Book Review: Diary of a Crush: French Kiss, by Sarra Manning

Edie Wheeler has just moved to Manchester with her parents and cat and is starting college for the first time. Everyone else there seems to know each other and she feels left out of everything. Spotting Dylan, a gorgeous art student, the boy of her dreams, only seems to make things worse as she feels sure she'll never get to know him. Frustrated with her lack of friends, Edie signs up for a photography class, where she is forced to work with Dylan, but she can barely speak in his presence and she doesn't have any good ideas. Dylan and his friend Shona just seem so much cooler than Edie could ever be. Then she starts talking to Mia, who is dating Dylan's friend Paul. It's a relief to finally have a friend, but Mia isn't at all helpful when it comes to her crush and when Dylan kisses Edie, then ignores her afterwards, she doesn't know what to do.

I've read this book so many times before that I've lost count, but when I received a copy of the cute new edition published by Atom Books I decided to read it and see how it holds up. I still found Edie to be a witty and engaging diarist. I like how she doesn't shy away from sharing the embarrassing things she does, and how self aware she is after she does something silly like throw a stereotypical teenage strop. Although she begins the diary as a nervous, self-conscious narrator, she stands up for herself when she needs to, even if it takes a long time for her to build up her resolve sometimes.

Of course I loved Dylan, as usual, but this time around he seemed more awkward, which actually made him more endearing in a strange kind of way. Edie knows what she wants, it's Dylan who is confused and flighty, and both of them act like inconsiderate fools when they're in the mood. I also still loved all the other characters - Shona still seems like a paragon of hipness, Nat and Trent are adorable (I always miss them in the following books, where they fade into the background). Josh, Edie's Dylan-substitute-boyfriend is endearingly deluded - I just wanted to take the poor boy aside and tell him to lavish his affections somewhere else. Villianous Mia's personal delusions are not so sweet, but I do feel sorry for her, and suspect that she wouldn't be playing games for attention if she had any friends.

The story is very fast paced, because Edie only writes when something has happened or to complain when something's on her mind. There are only 205 pages, and there is so much friendship and relationship drama in the first half of the novel that the pages fly by, and before long I was on the ferry with Edie, on the way to Paris for the photography trip!

Having read a previous edition, I was interested to see what changes would be made. Apart from the inclusion of an author's afterword, all of them are quite superficial - cultural references updated, sentences cut to improve the flow of the text - but it was quite weird to me to imagine Edie and Dylan walking around in 2013! Because I've been reading the 2004 edition about once a year since it came out, in my head I had them frozen in that time, wearing clothes that I thought were cool when I was a teenager. Art boys were better dressed back then, I'm afraid to say. Nowadays they all seem to wear the same checked shirts and skinny jeans and beanie hats (as described at one point in the novel) - I kind of preferred them in baggier jeans!

I would recommend French Kiss to fans of books featuring moody boys, friendship drama, and amazing kissing scenes. I've read hundreds of books since I read this for the first time, and I still think that French Kiss has some of the best kissing scenes of all time. The Louvre. The discotheque. The hotel room...



Previously: I introduced the Diary of a Crush trilogy in my first Celebrating Series post!

Next up: I utilise my hard-earned Polyvore skills and play dress-up-Edie!

Celebrating Series 1: Diary of a Crush

I decided a month or so ago that I wanted to start a new regular feature, and after a few ideas my mind turned to series. I've always loved reading series. I like falling in love with characters and following them over multiple adventures, seeing where the stories take them and how they grow and change. I'm addicted to the thrill of opening the next book and finding out where the characters have got to.

However, I often neglect them. It's easier to pick up a standalone and review it, especially if you've read it before. Series require upkeep and hours of rereading if you really want to do them justice in a review, and that's where this feature comes in. Celebrating Series posts will be overviews, rather than detailed reviews of each book. This will allow me to share my enthusiasm for series I've read in the past, even when it isn't convenient for me to re-read every book. I can also use them to spotlight series that I've already reviewed, when I think they deserve a bit more praise and attention.

I can even use them to kick off themed weeks, like I am doing here!

