An Exploratory Novel with Intense Writing // REVIEW: All The Dirty Parts by Daniel Handler

Title: All The Dirty Parts
Author: Daniel Handler
Publication Date: August 29th 2017
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: Bloomsbury India (THANK YOU!)
Buy Links: Amazon IN || Barnes and Noble || The Book Depository || Wordery || Flipkart || Infibeam || Foyles || Waterstones || WHSmith || Kobo || Chapters Indigo || Google Books

Blurb Description: Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) delivers the eagerly anticipated companion piece to his award-winning bestseller Why We Broke Up--a gutsy, exciting novel that looks honestly at the erotic lives and impulses of an all-too-typical young man.
Cole is a boy in high school. He runs cross country, he sketches in a sketchbook, he jokes around with friends. But none of this quite matters, next to the allure of sex. "Let me put it this way,†? he says, "Draw a number line, with zero is, you never think about sex, and ten is, it's all you think about, and while you are drawing the line, I am thinking about sex.†?
Cole fantasizes about whomever he's looking at. He consumes and shares pornography. And he sleeps with a lot of girls--girls who seem to enjoy it at the time and seem to feel bad about it afterwards. Cole is getting a reputation around school--a not quite savory one--which leaves him adrift and hanging out with his best friend. Which is when something startling begins to happen between them--another kind of adventure, unexpected and hot, that might be what he's been after all this time. And then he meets Grisaille.
A companion piece to Handler's Why We Broke Up, the bestselling Michael J. Printz Honor novel, All The Dirty Parts is an unblinking take on the varied and ribald world of teenage desire in a culture of unrelenting explicitness and shunted communication, where queer can be as fluid as consent, where sex feels like love, but no one knows what love feels like. Structured in short chapters recalling Jenny Offill's Dept. of Speculation or Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever, the novel gives us a tender, brutal, funny, and always intoxicating portrait of an age in which the whole world is tilted through the lens of sex. "There are love stories galore,†? Cole tells us, "and we all know them. This isn't that. The story I'm typing is all the dirty parts.†?

The minute I read the synopsis of this book, I was intrigued, to say the very least. I’ve always thought that the more knowledge adolescents have about sex, the more informed decisions they can make about any matter relating to it.

Which is to say, I went into this expecting it to be something GOOD. I finished the entire book in little more than an hour and, at this point, I’M HONESTLY NOT SURE HOW TO REVIEW THIS BOOK AT ALL.

It wasn’t like anything I’ve ever read before and like the description promises, it was purely about sex, from the mind of a ‘horny’ teenager talking only about ‘All The Dirty Parts’ in a cut prose.

MY THOUGHTS:

1.       Despite the fact that the description of this book PROMISES that this isn’t a love story of any sort, and that it only contains all the dirty parts, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that I wanted something MORE from the main character in terms of character and development.

2.       I guess I didn’t want a love story, per se, but I wanted a little more of a STORY instead of just descriptions of sex.

3.       I really liked Daniel Handler’s writing style. I’ve seen Lemony Snicket on TV with family, but I haven’t actually read any of his books. It was definitely an interesting style of writing with broken, cut away prose that reads SOMEWHAT like verse, but isn’t. The writing DEFINITELY suited the plot of the book, and that made my reading experience that much better.

4.       The descriptions in this book were all kinds of crazy. At first, I was a little shocked at how graphic everything about this book was but I got over that. There was also a lot of diversity in terms of same sex relationships and a lot of experimentation which I really liked.

5.       Despite the fact that there WAS a same sex relationship, I absolutely HATED the way Cole treated his best friend. He honestly acted like a Grade A Dirtbag and I felt horrible for him.

6.       ALSO, CAN I HONESTLY TALK ABOUT HOW COLE’S MONOLOGUES AT THE ENDING CONFUSED ME? Because they did, and I STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT TO MAKE OF HIM.

I HAVE to give this book points for Originality and while it stayed true to its title and description I can’t help but with that there was a little more to Cole as a character. 3 stars. 

