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mishale1's review
emotional
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
I just watched Felicity for the first time, very recently. When I found out about this book, about this character, finding Felicity and loving it so much that she pretended it was her life I had to read it.
After Caroline’s father left, she moved to a new state with her mom. She did not make new friends. Her mom kept asking and stressing. Her mom felt bad about the move. One day it was too much for Caroline and she invented fake friends. She told her mom about her friend Felicity Porter, about Elena and Julie. She was only planning to hang onto these fictional friends until she made real friends. But Caroline never made real friends. So Caroline’s stories about her fictional friends continued until the day they exploded. When Caroline’s mother threw her an unexpected graduation party only one person shows up. Eventually the whole story came out.
Caroline’s mom is very worried. She feels like she can’t let Caroline go away to college now.
They make a deal. Caroline will see a therapist and if he agrees that it’s ok, Caroline will be allowed to go to the school that she picked.
Caroline is able to convince the therapist to let her go with a few requirements.
Caroline is planning to try to reinvent herself in school in order to make friends. Her mom will be visiting only weeks after she starts and if Caroline hasn’t made friends, she’s coming back home.
I definitely felt bad for Caroline throughout this story but I enjoyed the book. I liked her journey to self-acceptance. Caroline grew a lot in this story.
After Caroline’s father left, she moved to a new state with her mom. She did not make new friends. Her mom kept asking and stressing. Her mom felt bad about the move. One day it was too much for Caroline and she invented fake friends. She told her mom about her friend Felicity Porter, about Elena and Julie. She was only planning to hang onto these fictional friends until she made real friends. But Caroline never made real friends. So Caroline’s stories about her fictional friends continued until the day they exploded. When Caroline’s mother threw her an unexpected graduation party only one person shows up. Eventually the whole story came out.
Caroline’s mom is very worried. She feels like she can’t let Caroline go away to college now.
They make a deal. Caroline will see a therapist and if he agrees that it’s ok, Caroline will be allowed to go to the school that she picked.
Caroline is able to convince the therapist to let her go with a few requirements.
Caroline is planning to try to reinvent herself in school in order to make friends. Her mom will be visiting only weeks after she starts and if Caroline hasn’t made friends, she’s coming back home.
I definitely felt bad for Caroline throughout this story but I enjoyed the book. I liked her journey to self-acceptance. Caroline grew a lot in this story.
michelle_pink_polka_dot's review
5.0
It's YA in COLLEGE!!! Can we please rejoice and throw a party now??
Do you guys even know what this book is??? It's a Young Adult book set in college!!! I was ready to sing from the mountaintops at just the idea of it, and then I held it in my hands and felt the proof that it was real-- and now I'm basically still over here throwing confetti. But seriously, we need more books about going to college. It's such an untapped topic about such an important and confusing time in a lot of people's lives.
This book combines so many of my YES things that if you know me you'd be all-- Oh Michelle, this is so you!! I mean, you've got 90's Felicity, starting college (which has a running spot on my PLEASE AUTHORS WRITE THIS List), and Stacey Kade (who I am mildly obsessed with). You could say going into this, I had high expectations.
So, you've got Caroline who just doesn't fit in but desperately wants to. In order to cope with her dad leaving & exiting her life, moving across the country in the middle of her high school years, and the pressure she feels from her mom to succeed socially, she makes up a fake life with fake friends inspired by the TV show, Felicity. Felicity is her favorite binge-watch show, and even though it's almost 20 years old, Caroline relates to the awkwardness of Felicity and dreams of having her own Felicity experience once she goes to college.
As much as I loved reading about what Caroline was going through, I realized that she's not someone I relate to as a person. Yeah, she's shy, and second-guesses herself, and also kind of dislikes herself/wants to be somebody else-- and all that is completely me, but girl takes it to a whole new level of weirdness that I'm never going to be down with. She's just a tad too odd and embarrasses herself in that please-don't-make-me-look-directly-at-it way. In spite of that, I (and I think most people will) hard-core relate to the fact that she didn't know where her place was when it came to social situations. I think most of us have been put in scenarios where we don't feel comfortable and don't feel like we can be our true selves-- or wish we magically had different personalities. I adored (and cringed) reading about those struggles.
