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A review by bookph1le
Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins
1.0
*Sighs. Hitches up ranty pants.*
Settle in, friends, this is going to be a long one, and there will be spoilers.
I'm feeling it now, the part where I'm too old for this sort of thing. Oh, I remember what it was like to be a teenager. I was involved in a very tempestuous relationship at the time, and I felt all the things Isla feels here, but now I see it for what it was: melodramatic wangst. My reasons for disliking this book are numerous, but the never-ending, self-indulgent, relentless wangst of the whole book was by far the most painful part.
In this book, two privileged teenagers mope and fret and fall into a deep depression because they can't have what they want: each other. And why can't they have each other? Why, because of reasons, of course! Reasons, reasons, and more horribly contrived reasons. I'll break it down: none of it makes sense. They aren't together because the story demands that they feel all kinds of torment during a good stretch when, really, all they needed to do was talk to one another and straighten everything out. It could have been over in the matter of an hour, but then the book wouldn't have that long stretch of mopey misunderstanding, would it?
The thing is, I might have cared about all this moping had I cared about the characters, but I didn't. Not one bit. I absolutely adore the previous two novels in this series, which are admittedly just as melodramatic at times. But the characters in those books felt like real, three-dimensional characters with thoughts, feelings, and dreams. By contrast, Isla is THE most annoying female YA character since Bella Swan. She has no personality of her own, no dreams, no drive, no desire. As she dramatically tells us, she is a blank slate. You know what? Blank slates might be full of promise for artists, but for the rest of us they're just boring because they're blank. All we know about Isla by the end of the book is that she reads comics, like adventure novels, has two sisters, and is utterly obsessed with Josh--and, like Bella's, hers is not a healthy obsession. She cyberstalks the guy and moons over him for three years before they start dating. She tells him she's loved him for all those years. What? She doesn't even know him, so how can she possibly love him? What she has is an unhealthy fixation on him, which is made all the more evident by the downward spiral her life takes when he leaves after they've been dating for a grand total of one month. One month, and she's basically ready to chuck her entire life away, but I guess that's a symptom of her nauseating privilege too. She can afford to throw her life away because her parents have all kinds of money, so she'll be fine. Cry me a river. Can I read about a character with real problems now?
Josh is no better. He's an artist. He resents his parents, especially during his father's run for Senator, because they don't pay enough attention to him. Snore. In many ways, he's very similar to St. Clair, but the difference is that St. Clair felt like a real person while Josh felt like a cardboard representation of one. And don't even get me started on his giving Isla his manuscript to read. Huge spoiler alert here: there are panels of his naked ex-girlfriend in them, and panels of him having sex with said girlfriend. And he wonders why Isla is upset. Since she's also been sexually active in the past, I found her reaction a bit hypocritical, but she definitely shouldn't have been exposed to something like that. Who in their right mind would think showing their new girlfriend something like that would be a good idea? I get that it's his opus and all that, but doesn't it occur to him that maybe he ought not to show her graphic depictions of what he's done with his ex, especially since he knows she's crazy jealous of his ex? It's so messed up I don't even know where to begin with it. Then he has the audacity to be angry with her when she offers some constructive criticism? True, her timing sucks, but it should hardly have come as surprise to him that she wouldn't be head over heels for it.
Worse yet, their relationship is all kinds of unhealthy. The minute they start dating, neither of them cares about anything else anymore. They engage in all sorts of reckless behavior that results in his getting booted from their spoiled kid prep school, and they have the nerve to be angry with her sister and with Kurt. What? Sure, later in the book Isla comes to the realization that, guess what, she and Josh are responsible for what's happened, but I vehemently disliked her when her illicit trip to Spain with Josh was first discovered. Even when she has him, Isla can't do anything more than obsess about Josh. She combs the Internet looking for more detail on him, she stops caring about her grades, and she can't be bothered to figure out on her own where she should go to college. Again, these are horrible, privilege-soaked problems. She all but throws away her entire future for a boy she's dated for four whole weeks.
I hate that message. I hate that these books, in many ways, promote the idea that young love like this is the be all and end all. It's not healthy. I know it feels that way at the time--I really, really remember how viscerally I felt it when I was seventeen--but that doesn't make the way it's portrayed here right. Now that I think about it, in every book in this series, the couples end up building their whole future around one another. Instead of pursuing the things they want in the best places to pursue them, they make compromises. Yes, compromises are necessary in love, but NOT when it's your whole future you're talking about. And while it's sweet that St. Clair and Anna get engaged in a significant spot in Paris, they are NINETEEN. Nineteen. No. I'm tired of YA authors equating young love with destiny. I know this is hardly a new thing, but that makes it even worse. Shouldn't we be more enlightened by this point? Shouldn't we be emphasizing to young people that, while their relationships are important, so are their futures? Shouldn't we encourage them to explore, to set goals to try to get all they want out of life? Shouldn't we tell them that if the love is real, it will wait until those important goals are met? Instead, books like this gloss over the fact that permanently altering the course of your life for someone will have lifelong consequences and may lead to lifelong regrets.
I'm sure by now it's obvious how vehemently I dislike this book. I'm sorry that I read it. It's left a bad taste in my mouth for the entire series. I keep returning to a blurb from another YA author, Tahereh Mafi, who calls Perkins the "Jane Austen of our generation". Are you for serious? You must not be reading the same Austen novels I've read, because in those books Austen's heroines are firmly and always true to themselves. They make mistakes, they act badly, but never do they compromise their own hopes, dreams, and beliefs. Elizabeth Bennet would shudder at the thought of being compared to a character like Isla because, unlike Isla, Elizabeth knows that believing in her own convictions, in staying true to her own character, is the most important thing a person can do. I think I need to go read Jane Eyre to purge myself of this book.