Daniel Handler is the author of the novels The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth, Adverbs and, most recently, the Michael J. Printz Honor-winning Why We Broke Up, a collaboration with noted illustrator Maira Kalman. He also worked with Kalman on the book Girls Standing on Lawns and Hurry Up and Wait (May 2015). Under the name Lemony Snicket he has written the best-selling books series All The Wrong Questions as well as A Series of Unfortunate Events, which has sold more than 60 million copies and was the basis of a feature film. Snicket is also the creator of several picture books, including the Charlotte Zolotow Award-winning The Dark, illustrated by Jon Klassen. His newest picture book is 29 Myths on the Swinster Pharmacy illustrated by Lisa Brown.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Handler attended Wesleyan University and returned to his hometown after graduating. He co-founded the magazine American Chickens! with illustrator Lisa Brown (with whom he soon became smitten), and they moved to New York City, where Handler eventually sold his first novel after working as a book and film critic for several newspapers. He continued to write, and he and his wife returned to San Francisco, where they now live with their son.

Have you read any of Daniel Handler's books? What did you think of them? 

Which one is your favourite?

Have you by any chance read All The Dirty Parts? What do you think of it?

I Expected More // REVIEW: Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy

Title: Ramona Blue
Author: Julie Murphy
Publication Date: May 9th 2017
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (Harper Collins)
Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: Harper Collins India (THANK YOU!)
Buy Links: Amazon IN || Amazon US || Amazon UK || Barnes and Noble || The Book Depository || Wordery || Snapdeal || WHSmith || Kobo || Books A Million || Chapters Indigo || Google Books

Blurb Description: Ramona was only five years old when Hurricane Katrina changed her life forever.
Since then, it’s been Ramona and her family against the world. Standing over six feet tall with unmistakable blue hair, Ramona is sure of three things: she likes girls, she’s fiercely devoted to her family, and she knows she’s destined for something bigger than the trailer she calls home in Eulogy, Mississippi. But juggling multiple jobs, her flaky mom, and her well-meaning but ineffectual dad forces her to be the adult of the family. Now, with her sister, Hattie, pregnant, responsibility weighs more heavily than ever.
The return of her childhood friend Freddie brings a welcome distraction. Ramona’s friendship with the former competitive swimmer picks up exactly where it left off, and soon he’s talked her into joining him for laps at the pool. But as Ramona falls in love with swimming, her feelings for Freddie begin to shift too, which is the last thing she expected. With her growing affection for Freddie making her question her sexual identity, Ramona begins to wonder if perhaps she likes girls and guys or if this new attraction is just a fluke. Either way, Ramona will discover that, for her, life and love are more fluid than they seem. 

I read Julie Murphy’s Dumplin over a year and a half ago, and I fell in love with Willowdean and her world. It was also my first review copy from an Indian publisher, and it will always hold a special place in my heart.

Which is why I had HUGE expectations for Ramona Blue, and it was one of the first book I started reading from my TBR that suddenly seems to have multiplied itself threefold.

The first two thirds of Ramona Blue was slow, to say the least. I like the message that the story was trying to convey but through the course of 400 pages, I struggled and I mean I really struggled to connect with all the characters.

I found myself bargaining in my head, how about just 50 more pages now? Well, come on, you can do 50 more and so on and the end result is that I simply didn’t enjoy it.

Let’s do a list of what I liked and didn’t:

1.       THE FLUID SEXUALITY: It was one of the highlights of this book for me. I love that no matter what, there were no labels being thrown around after Ramona noticed that she liked Freddie (apart from girls) romantically too. Being put under a label wasn’t a part of, or even a little bit, of what Ramona Blue was about and I absolutely love that.

2.       THE SWIMMNIG: I’m a swimmer. I used to do it competitively and although I gave that up a while ago, I know what it feels like when Ramona says that any workout feels only like the beginning. I love the water and I love that swimming was FINALLY incorporated in a Young Adult book is a serious way.

Things That Could Have Better:

  1.       THE PACE: Honestly, this book was SO SO SLOW. It has 430 pages of “self-discovery” but so much of it was filler. Like I said in the beginning, I kept bargaining with myself to read a few more pages, and eventually made it to the end.

