Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by emmareadstoomuch
I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo
1.0
I am a relatively fearless person.
In fact, it borders on unsafe. Although I am a physically weak and indoors-y young woman, I feel no fright when I walk outside at night. (Relatedly, I’m a poet and I didn’t know it.) I capture bugs in mason jars and take them outside like a romcom character played by Zooey Deschanel. Heights, death, snakes, loneliness: All of these phobias quiver before me.
Only one thing scares me, and it’s books like this one.
I F*CKING HATE THIS KIND OF BOOK.
I HATE picking up a YA contemporary and expecting a good swoony time and being confronted with the fact that no, I will not be blissfully watching from the sidelines as a sixteen year old with fairytale princess levels of beauty who is totally unaware of them falls in love with a boy she never noticed before even though he goes to her high school which for all intents and purposes seems to have 22 students max.
Not only will I not be getting that experience, but I’ll be getting this one. One where the protagonist is being totally goddamn cringey and embarrasing and you KNOW that it’s going to blow up in their stupid cringey face on page 276 but you can’t stop it and you just have to deal, like you’re watching a slow motion car crash for hundreds of pages, or worse, someone trip and spill a full iced coffee.
See, I contain multitudes. I am a debilitatingly empathetic person, whose day can be obliterated by seeing someone who looks kinda-sorta sad eating alone in public, but I am also profoundly judgmental.
So plotlines like these cause me unrelenting suffering on multiple levels.
Anyway.
Introducing a new segment of my reviews entitled SO RELATABLE TEEN MOMENTS THAT ARE ACTUALLY NOT RELATABLE AT ALL, BECAUSE THESE CHARACTERS ARE MONSTERS :)
(Note: These things actually happened.)
1. When your girl causes you to get in a car accident, leading to extensive damage to your car and minor injuries to you both :) and also she’s not your girl :)
2. That relatable feeling when you give up your life dreams to momentarily support your boyfriend of a week
3. That moment when you’re a genuinely bad friend, and it’s also not a moment, it’s just...a thing
4. When your friend Cassidy has a crush on the guy who will later become your boyfriend except it’s very funny to you, so that’s why it’s okay for you to make her ask him to prom even though it ruins her chance to have a date who actually wants to be there with her :)
5. When your boyfriend breaks up with you because the entire beginning to your relationship was fake and you staged it, including parts that put his life and your life in danger, so you win him back by...staging another fake dramatic thing that puts his life and your life in danger? Whoops.
These #SoMeMoments happen throughout the book. Page 1 to page 894. (What do you mean this book isn’t 900 pages long? I swear I read 900 pages.)
But it’s okay she did all that crazy stuff because she knew she loved him since he *check notes* drew something on her paper once?
Okay.
Bottom line: Character development? I don’t know the name. I only know pain.
-------------
nothing says I'M OUT OF MY READING SLUMP AND I'M GOING TO LIVE FOREVER like finishing four books in one day.
especially when one of those books sucks as hard as this one.
review to come / 1 star
-------------
you know that stage when you're finally out of a reading slump and you can't stop reading and you just pick up more and more books?
yeah. that.
In fact, it borders on unsafe. Although I am a physically weak and indoors-y young woman, I feel no fright when I walk outside at night. (Relatedly, I’m a poet and I didn’t know it.) I capture bugs in mason jars and take them outside like a romcom character played by Zooey Deschanel. Heights, death, snakes, loneliness: All of these phobias quiver before me.
Only one thing scares me, and it’s books like this one.
I F*CKING HATE THIS KIND OF BOOK.
I HATE picking up a YA contemporary and expecting a good swoony time and being confronted with the fact that no, I will not be blissfully watching from the sidelines as a sixteen year old with fairytale princess levels of beauty who is totally unaware of them falls in love with a boy she never noticed before even though he goes to her high school which for all intents and purposes seems to have 22 students max.
Not only will I not be getting that experience, but I’ll be getting this one. One where the protagonist is being totally goddamn cringey and embarrasing and you KNOW that it’s going to blow up in their stupid cringey face on page 276 but you can’t stop it and you just have to deal, like you’re watching a slow motion car crash for hundreds of pages, or worse, someone trip and spill a full iced coffee.
See, I contain multitudes. I am a debilitatingly empathetic person, whose day can be obliterated by seeing someone who looks kinda-sorta sad eating alone in public, but I am also profoundly judgmental.
So plotlines like these cause me unrelenting suffering on multiple levels.
Anyway.
Introducing a new segment of my reviews entitled SO RELATABLE TEEN MOMENTS THAT ARE ACTUALLY NOT RELATABLE AT ALL, BECAUSE THESE CHARACTERS ARE MONSTERS :)
(Note: These things actually happened.)
1. When your girl causes you to get in a car accident, leading to extensive damage to your car and minor injuries to you both :) and also she’s not your girl :)
2. That relatable feeling when you give up your life dreams to momentarily support your boyfriend of a week
3. That moment when you’re a genuinely bad friend, and it’s also not a moment, it’s just...a thing
4. When your friend Cassidy has a crush on the guy who will later become your boyfriend except it’s very funny to you, so that’s why it’s okay for you to make her ask him to prom even though it ruins her chance to have a date who actually wants to be there with her :)
5. When your boyfriend breaks up with you because the entire beginning to your relationship was fake and you staged it, including parts that put his life and your life in danger, so you win him back by...staging another fake dramatic thing that puts his life and your life in danger? Whoops.
These #SoMeMoments happen throughout the book. Page 1 to page 894. (What do you mean this book isn’t 900 pages long? I swear I read 900 pages.)
But it’s okay she did all that crazy stuff because she knew she loved him since he *check notes* drew something on her paper once?
Okay.
Bottom line: Character development? I don’t know the name. I only know pain.
-------------
nothing says I'M OUT OF MY READING SLUMP AND I'M GOING TO LIVE FOREVER like finishing four books in one day.
especially when one of those books sucks as hard as this one.
review to come / 1 star
-------------
you know that stage when you're finally out of a reading slump and you can't stop reading and you just pick up more and more books?
yeah. that.