Isla and the Happily Ever After | Stephanie Perkins

✴ ✴ ✴ . 5

meow

Happy new year lovelies! Better late than never.

How are you all? I'm eating strawberries! Not that anyone cared buuuuut I hope you all had a great start to the new year with all your resolutions and whatnot, one of mine is to eat more fruit because I don't when I really should. It's a struggle to eat an apple when I can Nandos all day everyday.

Sadly the first book I read this year wasn't all that great. This actually makes me really mad because if you know me you would know THAT I ADORE STEPHANIE PERKINS AND HER BOOKS but this was a one off and with this book it was like I most related with the main character -Isla*- but I was extremely detached from the storyline.

Isla and the Happily Ever After is a Young-Adult, Contemporary. 

Hopeless romantic Isla has had a crush on introspective cartoonist Josh since their first year at the School of America in Paris. And after a chance encounter in Manhattan over the summer, romance might be closer than Isla imagined. But as they begin their senior year back in France, Isla and Josh are forced to confront the challenges every young couple must face, including family drama, uncertainty about their college futures, and the very real possibility of being apart

I again, try not very hard to explain the order of these books in my other reviews of this companion series. Anna and the French Kiss and my favourite from the three, Lola and The Boy Next Door.

Many and I mean many people have disliked this book compared to the others Ms Perkins has written and I totally see why. I read a few reviews on Isla* before I picked it up just to see what everyone was saying and most of the reviews I came across was filled with more negativity than positivity. I gave this a 3-3.5 out of 5 stars, it's an 'alright' book but for Stephanie Perkins I was just hoping for better to be honest.

I feel as though the first half and the third half of this book was easier for me to read and captured the essence of her other books whereas the middle half was very iffy. This book also had an element of bore. It got so bad that whenever I picked the book up I would only get through a page or a few lines at most and just put it down and do something that felt more productive.....I have never and I mean n-e-v-e-r felt like this with any other book before. It actually scared me.  

The thing is with Ms Perkins, is that she has a 'way' with the way she writes and how she creates 'love' to be so tangible and realistic (really realistic). She is a phenomenal writer even though this -in my opinion- may not be one of her best works nevertheless I will continue to read whatever she comes out with because I do love her writing and I know she can excel and deliver. There is a downside as if I'm correct she only has works in the genre of young-adult, contemporary, romance and chicklit and I don't know if she is versatile enough to change it up as I know she is currently working on a horror novel. 

With this particular book by Stephanie Perkins I mentioned that I felt detached and bored. This is because I didn't connect with the setting as I did with Anna or Lola and I've never felt like any of Ms Perkins's books were cliché at all but it felt very prominent with this book. I also mentioned that I related so much with this character - Isla - that I have done with any other book that I have ever read! Isla is literally me in a nutshell. I'm an INFP and I have social anxiety, I am Isla, Isla is me. It's never announced that Isla has social anxiety in the book but that she is very shy in which Stephanie Perkins actually tweeted that originally Isla was supposed to have social anxiety but with a lot of things going on in the book her publicist or someone said to leave it out and make her extremely shy. 

I also noticed at the end of reading this that her books are equally quite whitewashed and her book as really do need more diversity in my opinion, it could be better. I feel as though it's not just Stephanie Perkins but all authors, aspiring writers or anyone writing narratives should have a diverse set of characters and even settings. 

There are many young-adult books that swerve or try to bypass the theme or scenes of sex for some unknown reason I cannot seem to understand. Sex is normal, to put it bluntly we need to normalise it and it has to stop being taboo. Why you would aim to write for young-adults where the themes of sex, puberty, romance, relationships and love are major factors of their lives and seize to write a sex scene is beyond me! There are also authors that refuse to swear.....like really? That's a whole other thing I will not go into as I do not have the effort to address stupid decisions. 

My point is that Ms Perkins didn't do what others have done. She did explore all that because THIS IS A YOUNG ADULT BOOK AND THESE CHARACTERS ARE YOUNG ADULTS. If you're going to sit there and tell me that the majority of teenagers don't go out, curse, have fun, hang with friends, have sex, get drunk etc I will actually scream from the obliviousness. Another reason I applaud Stephanie Perkins is because she screws gender society roles and empowers women in her books. You would expect a petite, shy girl like Isla to be a virgin or prude but *shocker* she isn't. WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD and stereotypes like these need to be shut down! 

I HOPE I'M NOT PUTTING ANYONE TOTALLY OFF FROM READING HER BOOKS BECAUSE DON'T GET ME WRONG HER BOOKS A FABULOUS AND SHE IS A GREAT WRITER AND YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY LOOK AT HER OTHER BOOKS, this one not so much for me. Or you could go look at some other reviews if you're very interested and see what other people have to say.

Also before I forget the cameos that Anna, Etienne, Lola and Cricket make in this book are so heartwarming that I think if you've read the others you should probably read this for them. Also Josh and Isla make me very happy as well. Just so cute ohmygod.

*this has nothing whatsoever to do with the book but can I just mention how Isla is such a pretty name because ITS SUCH A PRETTY NAME. Isla like Island not Izla.

this also has nothing to do with this review but as it's now 2015 (if you don't already know) I'm setting myself a goal on goodreads to read 70 books this year and you can follow me on that here.