Even the part where Ramona “realises” after 300 pages of being dead against it, to leave her home and pregnant sister and go to college is because her sister spites her and chooses to have her boyfriend in the OR instead of Ramona. It all felt so subpar.

  2.       THE CHARACTERS: Like I said, it was SUCH A STRUGGLE for me to connect with ANY of the characters. All of them felt like underdeveloped secondary characters and I didn’t feel anything for any of them. Occasionally, there was a fun scene like the time where everyone meets Adam’s parents but AAH I just couldn’t with any of them.

I love what this book stood for, I like the idea behind this book and I LOVE THE FACT THAT SEXUALITY WAS FINALLY PORTRAYED AS SOMETHING THAT COULD BE FLUID but that was all. Everything else about this book was subpar and I can only wish that I had connected with the characters. 3 stars. 

 Julie Murphy is a potty-mouthed Southern belle who was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, but found her home in Fort Worth, Texas. She’s never seen Star Wars, but has yet to meet a made for TV movie she didn’t love. When she’s not writing, Julie can be found cruising Costco for free samples, watching Sister Act 2, stalking drag queens on instagram, obsessing over the logistics of Mars One, and forever searching for the perfect slice of cheese pizza. She lives with her bearded husband, two vicious cats, and one pomeranian that can pass as a bear cub. DUMPLIN’ is her second young adult novel.

Here’s a link to a more serious and less nonsensical bio for grownup things.

Julie is represented by John Cusick of Folio Literary Management.

Have you read Side Effects May Vary, Dumplin' or Ramona Blue? What did you think of them and which one is your favourite?

Are you excited that Dumplin' is getting turned into a movie?

What are some of the best YA Contemporary books you've read this year?

I can't wait to hear from you <3!

A Very Important Read // REVIEW: If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo

Title: If I Was Your Girl
Author: Meredith Russo
Publication Date: Just 1st 2016
Publisher: Usborne Publishing
Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: Usborne Publishing (THANK YOU!)
Buy Links: Amazon UK || Waterstones || Foyles || WHSmith || Wordery || The Book Depository || Amazon US || Barnes and Noble || Google Play Store || Kobo

Blurb Description: Selected as the launch title for the Zoella Book Club.
'Important and brave. Read this wonderful book, just read it.' -- Jennifer Niven, author of All the Bright Places
Amanda Hardy is the new girl at school.
Like everyone else, all she wants is to make friends and fit in. But Amanda is holding back. Even from Grant, the guy she's falling in love with.
Amanda has a secret.
At her old school, she used to be called Andrew. And secrets always have a way of getting out.
A book about loving yourself and being loved for who you really are.

First, I cannot stress the IMPORTANCE of reading and writing more books like If I Was Your Girl. I read books to understand myself better AND to understand the people I’m different from, as well as be able to relate to what they’re saying when I do talk to them.

NO AMOUNT of diverse books that you read is ever enough, and you (and I) should always be looking out for our next read.

Second, I had HIGH EXPECTATIONS from this book, because of what it stands for and also the GREAT things I heard from people who had read it.

If I Was Your Girl is centred around a transgender main character and the new life she is attempting to build for herself after the hate and discrimination she faced in her last school, as well as her suicide attempt.

All Amanda’s plans for her senior year in a new city is to keep her head down, pass by unnoticed and not get killed. Until, that is, she walks into school and the boys make a beeline to date her and the girls want to be her friend, and Amanda’s days of hiding are over, and living have begun.

I liked and also had slight problems with the same aspects in the book, so here goes:

1.       WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT: Like I said before, I’M SO PROUD of what this book stands for. It handles a topic SO IMPORTANT to our society, that so many people go through and others should all support.

2.       GRANT:  He was an AWESOME SAUCE BOY. I loved when he burned the letter that Amanda gave him because nothing would stop him from liking Amanda – it just warmed my stone cold heard. Also, his home life and how he handled it all made me like him a whole lot more.

