Review: Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins

Publisher: Dutton
Published: August 14, 2014
Pages: 339
Source: Bought
Rating: 5 Stars

From the glittering streets of Manhattan to the moonlit rooftops of Paris, falling in love is easy for hopeless dreamer Isla and introspective artist Josh. But as they begin their senior year in France, Isla and Josh are quickly forced to confront the heartbreaking reality that happily-ever-afters aren’t always forever.

Their romantic journey is skillfully intertwined with those of beloved couples Anna and Étienne and Lola and Cricket, whose paths are destined to collide in a sweeping finale certain to please fans old and new.

In short: Every emotion and feeling that was incited in me while reading Isla and the Happily Ever After was felt strongly and sincerely, and I LOVED it for that reason.

Ohhh the complete and overjoyed happiness this book brought me!! I mean, all of Stephanie Perkins' books have brought me happiness and swoons and squees and feels, but I think it's possible that Isla and the Happily Ever After tops them all (though it has been quite a while since I read Anna and the French Kiss so I might not be remembering correctly). Isla left me in a puddle of feels and happy tears when I finished it in the middle of the night and I loved every moment of it.

One of the things I love most about Stephanie's characters is there is at least one aspect in each of her leading ladies that you can identify with. But I think Isla is the girl that I relate to most. She's shy and has low self-esteem and she doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. She prefers to read about adventures than go on them. Josh is her opposite in many ways and yet they connected and played off each other perfectly. I LOVED them together.

Of course it's no surprise that Stephanie Perkins got the romance right. She proved as much in Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door. But I was reminded again - and more powerfully than ever - that Stephanie Perkins has a way of pinpointing and recreating the feelings and the ups and downs of first love like no other author that I can think of. The intense giddiness, the unwanted insecurities, the extreme elation, the bitter and unreasonable feelings of jealousy, etc. - every heightened emotion you go through when experiencing your first love is there (or at least the ones that I went through...). Stephanie Perkins handles first love beautifully and meticulously.

Every emotion and feeling that was incited in me while reading Isla and the Happily Ever After was felt strongly and sincerely, and I am totally CRAZY about this book for that reason. I am unbelievably bummed that this trilogy of Stephanie's has come to an end, but I am also unbelievably ecstatic that Isla and the Happily Ever After was everything I was hoping it would be and that we got to see Anna, St. Clair, Lola, and Cricket one last time (because I love them to death). I look forward to reading whatever Stephanie Perkins writes next!

Previously, my reviews of Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door.

Other Reviews:
A Girl, Books and Other Things
Pirate Penguin's Reads
Shooting Stars Mag

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My Life in January: O.Noir, Potted Potter, and Dino Hunts

January was a fun month! There were several exciting events that pertained to my boyfriend and I. First up: our 4 year anniversary.

We went to O.Noir for dinner, something that I had been curious about trying out for a while now. If you don't know, O.Noir is a restaurant in Toronto (and Montreal) in which you dine in pitch blackness. No jokes. Dining in the dark is meant to heighten your remaining senses so that you can savour your meal more than you would otherwise... well, I don't know about that. But what I do know is that the experience was just plain cool.

The servers are all blind and it's a good thing too, because they have the experience needed to guide you through the restaurant and through your meal. I really love the concept of this restaurant. It gives you a feel for what it must be like to be visually impaired and the challenges that come with that. And there's a role reversal here: usually it is the sighted that lead the blind, but here we were utterly dependent on the guidance of our blind - and very kind - server.

At some point during my meal, I must have left my fork on the plate of my starter, which was then taken away by my server. When my main dish was put down in front of me I realized I no longer had my fork, but was too embarrassed to call out to my server to ask for another one. So I ate my dinner by carefully scooping up the food from my plate with my knife. LOL! I also lost my napkin at some point during the meal, so it was a bit messy... But like I say, it was definitely a very cool and fun experience!

