Hey friends!
Welcome back to my blog (or if you’re new, hello, welcome, I
ramble a lot about books!) and I hope you’re all having a lovely day. Today I’m
going to be sharing with you mini reviews for Our Chemical Hearts and A Semi
Definite List Of Worst Nightmares, both by Krystal Sutherland.
If you didn’t know anything about Krystal Sutherland, she is
an Australian author whose first novel, Our Chemical Hearts was published last
year. I had been meaning to read her work for a really long time but for some
reason, I kept putting it off until recently, I read both of her books!
OUR CHEMICAL HEARTS
I was super excited for Our Chemical Hearts. All my
Australian bookish friends had been raving about this book and I was super
pumped to read it after having heard such good things. But sadly, I was
disappointed.
I liked how unique it was as most YA tends to focus on the romantics
of first-love, rather than the realistic nuances of the emotion and I feel like
Krystal was able to capture the heart of the emotion (aha no pun intended)
really well. Henry and Grace had distinct personalities and they didn’t fall
into the clichéd boy-meets-girl tropes common in YA. The side characters were
also quite fleshed out and didn’t fade into the background, thankfully. The humour
was well done and I feel as a writer, Sutherland has a lot of potential because
her exploration of love and loss and first times was so well done. The ending
was really great and managed to wrap up the book extremely well and get across the
message.
But the problem comes in the middle portions. The book felt
like it was trying too hard at times (and it reminded me a lot (and not in a good
way!) of John Green) with the characterisation of Grace and Henry. It was so
hard to connect with and root for them and often, their choices throughout the
novel made me dislike them even more. They were so bland and often, cringe too.
I didn’t like Grace, and I could understand she had been through a lot, but the
hot-and-cold happening between the two of them frustrated me to no ends. Plot wise,
the book dragged and didn’t have much happening, which was quite unfortunate.
Overall, it wasn’t the worst, but not the best either. A sadly
‘meh’ read for me.
OVERALL RATING:
★★★
A SEMI DEFINITE LIST
OF WORST NIGHTMARES
I was more reluctant to read this after having read Our
Chemical Hearts first because after reading the synopsis, it sounded much like
the first one where the book ‘tried too hard’. But glad to say that this was an
improvement and that Krystal Sutherland was able to improve as a writer since
her first book.
This was well written and tackled the issue of mental health
in an unexpected but absolutely terrific way that totally surprised and
simultaneously pleased me. The dialogue was the perfect balance between touching
and understated to deadpan humour (which, let’s be real, is the best kind of
humour!). I liked the characters A LOT more in this one because despite their
wackiness, they really spring of the page and seem life like. Esther was so loving
and funny and a great main character and Jonah was such a sweet heart. Bonus points
to Sutherland for having POC representation in this book! Once again, the side
characters didn’t feel like side characters in this because they had such
distinct personalities and an important role to play in the book.
But now to the downs. I found this got quite confusing at
some points. The flashbacks irritated me because I wasn’t really interested in
them, but they were vital to the story so I couldn’t skip them. Usually, I’m
not that picky but I don’t think the supernatural elements worked very well for
this book. I liked it up to a point, but when it began to become more detailed
and a bigger part of the story, I was a little discouraged. The ending was also
unclear and quite rushed as suddenly after the climax, the falling action
happened in the matter of pages. It also took me a while to figure out that it
wasn’t actually me who had missed something but the ending had been left that way
and up to the readers own interpretation, which, once again, I usually don’t mind,
but I felt like I needed closure in this one.
However, this was a solid read and a definite (ha, see what I
did there? I am just full of jokes today!) improvement from the first one.
