A review by viviette
Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter

adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Um…well…hmm… I picked up this book from the library with high expectations; I was let down. This book isn’t BAD it’s just not all that I was lead up for it to be. I was watching one of Haley Pham’s YouTube videos and she said this was one of the best books of 2021 for her (or at least in the YA romance category) so needless to say I was intrigued. The thing is, this book is just a whole giant trophy, cheesy, cringe fest mess, though it’s not like that was on accident—that’s basically the whole point! The reason why it’s like that is because the character basically leads her life like a rom-com movie. But there was just a lot of pet-peeves for me in it including one of it’s iconic inclusions of songs to represent scenes (the mc chose them). Most of the songs didn’t seem to exactly fit with the scenes in question and it was strange because there was many songs I could think of from the top of my head that were better; such as in the scene where the mc mention “Paper Rings” the song could be easily replaced with “Afterglow” or “Daylight” and make the whole thing 10x better. Same with “New Years Day” It just doesn’t feel like a prom night slow dance song.
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