Who Do You Love

Rachel Blum and Andy Landis are eight years old when they meet late one night in an ER waiting room. Born with a congenital heart defect, Rachel is a veteran of hospitals, and she's intrigued by the boy who shows up all alone with a broken arm. He tells her his name. She tells him a story. After Andy's taken back to the emergency room and Rachel's sent back to her bed, they think they'll never see each other again.

Rachel, the beloved, popular, and protected daughter of two doting parents, grows up wanting for nothing in a fancy Florida suburb. Andy grows up poor in Philadelphia with a single mom and a rare talent that will let him become one of the best runners of his generation.

Over the course of three decades, through high school and college, marriages and divorces, from the pinnacles of victory and the heartbreak of defeat, Andy and Rachel will find each other again and again, until they are finally given a chance to decide whether love can surmount difference and distance and if they've been running toward each other all along.

With honesty, wit, and clear-eyed observations about men and women, love and fate, and the truth about happy endings, Jennifer Weiner delivers two of her most memorable characters, and a love story you'll never forget.

I am going to be honest and tell you exactly why I wanted to read this book: In the second sentence of the description above, BOOM, a child with a congenital heart defect. In my mind it instantly became relatable and must be right up my alley. Because *gasp* I have a child with a CHD too! So really, I was setting myself up to be really disappointed in this book. I really thought it would be a trending topic throughout the book because it was mentioned in the description, but really, the CHD only played a factor in the first few chapters and then we never heard about it again. I suppose that may be what it would be like in real life for Rachel, maybe after her CHD was fixed it was never really an issue ever again? But it's unlikely. I researched her type of CHD and I wasn't familiar with it, but generally CHDs can't be fixed with one open heart surgery. Dominic will likely have 3 or 4 throughout his life.

OK, CHD aside, how was this book? It was fine. It was really cheesy and predictable. Less like a chick lit and more like a PG-rated romance novel. It did feel like it would make a good movie though. Cut out a bunch of the fluff and I would totally go see it with a bunch of girls! I won't hold my breath, but we'll see. 

Not much else to say about it. My guess is that I may forget about this book entirely in a couple of years. 

The Maze Runner

If you ain’t scared, you ain’t human.

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his name. He’s surrounded by strangers—boys whose memories are also gone.

Nice to meet ya, shank. Welcome to the Glade.

Outside the towering stone walls that surround the Glade is a limitless, ever-changing maze. It’s the only way out—and no one’s ever made it through alive.

Everything is going to change.

Then a girl arrives. The first girl ever. And the message she delivers is terrifying.

Remember. Survive. Run. 


The reasons I had behind choosing to read The Maze Runner had a lot to do with timing. This book made it on to my list just over a year ago when Brayden's Grade 8 teacher mentioned that this was the series of choice for her class right then. In case you missed it, I'm not opposed to Teen or Young Adult novels in any way shape or form and often times I find I like them better than Adult novels. So I added it to my [ridiculously long] to-read list. Then, the film adaptation came up on Netflix, so it was bumped higher in the to-read list. THEN, at work on day, on a particularly boring break, I grabbed it off of a unit bookshelf and just started reading it. Went home, borrowed the ebook from the library, and that's how The Maze Runner ended up bumping to the front of the line for the books I had to read. 

Unfortunately, being a choice of convenience rather than choice can sort of be a disadvantage. 

This is another one of those Young Adult series that are riding the gravy-train of post-apocalyptic, dystopian society, fad that's going on right now. Hunger Games, Divergent, etc... so it really feels like I have read it before. (C'mon youth of today! Read something HAPPY for a change! Your life isn't really all that bad that you need to read depressing stuff to realize it) I considered it a cross between Battle Royale (youth were placed in this environment, it was not an accident) and Lord of the Flies (the separation of different types of youth). And both of those novels were written far better than this one. There is a fine line between too much description and not enough... and things just being made too strange to describe. There are monsters called Grievers in this book and I am pretty sure I didn't imagine them right. A cross between a slug and a robot? What? Anyway, I figured when I watched the movie it would end up making sense, but it turns out the book wasn't good enough for me to get into watching the movie. I got about 30 minutes into watching it on Netflix, and then gave up.

This book was really one of those ones that are "fine", and considering it's a Young Adult series, if kids are reading them, great! But there's a lot better stuff out there, so go read the Hunger Games instead ;)

P.S. I Still Love You

Lara Jean didn’t expect to really fall for Peter.
She and Peter were just pretending. Except suddenly they weren’t. Now Lara Jean is more confused than ever.
When another boy from her past returns to her life, Lara Jean’s feelings for him return too. Can a girl be in love with two boys at once?

