Review: To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before #1) by Jenny Han

Book Title: To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before (To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before #1)

Author: Jenny Han

Publish Date:  April 15th, 2014

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers 

Genre: YA Contemporary

Series: Book 1 in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before duology

Book Link: Goodreads

Purchase Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository

Synopsis from Goodreads:

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the story of Lara Jean, who has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister’s ex-boyfriend, Josh. As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that something good may come out of these letters after all.

Disclaimer: library book.

Review:

This BOOK! I am going to be gushing about it all the way through this review so it may be a really short review or it could be really long. It was perfection all the way through. The writing was beautiful, the characters were well developed and gahhhh, this book was everything I want every other book to be. It was my first Jenny Han book which really makes me realize I need to read all of her books. Especially if they are this fabulous.

I thought for sure the romance would be my favorite part of the book but it wasn’t. My favorite parts all had to do with Lara Jean and her sisters and their dad. Very rarely are single dads portrayed in YA books and especially single dads with only daughters. Throw in the fact that the sisters are half Korean and you’ve really got a wonderfully unique book that will definitely appeal to all sorts of readers.

I loved Lara Jean. She was flawed, which is one thing I really love in books. She’s human, she makes mistakes. She fell for her older sister, Margot’s boyfriend for goodness sake. She’s not great in the kitchen, but she’s working on it. 

I didn’t feel like I really got to know Margot as well as  I wanted to, but I think that was mostly because she wasn’t in the book a whole heck of a lot. But I do feel like I got to know her through Lara Jean and Kitty and even through Josh, her ex boyfriend. 

Kitty was an awesome kid and it took me back to remembering how badly I wanted a sister growing up. Kitty was vastly different from her older sisters. She was more outgoing and less reserved than both Margot & Lara Jean were.

Now with the boys, I found myself loving one of them at the beginning and hating the other one. By the time the book ended, my feelings had completely reversed. Talk about confused. I totally understood how Lara Jean could feel confused and conflicted. It made sense to me given all she knew about both boys.

There was definitely more than met the eye with this book. I LOVED this book. I loved that so much focus was on family and despite what the synopsis said, this book didn’t focus as much on the boys as I was expecting. I mean, the boys were there but Lara Jean’s family played such major roles in this book which was what really made me fall in love with it. 5 stars to this book. It’s definitely something you should pick up if you haven’t already.

Review: Far From You by Tess Sharpe

Book Title: Far From You

Author: Tess Sharpe

Publish Date: April 8th, 2014

Publisher: Disney Hyperion

Genre: YA Contemporary Mystery

Standalone

Book Link: Goodreads

Purchase Links: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, The Book Depository

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Sophie Winters nearly died. Twice.

The first time, she’s fourteen, and escapes a near-fatal car accident with scars, a bum leg, and an addiction to Oxy that’ll take years to kick. 

The second time, she’s seventeen, and it’s no accident. Sophie and her best friend Mina are confronted by a masked man in the woods. Sophie survives, but Mina is not so lucky. When the cops deem Mina’s murder a drug deal gone wrong, casting partial blame on Sophie, no one will believe the truth: Sophie has been clean for months, and it was Mina who led her into the woods that night for a meeting shrouded in mystery.

After a forced stint in rehab, Sophie returns home to a chilly new reality. Mina’s brother won’t speak to her, her parents fear she’ll relapse, old friends have become enemies, and Sophie has to learn how to live without her other half. To make matters worse, no one is looking in the right places and Sophie must search for Mina’s murderer on her own. But with every step, Sophie comes closer to revealing all: about herself, about Mina and about the secret they shared.

Disclaimer: This is a library book.

Review:

I had my eye on this book for months and when I got my new library card, I immediately put a hold on this book. I had heard nothing but amazing things about it and I could not wait to get my hands on it. It was totally amazing, unputdownable, fabulous mystery mixed in with friendship and romance. It was fast paced and it kept me guessing all the way through.

The timeline actually worked for me. I liked how it bounced around from present time to past time. It filled in a lot of the gaps that I would have had without the flashbacks. We got to see the characters in different lights. We got to see how Mina and Sophie fell in love. We got to see Mina’s struggle with wanting to be herself in front of her family, but also fearing the consequences of it. We got to see how Sophie’s addiction started, which was probably my favorite subplot of the story.

When we first meet Sophie, she’s nearing the end of her stay in a rehab facility. It’s been 4 months since her best friend was murdered right in front of her. Sophie has been dealing with addiction since she was fourteen years old, after a terrible car accident that left her in constant pain. But she shouldn’t have been at Seaside. At the time of her best friend’s death, she had been clean and sober for 10 months.

None of that mattered to her parents. Especially when they found a bag full of drugs in her jacket pocket the night of the murder. Her parents, the detectives, even her friends won’t listen to her. That was incredibly hard for me to read. My heart ached for Sophie. She had just lost her best friend and now her parents refused to believe she was clean. Not only that, but they were sending her off to a rehab facility. 

So many things happened in this book. So many difficult things were talked about in it, In true mystery book form, there were twists and turns, none of which I saw coming. And there was a romance, although it was more like a love square. It was complex, but interesting to see how Sophie interacted with Kyle & Trev. It was interesting to see that the secret Sophie and Mina shared was not quite as secret as they thought it was.

Sophie’s relationship with her aunt Macy was awesome to see. We don’t see extended family much in YA novels so I was excited to see Macy make several appearances. Especially since she was the one who helped get Sophie clean. I actually wanted to see more of Macy because I thought she was a great character.

This book was nearly perfect, so I’ll be giving it four and a half stars. I can’t quite figure out why I can’t give it the full 5 stars. I just know that I need to buy my own copy of this book whenever I can afford it. I cannot wait to see what the author writes next.