Take a photo of a barcode or cover
melodier93 's review for:
Let's Get Lost
by Adi Alsaid
--SPOILERS AHEAD--
I sat down with this novel excited to read a carefree and engaging YA romp that promised to evoke John Green, and I was fairly disappointed. "Let's Get Lost" does evoke John Green, in the way that poorly written fan fiction evokes its source work. It feels as if Alsaid made a list of all of the elements of John Green's book that he liked - intelligent characters with obscure tastes, road trips, hijinks, young love, and mysterious girls going on adventures - and then threw them all together with a rather sloppy artist's brush. There are all of the elements here of a truly great YA novel, but they're impeded by shallow, unlikeable characters and heavy-handed writing.
The brilliance of John Green's books is that he writes fully-realized, complex, and intelligent characters who we truly care about; when they engage in hijinks, their actions make sense. By contrast, the characters in "Let's Get Lost" seem to do irrational and extremely risky things simply...because? Because they're young? From committing grand theft auto for an hour of air conditioning to missing college interviews because of a four-hours-old romance, characters go beyond actions that Green's "Paper Towns" describes as "young, goofy, and infinite" to downright mentally deranged.
Furthermore, as other reviewers have pointed out, these characters are more embodied tropes than interesting people who learn anything new or revolutionary. The most egregious example of this is Elliot, who - after chasing the best friend who turned him down when he confessed his love to her during prom - learns from Leila that sometimes you get turned down, and that's okay, and it doesn't mean you won't find true love some day. I was pretty impressed with this Aesop, which would be unusual for a teen book, and if that's where the story ended I would have given this book at least three stars. But no! After he "learned his lesson," in the last paragraph of the section he gets a note from said best friend saying that she made a mistake and she loves him after all. That's right, kids. If you pursue your best friend enough you can convince them to love you after all. No one should ever take "no" for an answer. That's a healthy message for teenagers beginning to understand love.
Finally, there's the character of Leila. Now, I'll give the book credit. The last section of the novel - Leila's section - is arguably its most powerful, because we finally understand her character. There's also a scene involving birthdays that is genuinely touching. However, until we get to this section, Leila is a textbook Manic Pixie Dream Girl who can magically understand people better than they understand themselves and solve their problems in a matter of hours. While the revelation we receive about her character does make her more interesting, it doesn't explain why she has these magical stranger-understanding powers, a plot recurrence that became intensely frustrating as the novel progressed. When you're reading a book, you're at least to like the protagonists, or at least find them interesting. You shouldn't be audibly protesting their actions and rooting for them to lose, which is what I found myself doing time and time again.
Maybe, at the ripe age of 21, I've finally gotten too old for this genre, and have lost my sense of joie de vivre and carpe diem. But I doubt it. Do yourself a favor, and if you want a delightful Young Adult novel read something by John Green, Rainbow Rowell, or Maureen Johnson. "Let's Get Lost" is, compared to them, a shallow imitator.
I sat down with this novel excited to read a carefree and engaging YA romp that promised to evoke John Green, and I was fairly disappointed. "Let's Get Lost" does evoke John Green, in the way that poorly written fan fiction evokes its source work. It feels as if Alsaid made a list of all of the elements of John Green's book that he liked - intelligent characters with obscure tastes, road trips, hijinks, young love, and mysterious girls going on adventures - and then threw them all together with a rather sloppy artist's brush. There are all of the elements here of a truly great YA novel, but they're impeded by shallow, unlikeable characters and heavy-handed writing.
The brilliance of John Green's books is that he writes fully-realized, complex, and intelligent characters who we truly care about; when they engage in hijinks, their actions make sense. By contrast, the characters in "Let's Get Lost" seem to do irrational and extremely risky things simply...because? Because they're young? From committing grand theft auto for an hour of air conditioning to missing college interviews because of a four-hours-old romance, characters go beyond actions that Green's "Paper Towns" describes as "young, goofy, and infinite" to downright mentally deranged.
Furthermore, as other reviewers have pointed out, these characters are more embodied tropes than interesting people who learn anything new or revolutionary. The most egregious example of this is Elliot, who - after chasing the best friend who turned him down when he confessed his love to her during prom - learns from Leila that sometimes you get turned down, and that's okay, and it doesn't mean you won't find true love some day. I was pretty impressed with this Aesop, which would be unusual for a teen book, and if that's where the story ended I would have given this book at least three stars. But no! After he "learned his lesson," in the last paragraph of the section he gets a note from said best friend saying that she made a mistake and she loves him after all. That's right, kids. If you pursue your best friend enough you can convince them to love you after all. No one should ever take "no" for an answer. That's a healthy message for teenagers beginning to understand love.
Finally, there's the character of Leila. Now, I'll give the book credit. The last section of the novel - Leila's section - is arguably its most powerful, because we finally understand her character. There's also a scene involving birthdays that is genuinely touching. However, until we get to this section, Leila is a textbook Manic Pixie Dream Girl who can magically understand people better than they understand themselves and solve their problems in a matter of hours. While the revelation we receive about her character does make her more interesting, it doesn't explain why she has these magical stranger-understanding powers, a plot recurrence that became intensely frustrating as the novel progressed. When you're reading a book, you're at least to like the protagonists, or at least find them interesting. You shouldn't be audibly protesting their actions and rooting for them to lose, which is what I found myself doing time and time again.
Maybe, at the ripe age of 21, I've finally gotten too old for this genre, and have lost my sense of joie de vivre and carpe diem. But I doubt it. Do yourself a favor, and if you want a delightful Young Adult novel read something by John Green, Rainbow Rowell, or Maureen Johnson. "Let's Get Lost" is, compared to them, a shallow imitator.