Little Stories

Ellie O’Neil is a normal seventeen-year-old girl, who lives in a small town in Maine and dreams about going to a prestigious poetry program at Harvard, that is in till she accidentally receives a misguided email about a pig named Wilbur that needs to go for a walk. Out of concern for Wilbur she replies to the mysterious email and the two strike up a conversation. Little does she know she is talking to the world famous teen heartthrob Graham Larkin. After months of correspondence the two enter in to what would be a relationship if only they knew each other’s names, but Graham does know what town she lives in and works to get his newest movie filmed their, he succeeds (shock).  Upon his arrival in the small town of Henley Ellie’s entire world is turned upside down. She has to choose if the love she feels for Graham is worth bringing up her mothers torrid past and thrusting herself in to the spot light, she has the biggest fight she’s ever had with her best friend, and to top it all off she’s still a thousand dollars short for that poetry program.  Graham’s life is no picnic either since arriving in small town Maine. First he goes on a date with the wrong girl and then he finds the right one, he becomes more aware of the fractured relationship between him and his parents, he is increasingly aware of his eternal loneliness, and to top it all off the mysterious girl he fell in love with over email may not want to be with him because of his constant spot light.

This is What Happy Looks Like is a great summer read, its perfect for the beach or those lazy summer days spent by the pool or that road trip your parents force you on. Its lighthearted and funny filled with romance and friendship and the relationship teen’s share with their parents. I love this book it made me smile and laugh (there were some very awkward moments in public because of this) and it just put me in a really happy mood. The writing is witty and fast paced. I highly recommend. 

Hero by Alethea Kontis. Hero is the second book in the Woodcutter Sisters series, the first is Enchanted which I read in early 2013. Hero follows the adventures of Saturday Woodcutter, who is the sixth daughter of Jack and Seven Woodcutter. Unlike her six sisters and three brothers, she doesn’t have any special abilities. She is completely normal, taller, bigger and more clumsy then other girls and she is good with an axe as well as a sword, but other wise she is completely normal. Her name day gift was even an axe that magically turned in to a sword at the end of Enchanted.

Saturday’s story really begins when she “breaks the world”. After news that Seven’s sister, Snow White, and Trix’s mother is dead, Seven makes arrangements to leave for Rose Abbey immediately but before she can Trix puts them all under a sleeping spell and right before Saturday falls asleep she throws the ornate mirror that Thursday sent her conjuring up an ocean in the backyard. When Saturday comes to she becomes distraught that she broke the world and may have injured her brother. She becomes determined to find Trix to make sure he is okay; so with her pirate queen sister and her mother she sets of on a great adventure, but her adventure takes a turn when she is captured by a gigantic bird that deposits her in a cave at the top of the world where she meet Peregrine, the son of an earl turned daughter of a witch. Peregrine and Betwixt a magical creature that can change forms, help Saturday kill the witch and fight a dragon all while saving the world and maybe falling in love.

 I absolutely loved this book. I’m a big sucker for fairy tales and the retelling of fairy tales and the Woodcutter Sisters series has to be one of my favorites, not only because Kontis retells fairy tales but because she mixes them to create a new story. Although I don’t relate to Saturday as much as I related to Sunday I still loved her character. I loved that Kontis made Peregrine more feminine and Saturday more masculine ad switched the roles up, it made the story all the more compelling. If you haven’t read this series I highly recommend. 

Self proclaimed fat girls rejoice! As a girl that has always been on the bigger side of things and a girl who grew up in Texas I relate to this novels in ways I never though possible. I mean lets face it I have read hundreds of books over the years and non of the heroines in those novels are even close to being described as looking like me. Everything about Julie Murphy’s Dumplin’ is funny, heartfelt and painfully honest; from chub rub to bathing suit anxiety to feeling confident till the moment someone shows interest. I relate to Will’s journey because its a journey I have been on my entire life. Coming to terms with the way our body looks, especially in comparison to others, is probably the hardest second hardest thing. The first, at lest for me, was coming to terms with the fact other people view my body very differently then I do.

Willowdean “Dumplin” Dickinson, also known as Will,  has spent her entire life in a small town in the middle of nowhere Texas. Her mother is an ex-Beauty Queen while her Aunt Lucy never seemed to comfortable in her own skin. Willowdean on the other hand has always been at peace with her body or as peace as one can be. Then she meets Bo and her world is flipped upside down. Bo is the kind of beautiful you find on the pages of GQ or described on the pages of a trashy grocery store romance. It one thing to have a crush on a boy that you decided was out of your league and know its never going to happen its quite another to have said boy reciprocate those feelings troughs you for a loop. Like many girls Will begins to question Bo’s intentions and compares herself to the girls he has dated before and it inevitably shakes her confidence. Dumplin’ is about way more then a budding high school romance between two people you would never expect. The novel taken on what it truly means to be a so called “Fat Girl”. From dealing with a mom you only had the best of intentions, but who ultimately shames her daughter, to having a best friend who’s life seems to moving at a much different pace, to doing things that scare you because they scare the living shit out of you. I highly recommend Dumplin’ to anybody who has ever felt out of place in their own bodies.

Choi’s debut novel Emergency Contact is without a doubt the first book I have finished in awhile. I guess life got in the way and I just kinda lost my passion for reading for awhile, but luckily it has been renewed again. As much as I love my historical romance or a good paranormal fantasy there is really nothing quite like a refreshing contemporary love story to bring you back into the folds of binge reading. I recently made a trip to Barnes and Nobel because even though I haven’t been in the mood to sit and read I am always in the mood to collect more books. On this particular trip I ended up with a total of 6 novels, but that us besides the point, one of those was Emergency Contact. An emergency contact by definition is a person that gets called well in case of emergencies, but sometimes life in general feels very much like an emergency. With the juggle between work, school, relationships, friendship and family is a delicate balancing act that trips up the most skilled of tightrope walkers at some point. Penny is a Asian- American teen that has always been wound a bit too tight. Sam is a too skinny tattooed twenty something who’s life seems to be in shambles. They are brought together by Penny’s happy-go-lucky college roommate, Jude, and they build a friendship based on family troubles, budding adulthood, and general loneliness.

Choi’s novel is a refreshing look into today’s relationships. Sam and Penny are as awkward as the rest of us when it comes to navigating a not only a friendship but a friendship that evolves into something more.  I absolutely loved the novel and I finished it about three days (work was slow but I still had to go and do something). I highly recommend it to anyone who is in a bit of reading slump and needs something to carry them out.