 Diary of a Crush, in all the forms I own! From the top: Atom's new edition of French Kiss, free with J-17 books Losing It and American Dream, the first Bite editions of the trilogy, and finally, my J-17s! I still love the puntastic, content-relevant spines. 'Same Old Brand New 'Do' will probably make no sense if you were born after 1989 or not in the UK...

I chose the Diary of a Crush trilogy for my first Celebrating Series week, because a) it will be back in print next Thursday, and b) to force myself to stop procrastinating on my reviews!

The series is about a girl named Edie who moves to Manchester from Brighton and develops a crush on Dylan, a beautiful but moody art student (or artboy, for short). Her feelings are so strong that she can't help feeling painfully awkward whenever she's around him or his friends. While working together on a photography project he kisses her, only to start ignoring her almost immediately afterwards. With Dylan switching from hot to cold all the time, and her new friend Mia tugging her into a whirlwind of drama, Edie quickly starts getting fed up of being a shy pushover. The three books deal with the not always lovely reality of being in a relationship, from difficult beginnings to adult decisions, and each of them involve some kind of travelling. French Kiss, naturally, features a college trip to Paris, Kiss and Make-Up, a music festival, and Sealed with a Kiss, a roadtrip across the USA.

This is one of my favourite series of all time, and I have read the books so many times I have lost count. I spent most of my teen years wanting to be Edie, and wanting to date Dylan. When I started reading YA again as an adult, with my newly developed critical eyes, I read lighthearted books and serious books, books about families and books about boyfriends. Quickly, I worked out what I enjoyed the most, and what spoke to the part of me that is stuck forever in her teens. The books I loved had something special about them, the same thing that made me obsess over Diary of a Crush. Eventually I worked out what it was, and why I loved it so much more than almost any other teen book I'd read. It's aspirational.

To my mind, aspiration means something more than wanting the hot boyfriend, though of course Diary of a Crush made me want to snog an artboy - I defy anyone to read it and not want to start hanging around the Tate Modern to check out the eye candy (greatly recommended as a post-Diary of a Crush adventure, have done it multiple times). I coveted Edie's life. I was jealous of her job and band and friendship with Shona and Poppy. It made me want to have more friends and to go places and do creative things.

Honestly, the nostalgic love I have for these books means that I struggle to say anything negative about them. I think that objectively, Let's Get Lost, Nobody's Girl and Adorkable are better written, and it does slightly bug me that some of Edie's friends from the first book disappear or almost disappear later on, but these are the books that gave us Dylan and that started Sarra Manning off on the glorious path of writing books about people who kiss first and engage the brain cell later, and more importantly, girls who grow in confidence as they grow in experience. I will always have a crush on Diary of a Crush.

Next up: I review the new edition of French Kiss and ruminate upon the fact that artboys were actually better dressed in the mid-noughties...

Top Ten Tuesday: Favourite Book Covers Of Books I've Read

This is my twenty-third Top Ten Tuesday post. Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I thought it would be silly to mention the books without showing them to you, so this week I bring you a video!

Top Ten Favourite Book Covers Of Books I've Read

1. The World's Wife, by Carol Ann Duffy (Picador, 2000) - simple but eyecatching!

2. The Book of Blood and Shadow, by Robin Wasserman (Atom, 2012) - blue and purple and pretty, a really well designed cover, I think.

3. The Iron King, by Julie Kagawa (Mira INK, 2011) - glitter, swirls, and thorns. Just lovely.

4. Under the Never Sky, by Veronica Rossi (Atom, 2012) - gorgeous illustration, title in the colours of a sunset.

5. The Magic Toyshop, by Angela Carter (Virago, 2008) - I chose this one specifically for the cover, which is fabric-covered and features an array of puppets.

6. Nights At The Circus, by Angela Carter (Picador, 1985) - just fantastic, Fevvers in all her winged glory and a starry leotard!

7. Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh (The Great Writers Library, 1988) - fabulous Art Deco styling.

8. The Secrets of Jin-Shei, by Alma Alexander (HarperCollins, 2004) - the kind of design you'd expect for historical fiction set in Asia, but beautiful nonetheless.