The best part for me was when Caroline and Liam "meet" (because yes Caroline pulls a Felicity and follows her "Ben" to college), and we get to see that Liam, who was Mr. Popular in high school, is also having a tough time figuring out where he belongs in the college landscape.
The only thing I wished was different was how the ending just sort of rushed up on me. Maybe this is my fault because I was so immersed in Caroline's drama, but I felt sort of surprised when I realized I was almost at the end. I think I just wanted to see more of her journey, but also I think it was smart for this book to stick to a very narrow view of the college experience.
Honestly, I could talk about this book all day. The "feel" of it captured the first days of college experience perfectly, and it made me super nostalgic for when I was the girl whose parents were helping her carry a TV and mini-fridge up to the 5th floor of Lawrence Hall. This is going to be one of those books I recommend to EVERYBODY.
PS-- You don't have to have watched Felicity to enjoy the book, but I would suggest at least reading over the Wikipedia plot outline for the first season.
OVERALL: Confetti and cake for everyone because we have a YA book set in COLLEGE!!!! Not only that but seriously-- it's SO good!!! It's about this super-awkward girl w/ a Felicity (the TV show) obsession who needs to find herself-- and where better than college??? Totally 100% recommend and wish that you would pass it along to everyone you know!!
My Blog:
Pink Polka Dot Books
Do you guys even know what this book is??? It's a Young Adult book set in college!!! I was ready to sing from the mountaintops at just the idea of it, and then I held it in my hands and felt the proof that it was real-- and now I'm basically still over here throwing confetti. But seriously, we need more books about going to college. It's such an untapped topic about such an important and confusing time in a lot of people's lives.
This book combines so many of my YES things that if you know me you'd be all-- Oh Michelle, this is so you!! I mean, you've got 90's Felicity, starting college (which has a running spot on my PLEASE AUTHORS WRITE THIS List), and Stacey Kade (who I am mildly obsessed with). You could say going into this, I had high expectations.
So, you've got Caroline who just doesn't fit in but desperately wants to. In order to cope with her dad leaving & exiting her life, moving across the country in the middle of her high school years, and the pressure she feels from her mom to succeed socially, she makes up a fake life with fake friends inspired by the TV show, Felicity. Felicity is her favorite binge-watch show, and even though it's almost 20 years old, Caroline relates to the awkwardness of Felicity and dreams of having her own Felicity experience once she goes to college.
As much as I loved reading about what Caroline was going through, I realized that she's not someone I relate to as a person. Yeah, she's shy, and second-guesses herself, and also kind of dislikes herself/wants to be somebody else-- and all that is completely me, but girl takes it to a whole new level of weirdness that I'm never going to be down with. She's just a tad too odd and embarrasses herself in that please-don't-make-me-look-directly-at-it way. In spite of that, I (and I think most people will) hard-core relate to the fact that she didn't know where her place was when it came to social situations. I think most of us have been put in scenarios where we don't feel comfortable and don't feel like we can be our true selves-- or wish we magically had different personalities. I adored (and cringed) reading about those struggles.
The best part for me was when Caroline and Liam "meet" (because yes Caroline pulls a Felicity and follows her "Ben" to college), and we get to see that Liam, who was Mr. Popular in high school, is also having a tough time figuring out where he belongs in the college landscape.
The only thing I wished was different was how the ending just sort of rushed up on me. Maybe this is my fault because I was so immersed in Caroline's drama, but I felt sort of surprised when I realized I was almost at the end. I think I just wanted to see more of her journey, but also I think it was smart for this book to stick to a very narrow view of the college experience.