3.       BEE/ VIRGINIA: These were two of my FAVOURITE Secondary characters (despite the unmentionable horrible thing that Bee does) and I loved that they were both LGBTQIA as well! There were these amazing personalities and I instantly fell in love with their bold voices that flew off the page (unlike Amanda’s that took me a while to get used to!)

4.       THE SENSE THAT SOMETHING WAS MISSING: I’m going to try my best to explain this – but EVERY dialogue and relationship in this book felt like it was MISSING something. EVERYTHING about Amanda’s past was terrible and EVERYTHING about her new life was sunshine and rainbows. It felt like there was dialogue missing that made up the relationships in this book, missing backstory which I would have LOVED more of – just MISSING.

I’m not even sure if that makes sense, but I kept trying to see if there were pages in the middle that I missed out, because it all felt so abrupt. SO SO ABRUPT.

5.       THE LACK OF BACKGROUND: While Amanda’s past as Andrew was talked about in flashbacks – in a story like this I WOULD HAVE LOVED MORE. She kept making generalisations from how jocks like Parker were the kind that would “kill her” (?) and it sort of shocked me because WHAT. I then spent the rest of the book waiting for some backstory (and while I will admit Parker was a F**K) I didn’t read anything about a jock that wanted to kill her, which means it was just a STEREOTYPE IN A BOOK TRYING TO BREAK BARRIERS.  

Despite the problems I had with it, I would DEFINIELY recommend this book to EVERYONE because reading diverse books like this one are SO SO IMPORTANT, but I can’t help but wishing that it was a little better.

3 stars. 

MEREDITH RUSSO was born, raised, and lives in Tennessee. She started living as her true self in late 2013 and never looked back. If I Was Your Girl was partially inspired by her experiences as a trans woman. Like Amanda, Meredith is a gigantic nerd who spends a lot of her time obsessing over video games and Star Wars.

What was the last LGBT Book you read? What are some LGBT Books that I NEED to read?

Have you read If I Was Your Girl? What do you think of it?

A Deep, Different Novel // Mornings After by Tharun James Jimani

Title: Mornings After

Author: Tharun James Jimani
Publication Date: August 23rd 2016
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Part of a Series?: No, A Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: Bloomsbury India (THANK YOU!)
Buy Links: Amazon IN || Flipkart || Infibeam || 

Blurb Description: On the morning India woke up to the news of the gruesome assault on Nirbhaya, Sonya lay awake coming to terms with a nightmare of her own: If you place your safety in the hands of another, who is to blame for its consequences? Incited by the media post mortem of Nirbhaya that followed, Sonya gives up the security of corporate life and starts a feminist webzine instead. 
When a Bollywood matinee idol –‘Bhai’ to his devotees, and simply ‘The Torso’ to the media – expresses interest in promoting the launch of Sonya’s publication in exchange for a little whitewashing of his latest misogynist transgression, she is faced with the age-old question of just how far can one go till the end stops justifying the means? Thomas, her lover of a mere couple of months, suddenly burdened with contributing to food and lodging and Sonya, unable to apply her political stand to their abusive relationship, negotiate the fluidity and chaos of contemporary urban relationships in ways both familiar and unique. 

It’s really hard to find the right words to describe something out of the box.

It’s also really hard to describe something in a couple hundred words, when you needed to pause on every section of that something to soak it all in.

And by really hard, I mean I’m not sure I can quite capture the essence of Mornings After and deliver it to you, but I’m going to try.

I could give you just three words to describe this novel: intricate, intimate and highly introspective. 

Mornings After is a beautiful piece of literature that takes you deep into the minds of a couple in love, and helps you unravel the threads of thought and the mess of emotions in a highly modernized, free spirited world.

Truth be told, I was already sold when I heard this book was about sexual fluidity, rape and navigating modern relationships, I just didn’t expect Mornings After to also be a journey of two souls, learning to grow up and grow together, to fall in and out of love and most of all, to discover themselves.

Mornings After is a documentation of two souls in Bombay, India, that happened to run into each other. Sonya is a Business School graduate working a standard nine to five job, while Thomas is looking for inspiration. They’re different, and yet, it’s the Potential that attracts them to one another.

