Strong Opinions on Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

I would like to start off by saying Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was in no way a bad book. I just didn't really like it. I think this review says more about me than the book itself.

MEDY follows a high school senior named Greg: he's forced into the situation of comforting his ex girlfriend who has leukemia. However, the  main conflict of the novel is not that this girl, whom he forms an unlikely friendship with, has cancer, but that he is, in fact, an asshole. Greg S. Gaines doesn't understand life (or death) one bit.

 The book starts off with Greg breaking the fourth wall. He did this copious times in the book--a stylistic choice of Jesse Andrews that I wasn't very fond of. It felt like a cop-out, like Greg's informal tone was a joke to such a heavy-topic book. But then again, the entire book felt like a joke.

I at least expected Greg to prove us wrong and have a change of heart in the end. Which he sort of did, but he was still an jerk. Greg never appreciated his family, his friends, or Rachel. It took seeing Rachel on her deathbed for Greg to realize she was dying. I was unimpressed by his childlike behavior toward the whole situation, and silently appreciated Earl in my head when he beat him up in one of the final scenes.

I can't articulate how much it gets on my nerves that there was no point for this book. Greg doesn't take anything away from Rachel's death. The point of a story is growth and development, but there is little of that in this book. At times, it seemed to contradict itself, and Greg's story was incredibly jumbled. It felt like I was reading one of his films--it skipped around all the time, the characters were obnoxiously ungrateful and flat, and there truly was no plot. If this was Andrews' intention, then well done. But I felt like his novel was trying to be something it was not--witty and intelligent, but it felt abrasive and offensive.

The only thing preventing me from giving this book 1 star was the humor and the fact that it was a nice, fast paced read. But I still couldn't get into it, or connect with any of the characters.

Overall, I gave this book two stars. It had a lot of potential, and it was really funny in some parts, but I don't really understand the hype surrounding it. The best thing going for it was the relaxed contemporary style of the book (written in texts and script format), but the lackluster characters were unappealing to me throughout. Still, I'm interested in seeing the movie, hoping that it would fix my many problems with this book. Unfortunately, it was an underwhelming first read for the new year.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Book Review

I don't normally write reviews, but I also don't normally have such confusing feelings about a book.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs took me two days to complete. So I must have enjoyed it. I must have been entertained. Indeed, I feel that I was. But each time I picked it up, my head hurt a little bit. 

The story starts off normal enough with plenty of room to grow. Since it's the beginning of the book, and every book is different, I expect the plot to pick up as I got further in. In my opinion, I don't believe it did much. The middle was faster and more exciting, but I felt the beginning and even the end really dragged. 

*Spoiler,* but I didn't know this was going to be a time travel book. Which I didn't have an issue with, it just surprised me. I also didn't know this would be a book with magical birds, named an unpronounceable name. AGH. 

There were times where I waited for more information to be shared or revealed. I found this quite confusing, like pieces of important information were being left out of the story. Confusing things would happen, and Miss Peregrine would go on to explain something else entirely to Jacob, so I had trouble keeping up with the story. 

I didn't find many of the characters to be particularly likable. We didn't get the chance to know many of the peculiar uses very well. I don't like Miss Peregrine at all. Emma annoys me, Jacob's father's an ass, and Jacob is boring and sort of one dimensional. 

I enjoyed the book, though it was more plot driven than I tend to read, so hopefully there's character growth to be seen in Hollow City and Library of Souls. I like the premise a lot, but unfortunately the plot is kind of boring to me. 

I'm struggling to understand how I gave this a four star rating. Why did I read it so fast? Did I actually enjoy it? Am I just talking about the bad things right now?, leaving out all I liked about the book? 

I'd definitely give this book more of a three-and-a-half star rating. Again, I'm confused why it amused me so.