Settle in, friends, this is going to be a long one, and there will be spoilers.
I'm feeling it now, the part where I'm too old for this sort of thing. Oh, I remember what it was like to be a teenager. I was involved in a very tempestuous relationship at the time, and I felt all the things Isla feels here, but now I see it for what it was: melodramatic wangst. My reasons for disliking this book are numerous, but the never-ending, self-indulgent, relentless wangst of the whole book was by far the most painful part.
In this book, two privileged teenagers mope and fret and fall into a deep depression because they can't have what they want: each other. And why can't they have each other? Why, because of reasons, of course! Reasons, reasons, and more horribly contrived reasons. I'll break it down: none of it makes sense. They aren't together because the story demands that they feel all kinds of torment during a good stretch when, really, all they needed to do was talk to one another and straighten everything out. It could have been over in the matter of an hour, but then the book wouldn't have that long stretch of mopey misunderstanding, would it?
The thing is, I might have cared about all this moping had I cared about the characters, but I didn't. Not one bit. I absolutely adore the previous two novels in this series, which are admittedly just as melodramatic at times. But the characters in those books felt like real, three-dimensional characters with thoughts, feelings, and dreams. By contrast, Isla is THE most annoying female YA character since Bella Swan. She has no personality of her own, no dreams, no drive, no desire. As she dramatically tells us, she is a blank slate. You know what? Blank slates might be full of promise for artists, but for the rest of us they're just boring because they're blank. All we know about Isla by the end of the book is that she reads comics, like adventure novels, has two sisters, and is utterly obsessed with Josh--and, like Bella's, hers is not a healthy obsession. She cyberstalks the guy and moons over him for three years before they start dating. She tells him she's loved him for all those years. What? She doesn't even know him, so how can she possibly love him? What she has is an unhealthy fixation on him, which is made all the more evident by the downward spiral her life takes when he leaves after they've been dating for a grand total of one month. One month, and she's basically ready to chuck her entire life away, but I guess that's a symptom of her nauseating privilege too. She can afford to throw her life away because her parents have all kinds of money, so she'll be fine. Cry me a river. Can I read about a character with real problems now?
Josh is no better. He's an artist. He resents his parents, especially during his father's run for Senator, because they don't pay enough attention to him. Snore. In many ways, he's very similar to St. Clair, but the difference is that St. Clair felt like a real person while Josh felt like a cardboard representation of one. And don't even get me started on his giving Isla his manuscript to read. Huge spoiler alert here: there are panels of his naked ex-girlfriend in them, and panels of him having sex with said girlfriend. And he wonders why Isla is upset. Since she's also been sexually active in the past, I found her reaction a bit hypocritical, but she definitely shouldn't have been exposed to something like that. Who in their right mind would think showing their new girlfriend something like that would be a good idea? I get that it's his opus and all that, but doesn't it occur to him that maybe he ought not to show her graphic depictions of what he's done with his ex, especially since he knows she's crazy jealous of his ex? It's so messed up I don't even know where to begin with it. Then he has the audacity to be angry with her when she offers some constructive criticism? True, her timing sucks, but it should hardly have come as surprise to him that she wouldn't be head over heels for it.
Worse yet, their relationship is all kinds of unhealthy. The minute they start dating, neither of them cares about anything else anymore. They engage in all sorts of reckless behavior that results in his getting booted from their spoiled kid prep school, and they have the nerve to be angry with her sister and with Kurt. What? Sure, later in the book Isla comes to the realization that, guess what, she and Josh are responsible for what's happened, but I vehemently disliked her when her illicit trip to Spain with Josh was first discovered. Even when she has him, Isla can't do anything more than obsess about Josh. She combs the Internet looking for more detail on him, she stops caring about her grades, and she can't be bothered to figure out on her own where she should go to college. Again, these are horrible, privilege-soaked problems. She all but throws away her entire future for a boy she's dated for four whole weeks.
I hate that message. I hate that these books, in many ways, promote the idea that young love like this is the be all and end all. It's not healthy. I know it feels that way at the time--I really, really remember how viscerally I felt it when I was seventeen--but that doesn't make the way it's portrayed here right. Now that I think about it, in every book in this series, the couples end up building their whole future around one another. Instead of pursuing the things they want in the best places to pursue them, they make compromises. Yes, compromises are necessary in love, but NOT when it's your whole future you're talking about. And while it's sweet that St. Clair and Anna get engaged in a significant spot in Paris, they are NINETEEN. Nineteen. No. I'm tired of YA authors equating young love with destiny. I know this is hardly a new thing, but that makes it even worse. Shouldn't we be more enlightened by this point? Shouldn't we be emphasizing to young people that, while their relationships are important, so are their futures? Shouldn't we encourage them to explore, to set goals to try to get all they want out of life? Shouldn't we tell them that if the love is real, it will wait until those important goals are met? Instead, books like this gloss over the fact that permanently altering the course of your life for someone will have lifelong consequences and may lead to lifelong regrets.
I'm sure by now it's obvious how vehemently I dislike this book. I'm sorry that I read it. It's left a bad taste in my mouth for the entire series. I keep returning to a blurb from another YA author, Tahereh Mafi, who calls Perkins the "Jane Austen of our generation". Are you for serious? You must not be reading the same Austen novels I've read, because in those books Austen's heroines are firmly and always true to themselves. They make mistakes, they act badly, but never do they compromise their own hopes, dreams, and beliefs. Elizabeth Bennet would shudder at the thought of being compared to a character like Isla because, unlike Isla, Elizabeth knows that believing in her own convictions, in staying true to her own character, is the most important thing a person can do. I think I need to go read Jane Eyre to purge myself of this book.