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A review by ellenmrozek
The Catastrophic History of You and Me by Jess Rothenberg
5.0
I added this book to my TBR pile so long ago that the only reason I remember what it's about is because I've been looking for it in a multitude of libraries for about that long. I didn't think the premise was particularly unique when I started--it reminded me of "Elsewhere" by Gabrielle Zevin quite a bit--but I was interested enough in the characters to push on.
Brie's voice was what kept me reading as long as I did. She's both your typical teenage girl and she's not. Whatever her special spark was, it was something I don't find in a lot of contemporary heroines, and it made me keep going even when I was thinking 'this is cliched' or 'I've seen this before.'
My only real problem with Brie was that she suffered from naive narrator syndrome occasionally. In the case of a few characters--Larkin and Patrick, for example--I was wondering how she could be missing what was so obvious to the reader. Or at least, this reader.
I hit my angry wall mid story, and put the book down for a few hours only to pick it up again the next day because I had to know how it ended. This wasn't a happy story, and there were certainly times when things seemed so hopeless I wasn't sure how they'd ever get resolved.
That being said, this is also the first book I've read in ages to make me cry. The ending left me a bit confused, I won't lie, but the emotion was so real that it broke pieces of my heart a little bit.
I never thought I would end up recommending this, but I am. Even if it's not your type of book, give it a shot and keep pushing on. I doubt you'll be disappointed. I certainly wasn't.
Brie's voice was what kept me reading as long as I did. She's both your typical teenage girl and she's not. Whatever her special spark was, it was something I don't find in a lot of contemporary heroines, and it made me keep going even when I was thinking 'this is cliched' or 'I've seen this before.'
My only real problem with Brie was that she suffered from naive narrator syndrome occasionally. In the case of a few characters--Larkin and Patrick, for example--I was wondering how she could be missing what was so obvious to the reader. Or at least, this reader.
I hit my angry wall mid story, and put the book down for a few hours only to pick it up again the next day because I had to know how it ended. This wasn't a happy story, and there were certainly times when things seemed so hopeless I wasn't sure how they'd ever get resolved.
That being said, this is also the first book I've read in ages to make me cry. The ending left me a bit confused, I won't lie, but the emotion was so real that it broke pieces of my heart a little bit.
I never thought I would end up recommending this, but I am. Even if it's not your type of book, give it a shot and keep pushing on. I doubt you'll be disappointed. I certainly wasn't.