Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, a mediocre book with a grammatically incorrect title, is about a boy and his movie-making partner who are forced to befriend a girl who is dying of cancer. It's like a not-moving, character development-less, disappointing Fault in Our Stars. I understand the point of this book is that its intent is not to be moving but it is in spite of itself, but I didn't really feel it. It's the book version of making uncool the new cool. 
SPOILERS BELOW
I recently finished this book and put it in my book haul. My overall thoughts of this book were not impressed, if you didn't glean that from my passive aggressive summary. Because of this, I'm not going to analyze this book and I'll be doing this review a little differently. I'm going to try listing the parts I did and did not like as a pro/con list. Let me know how you feel about this style in the comments. 

PRO: 
•I really enjoyed Earl's character. I think it was very interesting how he differed from the rest of his family. 
•I empathized with Greg in the way of not fitting into a particular group. 
•The way Greg narrated the dynamic of high school was so funny! 
•I absolutely adore the cover. The color blocking is very eye catching and I love the homemade movie feel it incorporates with all the strings and shadows. 

CON: 
•This book felt like it was making fun of other books that are meaningful. I understand that not all books are like that and some are overrated, but part of me was defending other books that setimrs come off as pretentious the entire time I read this. 
•This book did not stir anything in me emotionally. My main feeling throughout the story was irritation. My frustration was mostly pointed at Greg and his inability to be a decent human being. I'll give him points for acknowledging this fact throughout the book, but the ending gave me no solution to this problem. It never seemed to me that Greg did anything except a few feeble attempts to be a better person. 
•While the narrator was funny, sometimes the humor felt a little forced. 
•I typically read books to escape the stupidity and ignorance of the people at my school, because that is typically where I read. This book's incredibly accurate representation of typical student dialogue and actions kind of hit me in the face. This is a very truthful contemporary, which wasn't really what I needed at the time of reading it. 
•Rachel died in the end (as expected). It wasn't her dying I had a problem with, it was the fact that her death didn't seem to mean anything. It was not a true climax.
•I genuinely think I would have enjoyed this book more had it been narrated by Earl. Enough said. 

Well, I think I'll give this book a solid 2 stars. I'm sorry if you really liked this book, but these are just my feelings. I'll have a new book talk up soon. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Which YA Book Should You Read Next Based on Your Myers-Briggs Type?

Image
As quarantine rolls on, we all have to find things to occupy our time. I love to learn new, weird things, so given as excess of time, I will most assuredly develop a few new obsessions. One such new obsession is MBTI, or the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. The Myers Briggs test is a personality test that assigns you one of two letters for four different categories, making it possible to have sixteen unique “types.” The letter options are as follows: Extroverted vs Introverted, iNtuition vs Sensing, Thinking vs Feeling, and Judging vs Perceiving. Your type, or combination of these letters, is determined based on your answers to a number of questions that ask  for your level of agreement/disagreement with various statements. Since MBTI is the most accurate personality test I’ve ever taken (and I’ve taken a lot ), I thought it would be a useful tool for personalizing some book recommendations!             I am certainly not the first have this idea, but I wanted to make MBTI-based recomme
Read more

Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard Book 1: The Sword of Summer

Image
   The time has come for a new era of Riordan. The first book in a Norse mythology series has been released, and wow did it impress me! It was exactly what I expected and nothing like I expected at the same time. Rick Riordan, you've done it again. You've woven a beautiful tale from the legends of generations passed. I simply cannot express how much I loved this book without revealing too much, so please, I beg you, pick up a copy of The Sword of Summer. *****SPOILERS*****     This book surprised me in so many ways. In a way, I was expecting another series starter like The Lightning Thief , but this....I don't want to say better because TLT will always have a special place in my heart, but in a way, it was. I've been saying for years, that Heroes of Olympus would make an amazing YA series if Riordan added cursing, slightly more gore, and more romance. Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard is fulfilling my dream. I struggled throughout the book, trying to establish w
Read more

Let's Reread The Mortal Instruments

Image
Obvious spoilers for TMI but warnings are before any spoilers for other Cassie series I first picked up City of Bones by Cassandra Clare at the beach the summer before 7 th grade. I’d only recently made friends I actually liked at school and I hadn’t even had my first period. But my middle school self found comfort in the shadow world, a name that aptly described her level of self-proclaimed angst. She lost herself in Clary and Jace and Simon and Izzy and Alec and Magnus in a way she hadn’t since the days of reading Harry Potter and Percy Jackson for the first time. I just graduated high school, so that was over six years ago . Cassandra Clare’s books have meant a lot to me in all the years since, but I rarely found myself turning to The Mortal Instruments, the series that started it all. Reading The Dark Artifices as they came out filled my school breaks with laughter and tears, while rereading The Infernal Devices helped me get through periods of tears in my own
Read more