any significant way by Leah's decision.
Leah reveals in the early pages of the novel that she suddenly finds herself unable to do math, something she's been good at up until her junior year of high school. She knows how to drive and owns a car, but has no confidence in her abilities to drive, so she chooses not to. These are but two examples of how Leah is presently as a helpless, childlike young woman - a stereotype young women have worked long and hard to overcome.
The character of Valerie is also problematic to feminist readers. Valerie is competing with Leah to be the class valedictorian. Her focus is on reading and schoolwork rather than fashion, and up until the very end of the book when Valerie proves to be useful to Leah, Leah reviles her for being smart. As a reader, I like to root for the smart girl. I felt really bad for Valerie, and also for the woman who appears at the pool in one chapter whom Leah mocks for looking too athletic. These are more examples of female stereotyping, and of how much Leah has internalized her mother's shallow viewpoint (which the plot supposedly turns on Leah opposing). It feels like Meredith bet on the wrong horse - a book from Valerie's point of view would have been much more interesting.
The other thing I disliked about this novel is that the plot is also shallow. Not much happens. Leah's life is so perfect, her problems all seem trivial. Since not much is ever at stake for her, there's no sense of urgency to her narrative. It simply meanders along, going through the motions as Leah does when she's helping her oldest sister plan her wedding. I really enjoy the romance genre, so I wanted something grand and dramatic to happen in the Leah-Shane-Duffy love triangle. It never does. Duffy exits briefly, Leah claims to be devastated (not very convincingly), but then Duffy comes back and all is well again. With a few more rewrites, this novel could be something. As it stands, it relies too heavily on stereotypes of girls and not nearly enough on real, recognizable human emotions.
Leah reveals in the early pages of the novel that she suddenly finds herself unable to do math, something she's been good at up until her junior year of high school. She knows how to drive and owns a car, but has no confidence in her abilities to drive, so she chooses not to. These are but two examples of how Leah is presently as a helpless, childlike young woman - a stereotype young women have worked long and hard to overcome.
The character of Valerie is also problematic to feminist readers. Valerie is competing with Leah to be the class valedictorian. Her focus is on reading and schoolwork rather than fashion, and up until the very end of the book when Valerie proves to be useful to Leah, Leah reviles her for being smart. As a reader, I like to root for the smart girl. I felt really bad for Valerie, and also for the woman who appears at the pool in one chapter whom Leah mocks for looking too athletic. These are more examples of female stereotyping, and of how much Leah has internalized her mother's shallow viewpoint (which the plot supposedly turns on Leah opposing). It feels like Meredith bet on the wrong horse - a book from Valerie's point of view would have been much more interesting.
The other thing I disliked about this novel is that the plot is also shallow. Not much happens. Leah's life is so perfect, her problems all seem trivial. Since not much is ever at stake for her, there's no sense of urgency to her narrative. It simply meanders along, going through the motions as Leah does when she's helping her oldest sister plan her wedding. I really enjoy the romance genre, so I wanted something grand and dramatic to happen in the Leah-Shane-Duffy love triangle. It never does. Duffy exits briefly, Leah claims to be devastated (not very convincingly), but then Duffy comes back and all is well again. With a few more rewrites, this novel could be something. As it stands, it relies too heavily on stereotypes of girls and not nearly enough on real, recognizable human emotions.
Le doy un 2 porque soy demasiado buena. No soy capaz de entender cuál era el propósito de este libro. Esta historia contada a la velocidad de la luz y sin ahondar realmente en nada. Me he quedado igual o incluso peor de no haberlo leído. No lo entiendo.
I thought this started off alright but then it fizzled out for me. The story felt unfinished, especially the plot line between Leah and Porter which was really disappointing considering the cover and the jacket summary lead you to believe it's "their" story. It's really just Leah's. About the cover...the guy has a tattoo on his arm which Porter doesn't or if he does, no mention is made of it in the story. That kind of attention to detail or lack thereof, bothers me. *frowny face*