We also went to see Potted Potter, a semi-improvised parody of all seven Harry Potter books told in seventy minutes by only two actors. It was pretty fun! It was cool to be surrounded by fellow Potter fans who understood all the Potter-ish inside jokes. We played a live game of Quidditch in the audience and my team (Slytherin) won when our Seeker, a very enthusiastic and feisty young boy, full-on TACKLED the Snitch, ensuring our victory. Definitely check this show out if it comes to a city near you!

And finally, in January we celebrated the reveal of a new ceratopsian dinosaur at our place of work at the ROM. My boyfriend is a fossil preparator at the museum and he is also featured in a new TV series on the History Channel about palaeontology in Canada. All month long, there was a live feed running on the History Channel website in which you could tune in to watch my bf work on the fossils of this new species. I spent much of my month doing just that... avoiding my own work in the process, heh. Ah well, it was a once in a lifetime event and I am quite proud of my boyfriend for being so successful in his field!

Blog Posts in January:

Waiting On Wednesday: HarperCollins Spring 2015 Catalog
Review: Waistcoats & Weaponry by Gail Carriger - 4 Stars
Review: Dreamer's Pool by Juliet Marillier - 3 Stars
Review: Alistair Grim's Odditorium by Gregory Funaro - 3.5 Stars
Review: Catalyst (Insignia #3) by S.J. Kincaid - 4 Stars
Muggle Monday: New Images from the Fully Illustrated Edition of Harry Potter
2014 End of Year Book Survey
My 2014 Bookish Stats
Thoughts on on my 4 year blogoversary
November and December Recap: Berlin and the Holidays

Best Book Read in January:

Ermahgerd!! I finally read Isla and the Happily Ever After this month and obsessively read it over the course of a few days. SO MUCH LOVE!! It's been many years since I read Anna and the French Kiss so it may be hard to say, but I think Isla may be my favourite book of the trilogy! I just adored it and I'm sad that it's over, but I can't wait to read whatever Stephanie Perkins writes next!

Review: Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

Publisher: Penguin/Dutton

Published: September 29, 2011

Pages: 338

Source: Bought

Rating: 5 STARS

Budding designer Lola Nolan doesn’t believe in fashion . . . she believes in costume. The more expressive the outfit -- more sparkly, more fun, more wild -- the better. But even though Lola’s style is outrageous, she’s a devoted daughter and friend with some big plans for the future. And everything is pretty perfect (right down to her hot rocker boyfriend) until the dreaded Bell twins, Calliope and Cricket, return to the neighbourhood.
When Cricket -- a gifted inventor -- steps out from his twin sister’s shadow and back into Lola’s life, she must finally reconcile a lifetime of feelings for the boy next door.

In short: Like Anna and the French Kiss, Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins is a fun contemporary with memorable characters and dialogue.

I feel like I could copy and paste my review for Anna and the French Kiss here, change a few character names, and it would work just as well for my review of Lola and the Boy Next Door. Unique, memorable, and loveable characters and fun and meaningful writing and dialogue characterize both Anna and Lola. Several story elements were also similar between the two. But instead of it bothering me that Stephanie Perkins didn't try to do anything too different with Lola, I welcomed the familiar tone, eager to get back into the plots and characters she has crafted.

It's an altogether strange feeling for me, this wanting to escape back to a non-magical, non-supernatural contemporary world. What happened to my exclusive love for bleak, well developed dystopian worlds or whimsical, fantastical ones? Well, I may be a bit dystopian and fantas-ied out. It was such a refreshing change to read about the everyday problems of life and relationships. And just because it's contemporary doesn't mean the problems faced by the characters are any less interesting than those faced by characters in dystopians or fantasies. I was completed hooked and interested in the plot and the characters from page 1.

Though I was able to relate more to Anna personally, that does not mean I liked Lola any less as a character. I loved her quirkyness, her bravery to be herself, and her growth from a relatively immature and somewhat selfish girl to a grownup. And don't ask me to choose between St. Clair and Cricket. But I will say that Cricket, in all his nerdy sweetness, is pretty much my ideal book guy. This all being said, I wouldn't say Lola and Cricket's personalities - or anyone else's in Lola, for that matter - are particularly realistic. Stephanie's characters tend to be a bit on the cartoonish side - all with slightly exaggerated character traits and passions - but for me, it works because I have a lot of fun reading about them.

