Nimona by Noelle Stevenson // Reviews

When Nimona applies as an assistant to Lord Blackheart, the villain of the city, his life gets complicated.

Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, YA

Publisher: HarperTeen

Publication Date: May 12, 2015

266 pages, paperback

series: –

Synopsis: Goodreads

I heard about this graphic novel here and there on Booktube and also on Instagram and after seeing this gorgeous cover, I knew I had to get it. The art style looked very familiar and now I know why: this is the same artist that designed the cover of Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell.

This graphic novel is based on a series of web comics, which I unfortunately know nothing about, but I definitely have to look those up.

This graphic novel was amazing. Basically everything about it was amazing! I could not find a single flaw (not that I was looking for it!) and I think that everyone who loves either fantasy or graphic novels or both, should read it.

The story was so much fun! It was set in a fantasy world, maybe comparable to medieval times, but with a touch of modern technology. There were knights and heroes and villains and kings and dragons and shapeshifters. What made the story itself really fun, was the fact that it was told (mostly) from the point of view of the villain of the story, who tries to overthrow the government, but the villain does not really want to be a villain. Very funny, very emotional and a lot of fun overall.

I loved the characters. First, the names of these characters were hilarious. Lord Ballister Blackheart, Sir Ambrosious Goldenloin and of course Nimona. Let that sink in and then tell me it is not funny.

Nimona is a shapeshifter and appears in the lab of the villain, Lord Blackheart, to apply and then directly start as his sidekick/assistant. Her back story was mysterious and didn’t really add up, but that doesn’t matter at first because she causes so much havoc and is so much fun to read about. What I also really liked was the fact that she was drawn as a plus size girl and she seemed to feel comfortable that way. That theme wasn’t elaborated, but it was still a nice aspect.

Lord Blackheart has become the villain of the town due to tragic circumstances in his past. He has lost an arm and now has a metallic one (pretty cool!) and does his best to be a ‘good’ villain. I really enjoyed his character and how conflicted he was between being a villain, but somehow still trying to be a good guy.

And of course we have the artwork, which was so so beautiful. I love this art style. It’s so pleasing to look at. The characters look adorable and everything was so colorful. I definitely need more of that art style in my life.

There were some aspects that were subtle, but still great to see in a graphic novel: the plus size main character, LGBTQ+ themes and a lot of feminism. I loved every aspect of it.

As you may have noticed, I really, really, really loved this graphic novel. Simply amazing!

Lying Out Loud by Kody Keplinger // Reviews

Sonny lies about almost anything and when she gets to know a boy, she wants to be honest, but accidentally lies to him and mayhem ensues.

I received this e-book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. My opinion is in no way biased.

Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult

Publisher: Hodder Children’s Books

Publication Date: July 2, 2015

309 pages, e-book

series: #2 in The DUFF companion series

Synopsis: Goodreads

As soon as I saw this book over at Netgalley, I knew I had to request it and I’m glad that I got approved. Prior to reading this, I prepared myself by reading The DUFF (review can be found here) to have the story and its characters fresh in my mind.

I loved the cameo appearances from Bianca and Wesley and how present they were throughout a lot of parts in the story and how this story was told from the point of view of Wesley’s little sister’s best friend, Sonny.

Sonny’s ‘thing’ has always been lying to everyone about everything to get out of tricky situations and to just make her life easier. Her family life is basically non-existent. She lives secretly in her best friend’s room because her mother kicked her out. The real reason why she doesn’t want to disclose, not even her best friend. I liked Sonny’s character and could really identify with her apart from the fact that she lies about being late to school, about her real reason why she doesn’t live at her own home and also about practically everything else. I knew that this web of lies would come crashing down on Sonny some time throughout the story and I was right.
I just don’t think that lying is the best way to deal with everything. But this definitely left room for character development and character growth and I liked how Sonny changed throughout the story.

Amy, Sonny’s best friend and Wesley’s little sister, was more on the quiet side. She was always polite and also somewhat shy. At the beginning it seemed like there was no personality behind that character. But after reading more of her I definitely saw potential and I wasn’t disappointed in the end. Amy is caring and does seem like a yes-person at the beginning of the story. No depth, no real reason for her to be there as a character except for building a story with Sonny as the main character. But I soon realised that Amy wasn’t as shallow a character as I thought. That was just her way. Like Sonny had her lying, Amy had her quietness and she also had feelings and her own opinion and I even liked her character development more than that of Sonny.

