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jessdemarest 's review for:
Why We Broke Up
by Daniel Handler, Maira Kalman
This book gets one measly star because I maintain that the premise--a story in the form of a letter accompanied by illustrations--could have been cool. If only everything else didn't piss me off so much.
Frankly, this is full of gross and annoying YA tropes. Like the "arty" main character who can't stop talking in old film metaphors and ends up in a relationship with the star basketball player because he thinks she's "not like other girls." The language was also just way too flowery for me. And given that I'm both a writer and a hopeless romantic myself, that's saying something, because normally I'd probably appreciate the lovely phrases and sentences scattered throughout a novel. But that's the thing. They're not scattered. They're heaped on one after the other until you're drowning in them and even the most hopeless of romantics wants to puke at the sentimentality of it all.
And let's not forget the running joke of using "gay" as an insult and tossing around the word "fag." I get it; it fits his asshole character. What I can't support, however, is the fact that it becomes this thread that I think is supposed to be a "funny" and somehow "cute" characteristic that no one seems to view as even slightly problematic. Even Min, who tells Ed he needs to stop using that word, doesn't do so because she finds it inappropriate, but rather because she feels it's insulting to her friend. So yeah, I get it--it fits his character. But there's no growth or journey and it wasn't handled in a way that really merited its presence in the novel at all.
Frankly, this is full of gross and annoying YA tropes. Like the "arty" main character who can't stop talking in old film metaphors and ends up in a relationship with the star basketball player because he thinks she's "not like other girls." The language was also just way too flowery for me. And given that I'm both a writer and a hopeless romantic myself, that's saying something, because normally I'd probably appreciate the lovely phrases and sentences scattered throughout a novel. But that's the thing. They're not scattered. They're heaped on one after the other until you're drowning in them and even the most hopeless of romantics wants to puke at the sentimentality of it all.
And let's not forget the running joke of using "gay" as an insult and tossing around the word "fag." I get it; it fits his asshole character. What I can't support, however, is the fact that it becomes this thread that I think is supposed to be a "funny" and somehow "cute" characteristic that no one seems to view as even slightly problematic. Even Min, who tells Ed he needs to stop using that word, doesn't do so because she finds it inappropriate, but rather because she feels it's insulting to her friend. So yeah, I get it--it fits his character. But there's no growth or journey and it wasn't handled in a way that really merited its presence in the novel at all.