(Side note: What is it about characters with four letter names beginning with L who have a propensity for bold, unapologetic strangeness? In addition to Lola, I'm thinking of course of Luna from Harry Potter and Lily from Dash and Lily's Book of Dares.)

The take home message that I got from reading Lola and the Boy Next Door is that I need to start reading more contemporaries. I know I always say that, but somehow I still never actually carry it through, even though I always enjoy the contemporaries that I do read. It's time now though. I crave more variety in my reading. And I always appreciate recommendations!

Previously, my review of Anna and the French Kiss

Other Reviews:
The Bucket List
Hughes Reviews
Stalking the Bookshelves

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Review: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Publisher: Penguin 
Published: December 2, 2010 
Pages: 372 
Source: Won from The Secret Life of a Bibliophile (Thanks!)
Rating: 5 Stars

Anna is looking forward to her senior year in Atlanta, where she has a great job, a loyal best friend, and a crush on the verge of becoming more. Which is why she is less than thrilled about being shipped off to boarding school in Paris - until she meets Etienne St. Clair: perfect, Parisian (and English and American, which makes for a swoon-worthy accent), and utterly irresistible. The only problem is that he's taken, and Anna might be, too, if anything comes of her almost-relationship back home. As winter melts into spring, will a year of romantic near - misses end with the French kiss Anna - and readers - have long awaited?

In short: Despite its horrid cover, it's impossible not to fall in love with the characters and the dialogue in Anna and the French Kiss, as perfectly written by Stephanie Perkins.

This is what happens when you let superficial biases keep you from reading a book right when it is published despite all the positive reviews. Superficially, everything about this book just screams bad, to me. The cover is just horrid. The title is cheesy. And the blurb is lame. It's not just the superficial elements though: it's also the fact that I'm not into contemporary, I'm not into romance, and I most certainly am not into contemporary romance. I don't do chic-lit.

Ultimately though, I am a lemming and easily become interested in reading whatever everyone else is reading and raving about (I'm feeble minded like that). I am also almost always in agreement with popular opinion so it came as no surprise to me that I did end up loving Anna and the French Kiss very, very much. It was just the initial push to start the book that was hard for me; everything after that came easily and naturally.

I am usually easily bored by the everyday events of contemporary novels. I crave fantastical or supernatural happenings, usually to break the monotony of my dreadfully normal life (not really, I like my life). So I was impressed with how easily Stephanie Perkins caught my attention and held it for the entirety of Anna and the French Kiss. I was instantly involved and interested in the plot, the characters, and the setting. It can't have been easy to capture my genre-limited attention so kudos to Stephanie Perkins!

There was a ton of dialogue in Anna and the French Kiss. Usually this would annoy me, but it was one of my favourite parts in Anna. I loved it so much that I'm prepared to say that Stephanie Perkins has written the best dialogue for a book that I've ever read. Each line of dialogue was either witty or meaningful or character building and I loved it so much I kind of want to end this review right here and go reread Anna again.

But definitely the best part of Anna and the French Kiss (and from the reviews I've read, people seem to agree) were the characters. What more can I say about my love for Anna and St. Clair and their relationship that hasn't already been said? The characters were perfect but flawed, which made them all the more perfect. I could relate wholeheartedly with Anna and I fell in love wholeheartedly with St. Clair. Perfect.

So I am officially mega excited for Lola and the Boy Next Door, to be published this month (September 2011), and Isla and the Happily Ever After, to be published 2012. I'm okay that these are more companion novels to Anna and the French Kiss instead of sequels because I'm perfectly happy with the way Anna and St. Clair's story turned out. I would also love to read companion novels based on Meredith's, Rashmi's, and Bridgitte's stories as well. Just putting it out there.

Other Reviews:
A Girl, Books and Other Things
The Secret Life of a Bibliophile
YA Book Queen

Author Links:
Website
Blog
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