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A review by reading_between_reality
I Hate You, Fuller James by Kelly Anne Blount
4.0
3.5 stars
Ok first off, how perfect is this cover?! It is a beauty! Second, if that synopsis doesn’t give you 10 Things I Hate About You vibes (and you KNOW that is my FAVOURITE movie!!) then I don’t know what will!
This is your typical jock-gets-tutored-by-the-nerd-but-then-they-see-there-is-so-much-more-to-one-another-and-fall-in-love, but it is oh so sweet. Of course there is drama and heart break and make outs and so on and so forth, no spoilers here. I thought this story was so cute. It’s definitely very fluffy and bubblegummy with a good dose of first love and heartbreak, jealousy and bullying of the “Mean Girls” sort, a misplaced bet and all the teen swoon you could want.
I loved the main character, Wren. After a bit of an embarrassing mishap in middle school she has been the centre of all of her classmates teasing and name-calling. Throughout the course of the book Wren finds herself standing up to her bullies and not letting them have that upper hand. I admire her strength and resilience and the fact that she carries on living her life in the cruel high school world where even her uncle, who is the coach of her proclaimed enemy, Fuller James, doesn’t even have her back.
There were a couple things that irked me, but that was probably on purpose. Books with bullying tend to do that, but I think this book does a good job of showing that those kind of actions are not appropriate and that even the most popular student can shut it down.
One thing that I didn’t love was that it felt like there was a bit of repetition and redundancy at times. Some moments things were explained right after they happened, thus having us readers reading it twice where it could have been something like, “I then explained to him what had happened”.
The ending fell a bit short for me in the same sense that I feel like it was explained too much. Everything was recapped EXACTLY and the excitement of what was happening really didn’t hit its mark. The story and the idea itself were very cute, but I feel there was some potential lost.
I definitely loved Fuller from the start in that way that you can tell there will be more from him. He’s a bit of a prankster and likes to cause trouble. He knows how to get away with things based on his social status and uses it to his advantage. But he’s also got hidden struggles with his family and is only seen for his basketball skills and nothing more.
Wren begins to see him for who he really is and if this isn’t the part of the story that always gets me, well, I was instantly in love with both of them. If you love a sweet and squishy contemporary YA, this is the book for you!
Ok first off, how perfect is this cover?! It is a beauty! Second, if that synopsis doesn’t give you 10 Things I Hate About You vibes (and you KNOW that is my FAVOURITE movie!!) then I don’t know what will!
This is your typical jock-gets-tutored-by-the-nerd-but-then-they-see-there-is-so-much-more-to-one-another-and-fall-in-love, but it is oh so sweet. Of course there is drama and heart break and make outs and so on and so forth, no spoilers here. I thought this story was so cute. It’s definitely very fluffy and bubblegummy with a good dose of first love and heartbreak, jealousy and bullying of the “Mean Girls” sort, a misplaced bet and all the teen swoon you could want.
I loved the main character, Wren. After a bit of an embarrassing mishap in middle school she has been the centre of all of her classmates teasing and name-calling. Throughout the course of the book Wren finds herself standing up to her bullies and not letting them have that upper hand. I admire her strength and resilience and the fact that she carries on living her life in the cruel high school world where even her uncle, who is the coach of her proclaimed enemy, Fuller James, doesn’t even have her back.
There were a couple things that irked me, but that was probably on purpose. Books with bullying tend to do that, but I think this book does a good job of showing that those kind of actions are not appropriate and that even the most popular student can shut it down.
One thing that I didn’t love was that it felt like there was a bit of repetition and redundancy at times. Some moments things were explained right after they happened, thus having us readers reading it twice where it could have been something like, “I then explained to him what had happened”.
The ending fell a bit short for me in the same sense that I feel like it was explained too much. Everything was recapped EXACTLY and the excitement of what was happening really didn’t hit its mark. The story and the idea itself were very cute, but I feel there was some potential lost.
I definitely loved Fuller from the start in that way that you can tell there will be more from him. He’s a bit of a prankster and likes to cause trouble. He knows how to get away with things based on his social status and uses it to his advantage. But he’s also got hidden struggles with his family and is only seen for his basketball skills and nothing more.
Wren begins to see him for who he really is and if this isn’t the part of the story that always gets me, well, I was instantly in love with both of them. If you love a sweet and squishy contemporary YA, this is the book for you!