In this charming and heartfelt sequel to the New York Timesbestseller To All the Boys I've Loved Before, we see first love through the eyes of the unforgettable Lara Jean. Love is never easy, but maybe that’s part of what makes it so amazing. 



This book was not really the book I expected it to be, but that's not a bad thing. I think that can be a problem with sequels sometimes. We expect them to tell a certain story, but when they don't we get disappointed. I really liked To All The Boys I've Loved Before, and so I had an idea of where the plot for this one was going to go (because I knew that it starts directly after where the first one ends). I thought it was going to dance around around how Lara Jean felt after the conclusion of the first book, figure out how she felt about the whole thing, and then in the second half it would inevitably come to a conclusion. That seems to be a standard plotline for a Young Adult novel sequel. But NOPE! I was entirely wrong. What I thought would be the entire book wrapped up in basically the first few chapters of the book and then had an entirely different plot for the rest of it. A FAR better option that the one I envisioned. Things got back to normal pretty quickly, and I liked that. Generally Highschool Drama is either resolved quickly or not at all. True story. 

Speaking of Highschool Drama, this book made me glad I never dated in highschool (or, the adult equivalency, dated coworkers). When you have to remain in an environment where contact is inevitable, I wouldn't have wanted to deal with break ups, and exes. The constant pouring of salt in wounds doesn't really appeal to me. Genevieve is even more cowish in this novel that on many occassions I hoped that Lara Jean had some hidden ninja talents or something and would just punch her out (not really, that would have been lame for a plot, but if Lara Jean was me, I would have smacked her). Peter... ugh... just... Peter. I'll just say his actions had me zigzagging about what I wanted to happen with him, but I'm happy with how things turned out in the end with him. 

One of the highlights for me was this homemade game the group had that they played in middle school called Assassins. I LOVED reading about that stupid game. It seemed like SO much fun! If I had read this back then I would have totally tried to get some friends to play it. The only thing I wondered about is what would happen if you got your own name before the game was over.

It was a pretty tough go for me for a while there with sequels! This one has ended the sequel slump I was in! I really liked it and felt it was on par with the first. It was still that same silly, yet likely love life of a teenager. The Teen Rom Com of novels. Light, fluffy, and full of cheese. If you liked that in the first one, then definitely read this one!

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

This book has taught me that I need to read more Neil Gaiman. The man is an artist with words. The only other Neil Gaiman I had dabbled in was The Graveyard Book, and although it was good, it wasn't as good as this one. I've had a few recommendations for American Gods, Neverwhere, and Coraline... so those have been added to my very long "To-Read" list.... we'll get there eventually. I actually just had someone ask me if I had read American Gods yet... so... I really aught to do that.

I felt really connected with this book. Like, there were parts of this book where I felt that my heart actually hurt, not because it was particularly emotional for me as the reader, but more like when you are talking about lice and then your head itches. My heart hurt because the main kid's heart hurt... and because Gaiman is amazing. So fantastic.

I don't like to have spoilers in my reviews, so excuse the following extremely vague statements. I feel that they are worth mentioning, but I don't want to spoil any plot for anyone.

I love how great the grandmother relationship are in this book. Not even necessarily between Lettie and her Grandmother, but between her Grandmother and the main boy. It goes to show how great grandmothers (and grandpas too!) are and how much value they have in everyone's lives. Gaiman had this great line: "It was as if the essence of grandmotherliness had been condensed into the one place, at that one time" Beautiful.

I also loved the kitten the boy picked. If all cats were like her, I would probably want one. Allergies be damned!!

For the record, I HATE when author's don't name their main characters/narrators. I keep referring to "the boy" because he is never named. That drives me nuts. He has a name. Everyone does. So why are we not privy to that name? I struggle with writing reviews when I don't know the character's name. I feel like it never reads properly no matter how I frame a reference to him. Drives me crazy. UGH!

One of the greatest things I love about this book, and something that stands out from other books is how AMAZINGLY FANTASTIC the cover of this book is. This cover (as seen above) is so wonderful because it depicts an extremely important part of the book, but also manages to not contain any spoilers. It is a beautiful depiction of a stellar scene, but nothing will be spoiled by seeing it beforehand. If you read this book, you will not know the relevance of this cover until the very moment you are reading it. That cannot be said for many books. Any books that have covers created from scenes generally run a risk of spoilers, the Harry Potter Series comes to mind (the american covers are the WORST!), but this one? Nada. It is perfect.

I questioned at a few points in this novel whether it was an Adult novel or a Young Readers one, because the main character is a child, but there are a few scenes that could be a bit scary, but then there were also ones that seemed childish. It seems like it's a tough one to classify because it takes so many elements from different types of fiction. I think technically it's classified as Adult Fantasy, but I think I would classify it as Adult Fairy Tale, so if that seems like it might be your kind of book, this one might be for you.