As they get to know each other, their relationship becomes something more meaningful and something more toxic, as only the people closest to us have the power to tear us down. They try and see if one will fit in the other’s pre-existing world and also if they can create a new one of their own together.

Then, the rape case that shook India, the Nirbhaya rape case, where a young medical student was brutally gang raped in a moving bus in New Delhi, and her friend severely beaten up as well, just as Sonya has a similar incident of her own sets in motion the need to quit her day job, and just Make a Difference.

Told with a beautiful writing style that I’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing before, Mornings After is all about modern relationships, and modern people – how they think, how they live, how they survive – and is also all about getting to know another person intimately. It’s about having the courage to do your own thing, to show the world who you really are, are learning every time you fall.

A Deep, Different Novel that you should be reading.

4 stars.

What was the last contemporary book you read? 

Do you have any recommendations for me that explore the themes that Mornings After does? I would LOVE to check them out. 

If you're looking for something YA, not Adult, I would recommend Louise O'Neill's Asking For It! 

Review: What We Left Behind by Robin Talley

Title: What We Left Behind
Author: Robin Talley
Publisher: MIRA Ink
Publication Date: October 22nd 2015
Part of A Series?: Standalone
I Got A Copy Through: Guardian Children's Books

Blurb Description: From the critically acclaimed author of Lies We Tell Ourselves comes an emotional, empowering story of what happens when love may not be enough to conquer all.

Toni and Gretchen are the couple everyone envied in high school. They've been together forever. They never fight. They’re deeply, hopelessly in love. When they separate for their first year at college—Toni to Harvard and Gretchen to NYU—they’re sure they’ll be fine. Where other long-distance relationships have fallen apart, theirs is bound to stay rock-solid.

The reality of being apart, though, is very different than they expected. Toni, who identifies as genderqueer, meets a group of transgender upperclassmen and immediately finds a sense of belonging that has always been missing, but Gretchen struggles to remember who she is outside their relationship.

While Toni worries that Gretchen won’t understand Toni’s new world, Gretchen begins to wonder where she fits in Toni's life. As distance and Toni’s shifting gender identity begins to wear on their relationship, the couple must decide—have they grown apart for good, or is love enough to keep them together?

**MY REVIEW**

I’ve never given much importance to gender, or sexuality or gender orientation on a personal level. I’m all for not following the standard norms of whom society says you should be, and if someone who was born male feels more comfortable female, who am I to judge them? If someone female is attracted to females, great for them, right? Like I said, I’ve always accepted that nobody is alike, and I have always been the Live and Let Live kind of person, but until What We Left Behind popped into my life, I never really understood how important all of it really is.

Neither the words ‘discovering a new gender identity’ nor the various combinations of the standard gender symbols on the cover clued me in onto what this book is really about, which I will get to later. What I was expecting, however, was a standard college separation story with peer pressure and new friends and trying to figure out how your significant other fits into the new world you’re a part of and the person you’re evolving into. Which is going to be my life very soon, as I go off to college and half my friends travel half the world away, and I felt like What We Left Behind would be a brilliant book to read at this point.

What I got however, was everything I expected and SO SO SO much more.

Meet Toni/ Tony/ Anatonia. Sexuality: Genderqueer. College: Harvard.

Meet Gretchen. Sexuality: Female. College: NYU (Previously, Boston University, but that’s not the point.)

They’re that high school couple. The ones most likely to make it, and make it together. They never fight, they’re perfect for each other, and they’re gorgeous, smart, and going to the same city. Most of all, they’re crazy for each other.

But college is a whole new life, and only the strongest survive.

“I hate pronouns. Why do we even need he and she? Neither one feels right. Why can’t everyone just use the same pronouns? Or if they have to be separated into categories – if our language absolutely needs multiple pronouns – why divide them up by gender? It’s so arbitrary. We might as well have different pronouns based on how old you are, or what your favourite colour is, or your astrological sign.”

Told in dual viewpoints, get ready to feel. Get ready to feel how terrible Gretchen feels as she changes their plan and heads off to New York. Get ready to feel what it feels like when the most important person in your life feels like you can’t understand what you’re going through. Get ready to feel the workload of college, get ready to make new friends.

