Mini Reviews: The Way You Make Me Feel and Emergency Contact!

Hello guys!

For today I thought I would do something I’ve never done before: mini reviews. I always write lengthy detailed reviews, but I found that I didn’t have to say enough about those two books for them to have separate posts. But I also wanted to discuss my thoughts on them so voila! Mini reviews format is here to save the day.

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Genre: YA Contemporary

Series: Standalone

Format: e-book

Pages: 336

Publication Date: May 8, 2018

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟.5

Book Depository || Amazon US

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Synopsis:

Clara Shin lives for pranks and disruption. When she takes one joke too far, her dad sentences her to a summer working on his food truck, the KoBra, alongside her uptight classmate Rose Carver. Not the carefree summer Clara had imagined. But maybe Rose isn’t so bad. Maybe the boy named Hamlet (yes, Hamlet) crushing on her is pretty cute. Maybe Clara actually feels invested in her dad’s business. What if taking this summer seriously means that Clara has to leave her old self behind?

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My Review:

If you are looking for the perfect heart warming/ feel good summer book look no farther: The Way You Make Me Feel is here to make you feel BETTER (I am not the least bit sorry for this joke).

🚚 It’s light and fun and I couldn’t stop grinning like a complete fool throughout, even though there were some moments that hit me in the chest like a truck.

🚚 The father/daughter relationship is the aspect that made this book for me. The way they cared for each other was so pure and sweet and lovely.

🚚 The enemies to best friends trope gave me life. I loved the whole “you hate this person without knowing them and even though you -seemingly- have nothing in common you end up becoming best friends once you put your prejudices and pettiness aside” vibe. Rose + Clara = BFF.

🚚 The ROMANCE ended me. I won’t dwell on this, you will read just one word from me: ADORABLE.

I recommend The Way You Make Me Feel to anyone who likes To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before aka everyone who reads books.

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Genre: YA Contemporary

Series: Standalone

Format: kindle

Pages: 400

Publication Date: May 27, 2018

My Rating: 🌟🌟

Book Depository || Amazon US

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Synopsis:

For Penny Lee high school was a total nonevent. Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she somehow managed to land a boyfriend, he doesn’t actually know anything about her. When Penny heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it’s seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can’t wait to leave behind.

Sam’s stuck. Literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a café and sleeps there too, on a mattress on the floor of an empty storage room upstairs. He knows that this is the god-awful chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he’s a famous movie director but right this second the seventeen bucks in his checking account and his dying laptop are really testing him.

When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch—via text—and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.

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My Review:

Unfortunately, Emergency Contact did not do it for me. I was so hyped for this book: the premise seemed awesome and the whole communication and falling in love via texts fascinated me (it is the only aspect I liked to be honest), but the execution fell flat.

📱 I strongly disliked Penny, and the main reason is the misogyny. She was so judgmental towards EVERY single girl she met including her mother which really did it for me. She basically slut shamed the hell out of her mom and critiqued every girl who liked make up, clothes and boys.

📱 Also her relationship with her boyfriend before she went to college was ????? What even was that? She disliked him immensely, again and again said that he is basically an idiot with whom she could not communicate. So as a reader you must be wondering: why is she with him? There’s absolutely no reason. We never know. She just despises him and treats him like shit.

📱 There is a certain line that completely rubbed me the wrong way and dropped the book to the abyss for me. The girls are discussing Sam, wondering if he is depressed and Penny thinks to herself:

“If that were true, depression suited Sam.” 

Ok, listen. This is so wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to begin. Depression does not “suit” anyone simply because depression is not an aesthetic. It’s an illness. Stop romanticising mental illnesses!!!! 

📱 Lastly, I felt like the book tried to tackle too many important issues at once and epically failed. There is mention of alcoholism, depression, rape, sexual assault, drug abuse, poverty, deportation and as expected in a 400 page novel you cannot fully focus on them all.

Trigger Warning: rape

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Have you read any of the two books above?? What are your thoughts? Are you planning on reading them? Let’s discuss!