february book report.

Me Before You. This book really resonated with me. The story is about Lou, a girl in her twenties that just gets let go from her job at a cafe because it is closing, and she has no idea what she wants to do with her life. A local career agent helps her to land a job as the caretaker of a quadriplegic, Will, who you know from the prologue is a younger man who was in an accident. Over the course of the novel Lou is a secret keeper for Will and his family, and this secret pushes her to try and make every day of his life as good as it can possibly be. I read this book so quickly and really did like it. My only complaint throughout was how crappy Lou's family treated her for most of the book. They were written as these loving characters who form this tight knit family going through its fair share of financial struggles together, but then they constantly make fun of Lou, put her down, and call her stupid. It's a little annoying to me, but I got over it in the end and really enjoyed this novel as a whole.
"I needed to tell him, silently, that things might change, grow, or fail, but that life did go on. That we were all part of some great cycle, some pattern that it was only God's purpose to understand."

This is Where I Leave You. This book tugged at so many different emotions. On the one hand, it's hilariously funny in a very dark way, but funny nonetheless. On the other hand, it's about a dysfunctional family sitting shiva for seven days after the narrator Judd's father passes away. Secrets are exposed, built up anger and frustration surfaces, and a family that spends little time together learns a lot about each other and themselves while being forced into close quarters for a week. Judd is going through a divorce after he found his wife and boss having an affair, so while he deals with his father's passing he is also constantly thinking about where his life went wrong and how it all blew up so fast. I laughed, I teared, and I learned a lot. It's being made into a movie later this year and I can't wait to see the screen adaptation.
"Even under the best of circumstances, there's just something so damn tragic about growing up."

Where'd You Go, Bernadette? I just finished this book a few days ago and loved it so much. It was hilarious and very real in that abnormal way fiction can be real even though it is so unimaginable in your own life. Bee is an eighth grader with perfect grades, and as a promise from her parents she can do anything, so she chooses to go on a family cruise to Antarctica. In the days leading up to the trip, her mother Bernadette disappears and Bee makes it her job to figure out where she went. This book is compromised of emails, letters, faxes, narration from Bee, and dialogue, rather than just straight narration, which I loved. I really enjoyed getting a direct insight to all of the characters through their IMs and emails, as well as Bee's perspective in her spurts of narration. Bernadette is such a likable character even though she's a little bit cuckoo. She made me laugh out loud on many occasions, especially when she said this: Hello, can I help you with something? If not, please step aside because I'm about to kick the shit out of life, and when she made a Roald Dahl reference to Matilda and the "chokey". Classic. I really recommend this book, and I hope that someone adapts this for film because I think it would be so hilarious.
"The sooner you learn it's in you to make life interesting, the better off you'll be."

5/25 complete. Two of these were on my paperback lust list, and I'm pumped to keep on chugging with that list as well as get into some more new reads in March.