Lang Leav

Representation: N/A?
Trigger warnings: N/A?
Score: Five points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

Where do I even begin with this? This was such an underwhelming novel I wish I could've enjoyed this more but alas I did not enjoy this novel. The story felt too fast paced and worst of all predictable since I could tell where this book was going before the book actually told me what was going on. In just less than 300 pages the main character, Verity Wolf stumbles on an old book, posts it on some social media platforms and gets instantly famous then she writes her own book which was a bestseller and was picked up by Carry Way Press and published it in a matter of days and you can tell where this book is going. The side characters were quite shallow and flat since their only characteristic is to try and get boys and that's all however there were two interesting subplots in the story. The dialogue kind of irritated me as well since it didn't feel like how real people would speak.

The first subplot was that Verity lived only with her grandfather since her parents were killed and her grandmother died which was kind of sad but not really relevant to the main story. The second subplot was that she developed an attraction with a boy named Sash, I think he describes himself as a cardboard cutout which was fitting since that was exactly what he was and his only characteristics are that he is Verity's boyfriend and he had an evil ex called Penelope who was jealous of Verity's success but she redeems herself in the end. Is this book assuming that all exes are evil, since that would be sexist because not all of them are like this and they broke up with their partners for a reason. So Penelope's great big revenge plan against Verity is to write a scathing review about her book on Goodreads Reader, there is no way one bad review can take an entire person's career down, that's so unrealistic. There were a few changes to the world building such as one mentioned above, Bella Swann changed into Karla Swann and JD Salinger changed into Sal Dollinger but nothing else changed, either you make an entire new world similar to ours but with no connection to ours or base a story off of the already existing world and based off that I think this was an editing oversight.

Verity, riding high on her success has enough money to splurge on some clothes and a trip to New York to meet Mena Rhodes which is the equivalent of Colleen Hoover in terms of authors but Mena writes more pop poetry and Colleen writes more prose though both are very famous. Then her friend realises that Mena is just using Verity and then she leaves her and Penelope executes her revenge plan by saying that Verity plagiarised off of Poemsia and everyone hated her afterwards however the author didn't even bother to create usernames rather she used pictures. Do they even fact check the articles the people are reacting to and where did the article come from and isn't BuzzFeed an unreliable source? By the way the haters just personally attacked her by swearing at her, calling her a ho, and pasting her face onto a nude picture. Speaking of, the book mentioned three types of haters, the people who think they are smart but are dumb, the bored people who want someone to pick on and the real haters.

In the end, her book became a bestseller nonetheless, her grandfather nearly died and his shop was refurbished. This author's prose writing style is quite juvenile but she is a poet also and I wonder what her poetry is like, hopefully it's not just what happens when one presses the Enter key a lot of times to arbitrarily split up sentences and calls it "poetry." If you like a typical story of a rise to fame only to crash and burn this is the book for you.… (mer)

I received an ARC of this book for free from the publisher (Harper Perennial) for promotional purposes. Since I received an ARC, my quotes from the book are tentative.

I am such a huge fan of Lang Leav, so I knew I had to read this book. I thought this was such a poignant and impactful story.

The story takes place in Australia during the late 90’s. As an Asian American, it was fascinating learning about Australia and its racial tensions during that time. I also enjoyed learning more about the large group of Asian refugees who moved to Australia.

The writing style is gorgeous. Lang Leav is a wonderful poet so it’s no surprise her prose is just as beautiful.

The best part of the book was the exploration of friendships, particularly Ai and Brigitte’s. At times their friendship reminded me of Olivia Rodrigo’s song, “Lacy,” because of the jealousy that Ai sometimes had towards Brigitte. The author weaved an intricate portrayal of their sometimes complicated friendship. The theme of grief and loss was also masterfully woven all throughout the story.

I do have two minor critiques. The first being that the 2 parts of the story felt unbalanced. Part 1 was twice as long as part 2, making part 2 feel a little rushed. My second critique is that this book felt more YA than adult. That isn’t a bad thing (I love YA); I just feel like it was miscategorized.

Lastly, I want to share a quote about the magic of books that I loved. Brigitte states, “I’m envisioning a bookshelf lined with tiny doors. A whole world behind each one. I’m in awe of the way authors can bring these worlds to life the way they do. Like Wonderland for example. It’s so detailed, it feels just like a real place to me—as real as any other” (pg. 45). I couldn’t agree more! Books can feel so real.

Overall, this was a moving and beautifully written story!… (mer)