Review #27: Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler

Well, this book just immediately catapulted itself to the very top of my list of best YA books of all time.

Seriously. This book is perfect.

Daniel Handler, you are a GOD. I loved your work as Lemony Snicket, of course (A Series of Unfortunate Events is one of my favorite children’s series ever). But this? This was just unreal.

Basic plot summary: Min, a quirky girl, falls in love with Ed, a jock. We know from the first page that they break up by the end; the question is, how? The story is told as a letter from Min to Ed, written as she goes through a box of mementos from their relationship. The book is gorgeously illustrated, with each little thing in the box getting its own picture. It’s beautiful, and it matches the stunning writing perfectly.

I just can’t even express how intense this reading experience was. I think it’s because everyone, male or female, has had an Ed. The circumstances might have been different, but the essence is the same: everyone had their heart broken at least once as a teenager. This book portrays that universal experience so well that it was like a punch to the gut to read. Never before have I read a book that captures the head-over-heels puppy love that only teenagers get, or the crushing devastation that comes with the realization that it’s not meant to be. Reading this was so raw and so real and so painful, but that’s what makes this book so beautiful. I knew what was coming–about halfway through, I could just sense the logical conclusion–but it still killed me when I got to the end, when it all comes crashing down around Min’s ears, and all I wanted to do was cry for her, because I knew exactly what she was feeling. It was a powerful experience and still gives me an ache in my chest when I think about it.

Do yourself a favor and go get a copy of this. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year.

Review #26: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Frankie Landau-Books is a fifteen-year-old student at a prestigious East Coast boarding school. She’s recently undergone a physical transformation, from an invisible freshman to a beautiful sophomore. When she arrives back on campus after the summer, she immediately catches the eye of Matt, a handsome and popular senior, and is soon drawn into his world. She soon realizes, though, that he’s keeping secrets from her: he’s the ringleader of a secret society, and he doesn’t want her to be involved. Tired of being treated like a little girl, she decides to take on the group and make a name for herself. Things do not, as one might expect, go as planned.

I think I would have loved this book if I’d read it when I was twelve or thirteen. Frankie’s a pretty cool narrator, or at least I would have thought so back then. She’s smart, she tries to be independent, and she wants to be treated like an equal. All good things, and all important things in a female narrator. However, as an adult, I found Frankie’s character to be kind of obnoxious. She’s a bit pretentious (she does this thing where she uses fake words like “maculate,” as in the opposite of “immaculate,” which drove me nuts). For all her talk of independence, she’s kind of reliant on her boyfriend, and seems to lose herself in the relationship (not good). And she makes some really, really frustrating decisions throughout the book.

I appreciate that E. Lockhart was trying to write a more literary YA novel. That’s a good thing! But the writing often came across as self-important and the themes/message she was trying to convey were way too heavy-handed. Again, I think I probably would have missed this if I were reading it as a teenager, and I think it’s a really good thing that girls are getting more feminist heroines in their literature. But as an adult, it just felt a little…blah. There weren’t any real stakes, and the ending was completely unsatisfying.

In the end, this book was just okay. It could have been executed a lot better.