marenkae 's review for:

Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins

2.0

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2.5. Hmm. Well...I liked this better than Anna and the French Kiss but definitely not as much as Lola and the Boy Next Door. The beginning of this book flew by pretty enjoyably for me (although it was admittedly way too instalove-y. I know this is primarily a romance book but it was TOO focused on the romance for my tastes, to be honest. But still. I was getting a nice YA contemporary fix which is totally what I wanted.) Things took a nose dive when Isla and Josh were apart from each other and she literally just cried constantly because it'd been five days since she'd seen her boyfriend of a month. I'm not kidding. I wanted to punch her. Then she got even more irritating by just straight up fabricating drama within their relationship and getting upset when her actions had natural consequences. Oh my god, I just couldn't handle it...it was like watching a train wreck. The character growth was completely tell, not show--there was actually a passage near the end of the book where Isla rattled off all her faults and how she had become a better person and I was just like... 'where? when? when did this happen?' because I didn't see the change happen at any point. I don't know. Stephanie Perkins is an author I really want to like because she's lovely in person and her writing has a fantastic effortless flow to it but two out of the three books in this series were driven by mind-bogglingly frustrating conflict and I just can't quite get myself to enjoy that. I also think she has problems fleshing out side characters which is pretty disappointing because they usually have great potential.