Review: Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten

Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

June barely has time to mourn the death of her best friend Delia, before Delia’s ex-boyfriend convinces her Delia was murdered, and June is swept into a tangle of lies, deceit, and conspiracy.

I’d like to thank YA Love Magazine for running the competition in which I won my copy of Suicide Notes From Beautiful Girls.

I probably wouldn’t have bought this book myself, although I did end up really enjoying it – the title is a little morbid and I was a little scared that people would think that I was considering suicide! The UK Cover is also dark so adds to the morbidness of this book.

SNFBG is written primarily from June’s perspective, a typical high school girl with a typical high school boyfriend. A year prior to the beginning of the story, ‘something’ happened which led her friendship with her best friend, Delia, to come to an end. Now, Delia is found, burned to death in her stepfather’s shed. Initially it seems to be a straight-forward suicide, but as June reaches out to Delia’s new friends who have their own suspicions about what really happened, she starts to believe that there’s more to Delia’s death than meets the eye.

The perspectives in the book are really clever – with current events written in the present tense and flashbacks in the past tense, and the multiple perspectives are used really well.

The book could easily be split into two sides – the first half of the book is much more linear, whereas the second half is full of twists and turns with a shock ending. This definitely kept me reading – I simply had to find out what happened in the end.

On the ending, it takes a little thinking to figure out what actually happened – which isn’t necessarily bad, but there are a few plot points which are a little frayed, that is it’s a little too difficult to make out what actually did happen. A few characters are left at an end, and if I had to make any changes to the book, I’d personally resolve the book a little more wholly – and I’d ramp up the toxic relationship between June and Delia a little more. Their relationship is hinted at throughout the novel, but nothing really seems to come of it.

I really think this book is a great addition to any YA bookshelf – it’s different to most of the YA fodder out there, and the ending is delightfully unpredictable.

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Have you read this book, or are you planning to? What did you think? Comment or tweet me @annalisebooks 🙂

Annalise x

Review: Only Ever Yours

Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Only Ever Yours was a book that I hadn’t heard of before I attended YALC. Then I was bombarded with praise for this book – including a full page spread in the YALC flyer – and within 48 hours I was on the tube to Foyles on Charing Cross Road to get myself a copy.

This is a debut novel which has won both the YA book prize and the Sunday Independent Newspaper Novel of the Year. It’s got to be good, right?

The novel revolves around Freida, who attends a school which trains women to go into one of three professions: companions (the perfect wife for a man of high standing), concubines, or chastities (teachers at the school). Freida, and her best friend, Isabel, are two of the most highly rated girls at the school, and surely destined for roles as companions… until Isabel distances herself during their final year and puts on weight. The novel details the last year of their schooling, including the arrival of the ten future husbands eager to choose a wife (and the destinies of these girls).

The girls have all been bred for sex, and independent thought is discouraged. They all have eating disorders. Essentially the girls in the book are all the same, with minor physical tweaks to make them differentiable. A slight problem here is that there are a lot of characters, of which only a small minority undergo any character development. The worthlessness of these girls is reinforced throughout the novel, to the point where the women aren’t even deserving of a capital letter in their name (a really poignant stylistic choice).

It’s depressing but it’s also brilliantly written and thought-provoking. This is the kind of book which you hate, but you understand why it’s been written how it’s written and the point it’s trying to make. The ending is inspired (and definitely worth the read), and even though it’s a little abrupt, it’s also perfect.

I would recommend this book, if not only because it isn’t a rehash of every other YA novel on the market. It has important things to say regarding the way society works today and the impossible beauty standards girls aspire to. It depicts realistic sex, it talks about periods and it discusses homosexuality (and its eradication in this world so that all women serve men). Those are topics which are completely relevant in YA but which hardly ever feature – and it’s important that they DO feature. The main heartbreak in the novel is one between friends, which is often way more relatable than having your heart broken by the most perfect guy/vampire/werewolf/alien on the planet.

After this brilliant debut, I can’t wait for Louise O’Neill’s second novel, Asking For It, which, refreshingly, isn’t a sequel. (Hooray for a stand-alone YA novel!)

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Annalise x

Review: Forever by Judy Blume

Forever by Judy Blume

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Forever is a story about a teenager’s first love and first time (having sex). Katherine and Michael are two older teenagers who meet, hit it off, and start dating. He wants to have sex with her, she’s not entirely sure if she wants to, but then she agrees and they do it. There are no horrific consequences – she doesn’t get pregnant, she doesn’t catch an STD, and she doesn’t die – and this is what sets it apart from other books depicting this kind of story (at least at the time it was published).

The story is a fairly realistic depiction of teenage romance – actual teenage romance without a paranormal element and rainbows and fireworks if and when the main characters have sex. There are scenes where both main characters acquire contraception – something a lot of YA writers leave out, because it ruins the romance of it all. This is where the book really excels – and why it is still a bestseller today – it’s realistic. There’s premature ejaculation and awkwardness and the whole ‘making-a-big-deal-of-it-all’ aspect of high school. Katherine and Michael are not soulmates (although they believe it at the time) and their relationship doesn’t even last the summer. Sure, there are people who marry their first boyfriend and live happily ever after, but it just isn’t the norm in real life (although it seems to be in YA). Michael’s had sex before, and I’d love to see more of this in fiction – real, experienced characters, especially girls. Every YA heroine seems to be an innocent virgin, and every villain is a sexually promiscuous bad girl – and it only reinforces slut-shaming and the idea that once you’ve had sex your personality miraculously changes.

The whole story is pretty progressive. Kath’s parents would rather have her having sex at home that god-knows-where, and her grandmother sends her pamphlets on all-sorts of relevant information – abortion and contraception. There’s a character questioning his sexuality and experimenting. There’s an attempted suicide, due to said questioning. It’s only disappointing that, forty years after this book was first published, so much of the story is relevant today. Teenagers are still having sex (shock horror), but there’s still controversy around non-heterosexual characters, abortion, and even just sex in general in YA fiction. In Kath’s world, there is no shame over having sex, using contraception, having an abortion – they’re seen as sensible, responsible choices. Unfortunately we don’t live in that world just yet.

Forever is known for being teenage girls’ first read of realistic sex. The topics involved (and the age of the main characters) suggest this book is for older girls, but the writing style is simplistic, and I almost felt a little too old to be reading it. The whole plot seems a little undercooked – at only 200 pages long, I would have happily read a book with a bit more padding. Some really interesting sub-plots are touched on briefly – Sybil’s hidden pregnancy, Jamie’s first experiences of love, and Artie’s possible homosexuality – which really would have brought the book into its own had they been expanded on. I think the tone and style of the book is really a remnant of the era in which it was first published – it reminds me a lot of the books I read published in the 1980s and 1990s, like Animal Ark and The Babysitters Club, rather than the high-octane paranormal fantasy romances that dominate YA today.

Ultimately, this is a book written to teach girls about safe, realistic sex. It more than achieves in that aim – and it’s a testament that girls are still reading it today. If it was a little longer, maybe those who don’t normally read, wouldn’t bother to read it.

I would kind of love to see a new Forever on the market though – a cult bestseller written today that portrays sex and being a teenager realistically. I’d also like to see a book that touches on the same theme but is aimed at boys – Forever is told through a girl’s perspective (as many YA novels are), and I’d be interested to read something from the other side for once!

(Also, my 2015 copy has a lovely design (a simple cherry) which isn’t as cheesy as some of the others and has red gilded edges)

Did you enjoy Forever? Do you have any recommendations? Tweet me at @annalisebooks or comment below 🙂

Annalise x

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