Honestly, I could talk about this book all day. The "feel" of it captured the first days of college experience perfectly, and it made me super nostalgic for when I was the girl whose parents were helping her carry a TV and mini-fridge up to the 5th floor of Lawrence Hall. This is going to be one of those books I recommend to EVERYBODY.
PS-- You don't have to have watched Felicity to enjoy the book, but I would suggest at least reading over the Wikipedia plot outline for the first season.
OVERALL: Confetti and cake for everyone because we have a YA book set in COLLEGE!!!! Not only that but seriously-- it's SO good!!! It's about this super-awkward girl w/ a Felicity (the TV show) obsession who needs to find herself-- and where better than college??? Totally 100% recommend and wish that you would pass it along to everyone you know!!
My Blog:
Pink Polka Dot Books
herlifewithbooks's review against another edition
Usually I am annoyed by contemporary YA filled with too many 90s-00s pop culture references, but not so with this one! This may be because the television show in question was so central to the plot that Kade actually had to make her MC's fixation believable; most books use a character's "retro" media interests to add "quirky" characterization that to me just reads "lazy." Or maybe we've just turned some sort of streaming-media corner where I suddenly find a teen binge-watching old WB shows on Netflix to be quite plausible.
It's possible I'm being more forgiving because I found this narrator's innocent awkwardness rather endearing. This is a book set in college, but Caroline's just so YA...
It's possible I'm being more forgiving because I found this narrator's innocent awkwardness rather endearing. This is a book set in college, but Caroline's just so YA...
caitiep92's review
emotional
funny
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
meghin's review
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I loved this? I went into it expecting it to be perfectly fine but nothing special and what I got was a complete surprise. I wish this book had been written in 2008 because I too believed I could go to college and become an entirely new person and all my problems would vanish into the night! I think most of us thought that!
My biggest problem with Felicity the TV show was always the initial premise of a girl giving up her entire planned future to follow a hot guy she's barely even ever spoken to to college which... you know... is a thing that happens in this book... but it's much more realistic here because this book is grounded in reality and thrives on the fact that life is not a 90s WB drama.
This book was an absolute delight and probably the best/most relatable (to who I was at 18 at least) college based YA I've read. I could almost smell the weird dorm smell. I got a war flashback to drunkely making French toast at 3am and how my floormates and I would always gather to watch our weekly shows.
My biggest problem with Felicity the TV show was always the initial premise of a girl giving up her entire planned future to follow a hot guy she's barely even ever spoken to to college which... you know... is a thing that happens in this book... but it's much more realistic here because this book is grounded in reality and thrives on the fact that life is not a 90s WB drama.
This book was an absolute delight and probably the best/most relatable (to who I was at 18 at least) college based YA I've read. I could almost smell the weird dorm smell. I got a war flashback to drunkely making French toast at 3am and how my floormates and I would always gather to watch our weekly shows.
bookmarklit's review against another edition
3.0
3.5 stars. Unexpectedly blazed through that in a day! While it was incredibly addicting from the start, I questioned Caroline quite a bit and was nervous I was going to dislike this. I started watching Felicity to prepare for the book, which was necessary I think to fully understand what she was talking about. I felt like Caroline and Felicity brought up similar, annoyed emotions for me. Both of them are/were incredibly insufferable at times. This book absolutely grew on me when time went on and Caroline started to work on herself. I continued to roll my eyes from time to time but I appreciated the ending very much.
alexryder's review against another edition
3.0
This book really remembered me of Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, however it is not as well developed.
I really liked Caroline but I wished her story and the support characters were better developed.
I really liked Caroline but I wished her story and the support characters were better developed.
vickycbooks's review against another edition
5.0
4.5 stars
Finding Felicity revolves around Caroline Sands who, after her parents' divorce and her move to Arizona, isn't particularly good at making friends. Being the new girl was hard enough and her social awkwardness didn't help her case. Out of desperation, Caroline invented a whole life for herself with characters from the old show Felicity to assure her mother that she was okay.
