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A review by pestowitch
Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins
1.0
It concerns me how many people are reviewing this saying it's like the oh so perfect love story. The relationship between Isla and Josh is so beyond ridiculous and harmful to each other! Josh essentially gives up on school, starts going on unsanctioned trips to other countries, and gets expelled during the course of their relationship. Isla lets her grades start falling, decides to entirely change her future plans to go to a different college to be with a boy she's been dating for A MONTH, and basically drops her childhood best friend.
This went from a creepily obsessive crush to intense, all consuming love within a matter of pages and didn't feel very romantic to me at all? This was not a healthy relationship. It didn't have the warmth of Anna and St Clair, it didn't have the backstory of Lola and Cricket. It just had privileged teenagers throwing tantrums and jetting across Europe with each other without telling their parents. Isla was insanely jealous and continually attacked Josh about his previous relationship with Rashmi, and said incredibly hurtful things to him about the graphic novel he wrote. Also, the descriptions of the graphic novel didn't work at all. It's graphic for a reason?
The only thing I liked about this book were the descriptions of Barcelona and the voice of reason from Isla's best friend, Kurt (who she doesn't listen to, and basically drops to hang out with Josh all the time).
Side note again: Just like the previous book, if the bit at the end about Anna and St Clair had been taken out, it wouldn't have made any difference to the story, so am annoyed this is marketed as "Anna and the French Kiss #3".
This went from a creepily obsessive crush to intense, all consuming love within a matter of pages and didn't feel very romantic to me at all? This was not a healthy relationship. It didn't have the warmth of Anna and St Clair, it didn't have the backstory of Lola and Cricket. It just had privileged teenagers throwing tantrums and jetting across Europe with each other without telling their parents. Isla was insanely jealous and continually attacked Josh about his previous relationship with Rashmi, and said incredibly hurtful things to him about the graphic novel he wrote. Also, the descriptions of the graphic novel didn't work at all. It's graphic for a reason?
The only thing I liked about this book were the descriptions of Barcelona and the voice of reason from Isla's best friend, Kurt (who she doesn't listen to, and basically drops to hang out with Josh all the time).
Side note again: Just like the previous book, if the bit at the end about Anna and St Clair had been taken out, it wouldn't have made any difference to the story, so am annoyed this is marketed as "Anna and the French Kiss #3".