Then we have Ryder. I didn’t know what to think of him at first. He seems like a massive a-hole at first, full of himself. But as Sonny got to him, I got too as a reader. I understood why he did certain things and why he was the way he was. But overall I just feel indifferent towards him and his character.

What I really could not stand was that Sonny used Amy and made her look bad to be with Ryder. I think this is something a friend should never do.
I really enjoyed the theme of how important friendship is in this book and how actions like these can also ruin it and are not that easy to mend and maintain.

As I already said, I really liked the cameo appearances of Bianca and Wesley, especially that of Wesley. He was not only a great big brother to Amy, but also to Sonny. I loved the advice he gave her and how he tried to bring Sonny out of her shell and to finally tell the truth.

The story was, as in The DUFF, easy to follow and I loved the setting at Hamilton High. I really have to get my hands on a copy of her other books as they are set in that same small town, as far as I know.

Overall I really enjoyed this story and this “lesson” it teaches on why someone should not go through life lying about practically everything. The ending was satisfying and not everything was wrapped up in a bow, which I really enjoyed and what made the story more realistic for me.

The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight by Jennifer E. Smith // Reviews

Hadley misses her flight to London, meets Oliver and has to be ready for her father’s wedding with another woman in just about ten hours.

Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult

Publisher: Headline

Publication Date: May 24, 2012

215 pages, paperback

series: –

Synopsis: Goodreads

This was a cute read, but there were definitely a few things I had problems with.

Hadley, our main character, misses her flight by mere minutes and is stuck at the airport. She has to take a later flight, which makes her almost late to a wedding she has to go to. Her father’s wedding with another woman in a foreign country.
I understood how Hadley was confused and angry at her father for leaving her and her mother. First, for a different country (Great Britain) and then for another woman (the “affair”). Although I did understand that she felt betrayed and hurt and felt sorry for herself and to see her mother devastated at first. But still wishing her parents would somehow end up together? I just found that a bit too juvenile for my taste.
There was also that missing authenticity for Hadley’s character growth. From resenting her father for marrying another woman to accepting everything and even liking that new couple in a matter of two days felt simply unbelievable to me.

Oliver is the boy Hadley meets at the airport, who is seated right next to her on the flight to London. I liked Oliver’s character. He was fun to read about and he wasn’t one-dimensional. He seemed to have depth. His character didn’t really grow throughout the story, but that was alright, as this was Hadley’s story. He had business to attend to in London as well and while waiting for the flight and on the flight itself Hadley gets to know Oliver and they seem to have that “connection”.

I wouldn’t say that they fell in love, it was more like they knew they had this chemistry and that more could happen in the future. So why not try it out?
Overall the romance was more cute than cheesy and I really enjoyed reading about their relationship.

What I just couldn’t deal with was that Hadley thought her father would break off his wedding and go back to his old life as if nothing had happened. Does anyone believe that this is a possibility? Maybe a five-year-old to seven-year-old. But a teenage girl? Reading those parts annoyed the hell out of me and made me think that maybe I’ve outgrown YA already and that in turn made me sad because I don’t want to outgrow the YA genre.

The writing made me feel rather detached to the characters. I couldn’t connect with them and what made matters worse was the length of the book. More pages could have made the story feel a bit more completed and maybe there would have been more time to connect with the characters and explain some things thoroughly.

Overall I enjoyed this cute read, but there were just a few things that just didn’t sit right with me and I cannot justify a higher rating. It was an okay read for me.

The DUFF by Kody Keplinger // Reviews

Bianca’s life takes a turn when Wesley calls her the Designated Ugly Fat Friend.

Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult

Publisher: Poppy

Publication Date: June 7, 2011

277 pages, paperback

series: #1 in The DUFF companion series

Synopsis: Goodreads

Trigger warning: slut-shaming, sexual content

This is another re-read for the year and I really enjoyed re-reading it. My first review of this book can be found here.

To be honest, I never heard of this term before reading this book. It’s humiliating and degrading and kids these days can be just so cruel. I understood that Bianca felt uncomfortable because of this one word and that she resented Wesley for it.

