Relationship Advice

I actually really like doing these advice columns on my blog. I feel like sometime I like to give people advice and that's just part of my therapeutic nature. Sometimes I need these posts as a documentation of what I've gone through and I know it's not only me and as a sixteen year old aspiring blogger, doing book reviews in my spare time, I though why not make my blog a book/lifestyle documentation. I mean I do take very lovely pictures. In addition, sometimes I also need to take my own advice. This is all from my heart to yours so I hope you appreciate this and I hope this may help you in some way.

My top 7 things to consider and to do: 

1. Give it two days. You will feel much better after two days. I know it feels like your body is going to collapse and your heart will explode in all the wrong ways but all I have to say is, give it two days. You will feel better. 

2. Don't contact them in those two days, or even the days after that unless it's absolutely necessary. That means don't facebook them, stalk them on twitter, watch their snapchat stories, text them, call them (?!!? why you would do this, I have no idea), etc. 

3. If you feel terrible about it, I'm 90% sure they do as well. 

4. Eat whatever you want. But don't not eat, don't stop yourself from eating. It's unhealthy and you don't need that. 

5. Have a hot pack/hot water-bottle wherever you go. Whether that's going to bed, just sitting reading, watching a movie, walking around your house, it will make you feel at ease and its warm and fuzzy.

6. Take care of yourself. You will get over this. I believe in everything happening for a reason. You may not believe in that, but sometimes it's good to look at it in a different perspective. Pamper yourself, you are too good. 

7. "People will always say mean things. When you feel like you can't win, remember they're the losers."

Getting over friendships and break-ups. What is a toxic relationship? How do we define it? 

Every relationship is different. There will be similarities but we cannot generalise those to everyone. There are plenty of blog posts on this topic around the internet so I won't delve into it, just google it. All I have to say is, get a second opinion. If you catch yourself pondering then just let go and leave. It's one of the hardest things in the world but sometimes it's for your own well-being and as always, time heals all wounds. All the love.

Advice for actual relationships including two people whether that be romantically or just platonically but you are both invested to each other. Here are some advice/tips from some of my friends:

Give them your full attention but not too much or too little
Don't forget their birthday
Show interest in the things they like
Don't do long distance if you can help it, only agree if they are worth it
Don't be scared to date your best/good friend, if you're really that close you'll get through the potential breakup

Books...re-read your books. I'm always a fan for going back to books that make you nostalgic when you're in a bad mood. So: Harry Potter is always a 10/10 go to! 

Movies....I'm not sure why but when bad stuff happens to be I always gravitate to movie marathons. Please take time off for yourself no matter what. You need it. So go do it. These are the few movies I watched when I went through a friend break-up and some of these movies make me laugh and some made me cry. They are bitter sweet and I'm sure you will all enjoy them as well. Obviously these are just a few, I can't think of all my favourites but these are just the latter:

500 Days of Summer
Flipped
The Devil Wears Prada
Shrek
Love Actually
Harry Potter
The Help 

Tv Shows to marathon:
Greys Anatomy
Friends
Parks and Recreation
Law and Order SVU
The Mindy Project
Bobs Burgers

Time heals all wounds.

xx
take care!

16 Things I learned In 2015

I'm sixteen.

I turned sixteen this year and I feel as thought this 'life advice' thing I might actually do for the many years to come. It's basically, '16 Life Tips' as I am sixteen and it would only be fitting to have sixteen things to mention for this year. I may do this blog post at the end of each year, just to summarise everything tangible and intangible I've learnt over the year. 

This is for all my friends that may need this as well! I wish everyone a wonderful and hopefully happy 2016.

1. When you have the chance, hold a baby.

2. Go find new music, whether that means attending more music festivals/concerts and make playlists for the different moods you're in or for different occasions. Playlists are just like your photo albums, they hold precious memories. 

3. Get out of all your toxic relationships/friendships, even though it may hurt sometimes it's necessary. I cannot stress this one enough, so I'm making a separate blog post on this one. 

4. Boys can wait. Focus on yourself because you're the sunflower.

5. Tell the people in your life that you're close to that you love them regularly. You never know when they leave. 

6. If you're ever going to get into an argument or in a fight, do it face to face and not on the internet. You'll find you won't say half the things you said to them online when your face to face. 

7. ALWAYS, take your makeup off before you go to bed. AND WASH YOUR FACE AFTERWARDS! Otherwise it will feel like you have a charcoal mask of makeup of your face.

8. If he keeps looking at you....he definitely thinks you're hot so chill out before you make a fool of yourself.

9. Don't always be on your phone taking pictures of moments, rather try and cherish your memories with your family and friends by living in that moment with them and not your phone.

10. Get a polaroid for the banter and a proper camera for the quality banter.

11. You're IB/SAT/GCSE/GPA/any other standardised testing score does not define you and the faster you realise it the better you will do and further you will achieve. If you try your best and put the effort it, I guarantee you will feel good as you will do well. If not, work slowly and understand what you're doing wrong and focus on those things.

12. Respect everyones opinions even though you may disagree with them. (Unless it's a horrible opinion then just get the hell out of there!)

