With much love to Sesame Street, I want to start by saying that Maureen Johnson is my favorite person to follow on Twitter. This is not a unique opinion as she was voted that by mashable shortly before I started following her. And I started following her there before I even knew the titles of her books, let alone had actually read any of them. So it was inevitable that I would add some of her work to my Amazon wish list, and ultimately to one of my orders. Since Scarlett Fever was new and a frequent topic of conversation on Twitter (and even some Vlogbrothers videos), I figured its predecessor, Suite Scarlett was a good place to start. It came in a large box with the brilliant Will Grayson Will Grayson and the larger than life Infinite Jest (which I will someday finish and write an epic blog about... if there is still a blog when I finish). So, it sat around for a while, and I then proceeded to flip through it in a couple trips to the gym and subsequent waits at the bus stop. And it was... good. Not life-changing, not exactly what I expected, but very enjoyable. Scarlett is an identifiable lead character and one that you want teen girls to read about. She is smart and witty, stronger and more capable than she knows (as Amy Amberson knows), and yet still susceptible to the pain and heartache of the teenage crush... on the wrong boy (just my opinion, more on that in the sequel... which come on, everyone gets. Her dialogue with her brother Spencer was a highlight for me as their banter is both funny and random, not unlike Maureen's twitter posts. And when it was all over I was sure that I would read the sequel. It took a couple months, as I had a stack of books to get through, but eventually I allowed myself a new Amazon order, and Scarlett Fever was sitting in my room. Last weekend I finally picked it up... one trip to the gym, staying up late Friday night (hey, the title of this blog pretty much gives me a free pass to stay up late reading on Friday), and finally finishing Saturday morning. And it was great, and in my opinion better than the first. So here are a few things that stood out, hopes for the future, and my Eric/Max preference:
- I might have liked a little more of her friends, all back from their exciting summer vacations, but I thought Dakota was great and it highly amused me that they all make out with Josh. And I was originially thinking that's weird, funny, but who does that? And then I remembered high school and while my friends & I were never that candid, well, maybe it would have been more entertaining if we just admitted the ridiculousness that occurred.
- I was so glad that Chelsea was not an evil bitch and I hope that she gets to have more fries and milkshakes (because yes, it is delicious to dip your fries into your milkshake) and tells her mother (who is an evil bitch) to back off. Maybe she'll date Spencer. Too obvious?
- Oh, Spencer. I didn't really know what to do with you in this book (even though you were my favorite in the first book), but I loved your demise. What an ending.
- Not to get all Twilighty on this, but totally Team Max. Is it a nerd thing to like the emo-y guy? He could sing her songs and he plays the piano! So I just want to go on the record to say to Scarlett, you totally want Max and not the pretty-boy actor.
That was much longer than I anticipated, but it was kind of about two books and needed to include my love for twitter.com/maureenjohnson. Follow her, she takes really good care of all those jars.
No comments:
Post a Comment