In this case, they are helpful.
This is my blog, otherwise known as my dumping grounds for anything I can put into words (book reviews that no one asked for, story ideas and/or excerpts, life updates, et cetera). Whether you are a newcomer or someone who has stuck with me for a long time, sit back with a cup of tea and enjoy. Welcome!
Eight Highly Offensive Yet Hilarious Jokes (80%)
There’s this stupid trend of YouTubers thinking they has struck gold in their blossoming channel of a couple million, which leads them to basically write a memoir about their life and successes. When these people haven’t even hit middle aggedom. And the first person I can remember starting this “wonderful” trend is Shane Dawson. I became a fan of his back when he was making parodies. My friend loved them and thought I would too, which was correct. I think my first video was his parody of Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night.” I don’t think I ever subscribed but I came back to see more of his work. That was until he started uploading videos to his vlog channel. I guess once I saw more of his life outside of the wigs, heavy makeup and questionable taste in humor, I was hooked and gave him a subscriber. I know a lot of people gave him hate for ditching the wigs, makeup and skits, but it was nice seeing that second side of him. Anyway, to the book. There’s really nothing wrong with it, regardless of everything i said before. I’m vibe with the short essay style, mostly because I really sounds like he wrote it. I’m in love with the way he speaks since it’s real and raw. No awkward third person narrator trying to facade as Shane, though many of these YouTuber “memoirs” (which haven’t read because I don’t support that crap) do that. The stories were funny and I never felt that I was faking laughter. I was also hooked, not Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda level, since I wanted to return the book to my friend before the weekend. With all these praise, I must do my job and provide feedback. Shane gets very, very detailed with some pretty nasty NSFW comments on other characters in the book and himself, which I really didn’t need to know, and yet didn’t ruin my experience reading the book. Kind of like the way I feel about listening to Nicki Minaj and other rappers drop a couple of slurs. I know that Shane has a lot of fears, but commas shouldn’t be one of them. They help give my inner voice and eyes a respite in the sentence, so it doesn’t become a run-on. I mean it can be annoying, but it reads better to have those breaks. I found myself questioning the grammar of the sentence because there was no comma separating the dependent clause from the independent I also found a typo, where there wasn’t a period. I’d recommend for anyone who is or isn’t a fan of Shane Dawson. You’ll like it and him a little more. Good job.
Seven Broken Hearts (30%)
I have words for you, Becky. I didn’t like this book, which had some stupidly big shoes to fill after they were handed down by Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda. She didn’t quite fit in them, obviously, so she made up for it by dropping subtle hints about the books being related. Except these subtle hints were about as subtle as Zendaya and Zac Efron being the faces of a movie they weren’t even the main focus of. That’s the only reason why I picked up the book, if we’re being honest, which is pretty sad as an independent work of literature. Molly’s cousin is Abby from Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda, and that didn’t quite latch on in my brain until the those five letters appeared. Yes, Simon was name dropped. Not once, but more than enough times. Way more than enough times. I didn’t need to be constantly reminded who your older brother is. You should be able to live up to your own standards, not your brother’s. That wasn’t the only point of dissatisfaction. The characters, even the non-teenage characters, sounded fake. Yes, they aren’t real people but it should feel like Molly is some kid at your high school or your neighbor. The writing and especially the dialogue tried too hard to sound like “an average teenager.” No seventeen year old would say “hell yes” or that something is “unfair” instead of “stupid.” It felt like I was reading a narrative told by a teenager who was puppeteered by a thirty-something year old who has never heard teens speak. She was trying too hard to sound “hashtag relatable” instead of making real characters that you could sympathize with and not cringe at. I found myself laughing while Molly or Cassie were crying or mad at each other, not only because I’m an actual sadist, but also because I couldn’t understand why they felt that way. I didn’t find any emotion they had “hashtag relatable.” There were some good things about this book, though. The scenarios dealing with love were… eerily well written. I believed all those feelings the adolescent girls and guys were experienced, and I wondered whether or not she was noting down events that were unfolding in my own life… spooky and good. I wished that she would have put the big reveal of this books significance in the Simon-verse at the very end of the book, and subtly hint at the relevance. I’m not sure if people who love Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda would like this, so I’d recommend this book to a twelve year old, but there are some low key high key cringy sex scene. Therefore, if you think it’s okay to expose a child to that, you do you.
Once summer dawned, marking the end of my first year at college, I found myself not just at home, but also in Target. Specifically, sitting on the ground of the book section, skimming the backs of YAs for some summer reading. I was about to be in a creative writing class for the first time in a while and my well of creativity was dry. I don’t normally write lovey, sappy things, but they do inspire. I settled on a sequel of one of my favorite books from that semester and was less than satisfied with what I just read. Instead of closing that chapter and filing it away on my bookshelf, never to be opened again, I opened a Google Doc on my school account and started writing down my opinion of said book. It was heated, and I jokingly called it the following:
I could have changed it at any point, but it stuck and long titles were I guess cool to me at the time. Dunno. But anyway, what started as a way to share my feelings anonymously slowly made its way mainstream to my various friends group and then lead to me sharing a couple of them to my study abroad program. Feedback seemed positive, so I guess they are more or less public now.
A few notes: 1) There are some spoilers, not explicitly, but they are there to enhance the review. 2) These are my opinions and I am allowed to have them. If you happen to really love a book that I didn’t, that’s fine because we shouldn’t all think the same. Not here to judge. 3) These are fun lil blurbs into how I read and what I see when I read, so enjoy them and don’t take my review on a book too seriously.
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