Bianca is a normal seventeen-year-old girl, who has two great best friends and a family that is on the verge of collapsing. She is swamped with school work, with keeping the house clean and with keeping her family life a secret. This burden brings her to kiss Wesley, the school “man-whore”, to forget things for a while and to relax. They start having a secret affair and things go awry when Bianca starts developing feelings for Wesley.

Wesley was, except for being rude to Bianca at the beginning by calling her the “DUFF”, quite a nice guy. He had family issues that he tried to hide from everyone as well.

I also liked Bianca’s friends, Casey and Jessica. They were both pretty, but that didn’t mean anything to them. They were worried about Bianca’s well-being and wanted to have fun and also to have fun together as friends.

There was some slut-shaming in this book, yes. But! I think that the way the author dealt with slut-shaming and man-whoring was done quite well. There was a lot of “Wesley is a man-whore because he slept with a lot of girls from school” and also a lot of “I [Bianca] am a slut for sleeping with Wesley. If he’d be my boyfriend then that’d be okay”. To say these things or to think these things from Bianca’s point of view might have been not right. But throughout the story she understands that no one deserves to be called a slut or a whore because of this or that. It’s something that society as a whole has decided some time or another that being like this or doing that gives that person the right to call another one slut/whore. No! Of course it does not and I liked how Bianca came to realise that.

The family problems were a lot to deal with and although I wanted to scream at Bianca and shake her so that she realises that she cannot hide things forever and that she does need help, I also understood why Bianca felt unable to do or say something. She was seventeen in this story and I probably wouldn’t have known what to do in her situation.

The writing was easy to get through and I enjoyed being back at Hamilton High, re-reading this story. I also read a bit about the author and found out that she published the story when she was seventeen (!!). That’s a big accomplishment, Kody Keplinger. It definitely is and I’m amazed by this talent at such a young age.

Overall, I highly enjoyed the story, the writing, the problems that were discussed throughout the story and I also liked the characters, especially Wesley. I have to say that he definitely deserves a place on my list as one of my fictional boyfriends.

Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins // Reviews

Lola is happy, has a rockstar boyfriend and is a costume designer. Everything is great until the Bell twins move back to the house next door and everything changes.

Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult

Publisher: Speak

Publication Date: September 28, 2011

338 pages, paperback

series: #2 in the Anna and the French Kiss companion trilogy

Synopsis: Goodreads

After reading Anna and the French Kiss on my vacation, I thought it was finally time to get to the next book in this companion trilogy.

I was mesmerized by this story. I loved, loved, loved it!

Lola is that one character that I always wanted to be when I was her age or even a bit younger. She is artsy and dresses up differently every day of the week. This gave her character such a unique and loveable note. Although she didn’t always see what was good for her or didn’t realise it until a much later point. She was stubborn and always focused on one thing/person in particular, so that she did neglect her best friend amongst other things/people. But she was also quirky and funny and a loving character, so I still loved her because everything about her behaviour seemed somewhat plausible and never unrealistic. There was also some character development going on, so her “bad” traits did even out somewhat and she began to understand what consequences her behaviour had on others.

The storyline is similar to Anna: girl has boyfriend, girl falls in love with the boy next door. But somehow I loved this book even more as the first book.

Cricket has just so much more potential to become my fictional boyfriend 😀
He was a thinker and an engineer. He was so nice and adorable and I couldn’t help but fall in love with him alongside Lola.
Although he wasn’t the flawless boy I make him look like. He also made mistakes in the past which cost him his friendship with Lola, but he changed and he wants to make up for it.

The boyfriend, Max, on the other hand I could not stand from the beginning. He was such a douchebag and I could literally see how he practically dragged Lola down with his negativity, his groupies, his rockstar ego. Blegh. Unfortunately Lola still saw him through rose-colored glasses. I didn’t like him and, like her parents, I didn’t trust and I didn’t like him much.

The parents were amazing! Lola’s parents were two gay men which I have never read about before. Two men raising a teenage girl. I thought it was amazing that this LGBTQ aspect was brought into the story. Both Andy and Nathan were such great role models for Lola and I really liked how one father was more strict and the other more soft when it got to parenting.

I also enjoyed that Anna and Étienne made more than one appearance in the story and that they were friends with Lola. It was great to see both characters out of school, now at an age where they went to college.

Again, the setting was amazing! San Francisco seems like such a magnificent city that I now want to desperately visit it!

I cannot wait to read Isla now. I hope it is just as good as this one!