But Caroline's secret gets exposed right before she goes off to college and she's left with an ultimatum: Prove in first semester that she can make friends (of the nonfictional variety) and thrive in a new environment or else she's to come back to living at home and therapy.
Caroline accepts the challenge, hoping college will let Caroline leave her old "life" behind and build something real. But she'll realize that the real world isn't as simple as her Felicity-inspired plan made it out to be.
I had such an awesome time reading this book. I have been searching for something like it for years now and I'm so glad that this book is getting published because it's just so important and something I think a lot of teens really need.
There's tons of YA out there talking about the high school experience and making friends and all sorts of things like that. But college YA is severely lacking and a lot of teens end up heading into that territory unprepared.
The only books that are very college-focused on the experience that I've read are Fangirl and Freshmen, and while Nice Try, Jane Sinner and American Panda and The Big F have a college setting, the focus does lie in other places besides the college experience.
So being able to add Finding Felicity onto the lists makes me so happy. This is something I related a lot to and I know a lot of other teens will be able to also relate to.
It's basically every teen's fears of college--whether than can make friends, are they wearing the right thing, what activities should you join, do you have to go to this frat party--jammed together into one book.
It was amazing.
Caroline's journey is just something so relatable and it's those high school fears that are put into one book. And I know for some people (you very fortunate people) her fears might seem super extreme, but for many others, they're legitimate worries.
Caroline does take it much farther than a lot of people--making up fictional friends--but the things she learns on the way really help shape the narrative. I found her to be wholly relatable and a very good representation of the anxious high school senior soon to be college student.
What I really loved was the timing of this novel. Kade could have told this story in a high school setting--writing about Caroline as she tries to keep the secret of her fictional friends--but she didn't and I think this made it to be a much more impactful novel.
I also loved how present the side characters are and how real they were. They didn't end up being just two dimensional clichés--the bad girl roommate, the party girl, etc.--but they had their nuances and backstories that helped really make them dynamic characters as well.
I sped through this novel in what felt like was only an hour. In twenty minutes, I seemed to have flipped through 75 pages. I thought it was paced really well and even though the plot is mostly character based, it had a very good balance of things that were happening in the real world and introspection.
I do think that some readers who can't relate to this as much as I could would definitely be less inclined towards this novel, but I think that it's a really great book. My only criticism would be that I kind of wished it was longer, which is something that I don't say often, but I wished there were more trials for Caroline to go through to give an even wider view of the college experience.
I feel like if this is a novel that seems like something you could relate to, you should definitely check it out. Finding Felicity should become a staple for all high school students as its message is a very good one that helps effectively emphasize that your hopes of a "new you" in college might not be the most stable idea. You can't just reinvent yourself in that way.
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Finding Felicity revolves around Caroline Sands who, after her parents' divorce and her move to Arizona, isn't particularly good at making friends. Being the new girl was hard enough and her social awkwardness didn't help her case. Out of desperation, Caroline invented a whole life for herself with characters from the old show Felicity to assure her mother that she was okay.
But Caroline's secret gets exposed right before she goes off to college and she's left with an ultimatum: Prove in first semester that she can make friends (of the nonfictional variety) and thrive in a new environment or else she's to come back to living at home and therapy.
Caroline accepts the challenge, hoping college will let Caroline leave her old "life" behind and build something real. But she'll realize that the real world isn't as simple as her Felicity-inspired plan made it out to be.
I had such an awesome time reading this book. I have been searching for something like it for years now and I'm so glad that this book is getting published because it's just so important and something I think a lot of teens really need.
There's tons of YA out there talking about the high school experience and making friends and all sorts of things like that. But college YA is severely lacking and a lot of teens end up heading into that territory unprepared.
The only books that are very college-focused on the experience that I've read are Fangirl and Freshmen, and while Nice Try, Jane Sinner and American Panda and The Big F have a college setting, the focus does lie in other places besides the college experience.