13. Don't go on a no carb no sugar diet.

14. Don't ever not brush your teeth because you're too lazy or hungover.

15. If you want those Adidas Originals, work for it and get those Originals!

16. You is smart. You is kind. You is important.

I'll Give You The Sun | Jandy Nelson

✴ ✴. 5 

OKay, lets begin.

When I first got this book, I believe it was on my birthday (I did a birthday post on this blog as well, which I will shamelessly link here). My friend Tess...I feel like I mention Tess is every other blog post but the thing is SHE IS ONE OF MY BEST FRIENDS and we love each other and she reads lots of books, like me probably more than me. We were in a bookstore and I saw this book and it was the hardback version but at a really cheap price for hardbacks where I'm from. Hardbacks are so expensive here but this was so cheap I was actually shocked. It was just this one book. There wasn't a second or third, just this one. I asked Tess whether it was good and she said it was so I just ended up getting it. I was really happy (~imagine me being happy here~). So I got this book on my birthday.

I'll Give You The Sun, is a young adult, standalone, contemporary, coming of age novel by Jandy Nelson. This novel is based with a first person perspective with two pint of views - Jude and Noah- This is the goodreads synopsis: 

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

When I first started it, probably a few weeks ago at the end of Octoberish, I hated it. I hated it. I hated it. SO MUCH! It was the writing style I despised. I know this is a recurring theme with a lot of other people who have read the book so it's not just me. HOWEVER, once I started to get like 50+ and 100+ pages into it, I started to work around the writing style and it got better. Not just that, but the actual plot (if you will) also got better and more intriguing. One night, I kid you not, I literally couldn't put the book down. It's kind of a sad book. It laments quite a bit. But it's a really lovely coming to age novel.

Another thing I really liked was probably the only realistic and genuine part of this book were the relationships between characters, romantically and platonically. The relationship with their parents was so interesting to read as well as the relationship with their friends. This is an LGBT+ book as those themes are present in this novel. This is my first LGBT+ book ever... WOW. I know right! What took me so long. I really loved that romance in this. It wasn't cliche or sexualised so much. It was mushy, cute, simple and I adored it. There is also heterosexual relationships, it's not all LGBT+. HOWEVER, I would like to stress that there is homophobic themes discussed in this book, if that triggers any of you, please don't read this. Your mental health and state is better than reading this book. 

Now to talk about everything I disliked.... 

Firstly, I did really like the characters in the book, although I thought they were just crafted too ~indie~ like. I just felt like they were just so.....I don't know....made to be so hipsterish and I really don't know how to explain this. It just felt artificial to me. The characters themselves were iffy. I loved Noah but I just liked Jude. They are twins but totally different people. I really liked some parts of the novel and some parts less. I didn't hate a particular scene or anything but this book was just eh.

In addition, there isn't a legit plot line. It's a contemporary coming to age story, so it's more of just lessons learnt and the growth of these characters. The concept of this book was good, I liked that cause everything really linked and fell together towards the end. Another thing I want to address, is that the POV's are like at different ages of Noah and Jude and I barley remembered how old they were cause it felt like they were doing so much at the age of 15? Which was weird for me. I mentioned before that I hated the writing style, and I feel strongly about that. Jandy Nelson is just not for me. Some people may think it's literary genius or whatever, but I despised it. There were times in the book I got hooked to a certain POV and I loved that but then it would go away and I'd find myself just skim reading. .

That brings me to my next point of issue: I hate skim reading. That's how you know it's bad. My English teacher actually said to our class a few week ago, that she would like to see us reading different genres of books such as: Ishiguro, Hosseini, Murakami, biographies, classics and basically not your typical teenage Y/A genre so that our sense of syntax, diction and overall language could broaden. She also mentioned that we didn't have to finish the book if we found it hard, just to read a few pages because sometimes that is all you need. I hate not finishing a book and just leaving it. Even if I hate it I have to finish it. No idea why I do this, it's just become my thing but I think I will start more of that in 2016. Life it too short to read shitty books.

You have to understand how disappointed I was because I made this up to be such some great panache; when I then got into it and the possibility of it being absolute shit got surreal. Although, I did get really emotionally invested with Noah's POV everything else was a blur (probably due to the fact I skimmed most of the book).  

Would I recommend this...I don't know. I wouldn't take just my review into account. Read others peoples reviews and maybe check the book out yourself if you're a bit off on whether you want to read this or not. I think I may just be the minority with this one.

Sorry for the extremely long sabbatical hiatus. I've been dying doing IB. I know it's been so long! Going through a break-up so that's also very hard to deal with. I'm really devastated that I cannot read lots and review much, but it's only because I don't have time, or I just really get tired/lazy. Hopefully I'll read over the Christmas holidays but then again I will also be revising for an exam in January. Wish me luck and I truly hope I'll get some reviews out for you all! 

p.s

Check out my most popular reviews:
Love and Misadventure by Lang Leav
I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson
Yes Please by Amy Poehler
To All The Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Alex + Ada by Jonathan Luna and Sarah Vaughn 

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