Most of all, however, get ready to really feel what it’s like to not know who you are; to not be able to define who you are, gender oriented and otherwise, even if you already know who you are. Because that’s what reading Robin Talley’s What We Left Behind will do to you. Make you question, make you feel, and help you take your first step in understanding what it’s really like to not be black and white like society initially defined us to be.

What We Left Behind is the most beautiful coming of age novel I have ever read, filled with some of the most important questions our generation has to answer for themselves. I couldn’t recommend it more! – 5 stars!

Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn - ARC Review

Title: Firsts
Author: Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Publisher: St Martin's Griffin
Publication Date: January 5th 2016
Part of A Series?: No - Standalone:)
I Got A Copy Through: The Publisher via NetGalley

Blurb Description: Seventeen-year-old Mercedes Ayres has an open-door policy when it comes to her bedroom, but only if the guy fulfills a specific criteria: he has to be a virgin. Mercedes lets the boys get their awkward, fumbling first times over with, and all she asks in return is that they give their girlfriends the perfect first time- the kind Mercedes never had herself.

Keeping what goes on in her bedroom a secret has been easy- so far. Her absentee mother isn’t home nearly enough to know about Mercedes’ extracurricular activities, and her uber-religious best friend, Angela, won’t even say the word “sex” until she gets married. But Mercedes doesn’t bank on Angela’s boyfriend finding out about her services and wanting a turn- or on Zach, who likes her for who she is instead of what she can do in bed.

When Mercedes’ perfect system falls apart, she has to find a way to salvage her reputation and figure out where her heart really belongs in the process. Funny, smart, and true-to-life, FIRSTS is a one-of-a-kind young adult novel about growing up.

**MY REVIEW**

“Everyone’s a version of somebody else.”

A girl that does other girls the awkward favour of getting their boyfriends through their first times? Just so that (honestly) these girls she barely knows will have the best possible first time they could have – but with one catch – absolute discretion? In high school? 

First WOAH - I mean pretty original, right? And also, there’s no way that a secret like that doesn’t get out…

I’m always on the lookout for a Young Adult book with a new take on things, and Firsts definitely gave me one. The thing I wanted most from the book was for it to make me believe the story – for Laurie Elizabeth Flynn to make me believe the story she had written, and to understand everyone’s motivations in it. And while she did, while I definitely understood where Mercedes was coming from, she wasn’t the girl I thought she would be, after having the courage to do what she was doing. (Yes, I mean courage, because even if the sex was partially for her, she was also doing it with the intention of helping AND come on, would you? Do what she did that is?)

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t at all about the sex – that part (the why part) I completely understood – but more than anything, I felt like she spent the entire time feeling sorry for herself, and then trying to justify what she was doing, and then feeling sorry for herself again as she pushed the people who cared about her away. I mean, so what if sex is what gives her comfort? Why is that the worst thing in the world? Why is that a bad thing at all? Why is it so shunned? 

During some parts in the book, I felt like she understood what I was talking about – that sex itself was so regressed, nobody likes to talk about it, and no girl in the entire universe should want to do it, because she’s definitely a slut if she does. And then came the self-pity spirals. And then I lost her. Because Mercedes Ayres is a character that I can only describe at this point as someone BEGGING for attention (NOT because of the sex, because of what came after – what she said and did- not whom)

I guess, I just felt, that when dealing with a topic this sensitive, that the girl willing to help other girls because of what was inflicted onto her at such a young age would actually know why she was doing what she was doing and that she could own it, and not use it as an excuse to feel sorry for/ hate herself.

But SECOND, I admire that story. It took guts to write, and that gutsy writing made me feel like the characters were extremely gutsy as well. I liked the characters, especially Faye – who, coincidentally, is what I expected Mercedes to be – and Zach as well *swoon*

I’m not very sure if I explained what I felt with this book, but it’s way too fresh in my head to form anything more coherent…

In the end, however, I just think you should read this book because of the powerful message it manages to send across in the end!

3.75 Stars.