So being able to add Finding Felicity onto the lists makes me so happy. This is something I related a lot to and I know a lot of other teens will be able to also relate to.
It's basically every teen's fears of college--whether than can make friends, are they wearing the right thing, what activities should you join, do you have to go to this frat party--jammed together into one book.
It was amazing.
Caroline's journey is just something so relatable and it's those high school fears that are put into one book. And I know for some people (you very fortunate people) her fears might seem super extreme, but for many others, they're legitimate worries.
Caroline does take it much farther than a lot of people--making up fictional friends--but the things she learns on the way really help shape the narrative. I found her to be wholly relatable and a very good representation of the anxious high school senior soon to be college student.
What I really loved was the timing of this novel. Kade could have told this story in a high school setting--writing about Caroline as she tries to keep the secret of her fictional friends--but she didn't and I think this made it to be a much more impactful novel.
I also loved how present the side characters are and how real they were. They didn't end up being just two dimensional clichés--the bad girl roommate, the party girl, etc.--but they had their nuances and backstories that helped really make them dynamic characters as well.
I sped through this novel in what felt like was only an hour. In twenty minutes, I seemed to have flipped through 75 pages. I thought it was paced really well and even though the plot is mostly character based, it had a very good balance of things that were happening in the real world and introspection.
I do think that some readers who can't relate to this as much as I could would definitely be less inclined towards this novel, but I think that it's a really great book. My only criticism would be that I kind of wished it was longer, which is something that I don't say often, but I wished there were more trials for Caroline to go through to give an even wider view of the college experience.
I feel like if this is a novel that seems like something you could relate to, you should definitely check it out. Finding Felicity should become a staple for all high school students as its message is a very good one that helps effectively emphasize that your hopes of a "new you" in college might not be the most stable idea. You can't just reinvent yourself in that way.
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tjlcody's review against another edition
2.0
Let me sum this up for you:
Caroline's greatest sin in this book is A) lying about being friends with fictional characters to save face, and B) lying about her reason for wanting to go to Ashmore (shock shock, it's a boy).
And yet everyone, including her mother and therapist, treats her like she's told an INSANELY SERIOUS LIE THAT COULD SIGNAL A TOTAL PSYCHOLOGICAL BREAKDOWN HOLY SHIT. Caroline was treated like one of those hardcore drug addicts that steal from grandma and sell their bodies for money as far as trust goes, and it was utterly ridiculous.
I mean, are you seriously telling me we need to pull a girl from school because she chose that school because a boy she liked was going there? Do you seriously think Caroline is the FIRST GIRL EVER to let a romantic interest influence her choice of college? Holy shit.
(Also, because I've finally hit my limit: From this point on, any book I read that shoves even ONE hamfisted "Fuck da Patriarchy!" reference in a book, especially YA, it immediately loses a star. I cannot even begin to make you understand how common this has become, and it's a virtue-signaling tool for the author. I hate it, and I've hit my limit with it.)
Caroline's greatest sin in this book is A) lying about being friends with fictional characters to save face, and B) lying about her reason for wanting to go to Ashmore (shock shock, it's a boy).
And yet everyone, including her mother and therapist, treats her like she's told an INSANELY SERIOUS LIE THAT COULD SIGNAL A TOTAL PSYCHOLOGICAL BREAKDOWN HOLY SHIT. Caroline was treated like one of those hardcore drug addicts that steal from grandma and sell their bodies for money as far as trust goes, and it was utterly ridiculous.
I mean, are you seriously telling me we need to pull a girl from school because she chose that school because a boy she liked was going there? Do you seriously think Caroline is the FIRST GIRL EVER to let a romantic interest influence her choice of college? Holy shit.
(Also, because I've finally hit my limit: From this point on, any book I read that shoves even ONE hamfisted "Fuck da Patriarchy!" reference in a book, especially YA, it immediately loses a star. I cannot even begin to make you understand how common this has become, and it's a virtue-signaling tool for the author. I hate it, and I've hit my limit with it.)