9. Let's Get Lost, by Sarra Manning (Hodder Childrens/Bite, 2006) - eyecatching, black and pink illustration.

10. Dramarama, by E. Lockhart (Hyperion, 2007) - bold yet classy.

Have you chosen any of my selections? What did you think of my foray into YouTube?

Monday Amusements 9

My reading journal, with my current favourite pen.

Happy Monday! A strange greeting, perhaps, but just think, you could read something really brilliant this week. And on that subject...

Keris Stainton wrote a beautiful post for Author Allsorts, I love libraries. I would love to know that my local library had a book that I'd written in stock. I really do love that place. I haven't gotten any new fiction books out of my local library in months but every time I visit to renew something I find it impossible to resist walking around for a little while to soak up the atmosphere. Then I tell myself that I must get through my TBR so that I can fully enjoy discovering new books in the library like I used to. Not sure that will happen any time soon, but it's a lovely thought!

I enjoyed reading Jo's write-up of her experience speaking on a London Book Fair panel at Once Upon a Bookcase. It sounds like such an amazing event.

I was excited to read that SisterSpooky will be hosting another Geek Week! I caught up with the last one a bit late but it was really fun to read all the posts revelling in geekdom.

It seems like every book blogger has been posting about the state of their TBR piles recently. I loved seeing Clover's pictures, and Lynsey of Narratively Speaking posted asking for ideas for TBR organisation. Last year I used a spreadsheet to help me calculate how many books I had left to read to help me finish each reading challenge I was participating in, but I haven't set it up for this year yet. It's not easily customisable because you'd need to change all the categories and numbers to fit your plans, but if anyone is interested in seeing it, I might upload it somewhere when I'm done.

I really enjoyed this video post by Paula at The Broke and the Bookish about learning to give people better quick reviews, though honestly I admire her for being able to openly enthuse to people about the books she loves! I've never been entirely comfortable expressing my opinions about anything cultural other than things that are really mainstream, like television and fashion. Talking about music makes me really anxious that I'll be judged for my tastes and when I do have the opportunity to talk about books, sometimes I freeze up and don't say anything because I don't think the person I'm talking to would have any interest in reading the books I like, or because I'm worried I'll bore them with my enthusiasm or criticism. It can be tough being an adult with a serious, academic interest in YA! (And this is why I blog)

I love a good list, and my recent favourites are Books I'd Like To See As Film Adaptations, at Fluttering Butterflies, Unlikable Female Characters in YA Fiction: A Reading List, at Stacked, and Stylist's 50 best books of the 1920s. I want to read my way through all three of these lists!

Did you ever stop to think and forget to start again?'s Confessions of a Book Nerd (via @cloverness) made me giggle. I have gotten the bus to another library so that I can get out a specific book that I looked up on the online catalogue. Several times. Happily this bus ride only takes me about 20 to 30 minutes, not an hour, but I usually go straight to the library, get the book, and go home again, only spending about 20 minutes there in total.

On to reviews, and Michelle at Fabbity Fab Book Reviews made Cadillac Couches by Sophie B. Watson sound like an absolute must read. A coming-of-age book about twenty-somethings? With a road trip and music festivals? Yes please!

After reading Sophie's review of Gail Carriger's Etiquette & Espionage I thought, yet again: right, that's it, this year I MUST read something by this author. I've had Soulless sitting on my TBR for years now, so I have no excuses.

Finally, Writing from the Tub and SisterSpooky both covered You Don't Know Me by Sophia Bennett and made it sound amazing - it's going straight on my wishlist for sure.

Do subscribe if you enjoy my link selections, and feel free to explore the archive! No Monday Amusements here next week, but Friday is the first day of my Diary of a Crush theme week (aka, my cunning plan to force myself to review this series)!

Book Review: The Secret of Ella and Micha, by Jessica Sorensen

Ella doesn't want to go back home, but her first year at college is over and she can't avoid going back to confront the reality she ran away from: her past, and her fears about her changing relationship with Micha, her best friend since childhood. Micha had refused to let her go, telephoning colleges and asking for her, hoping that he could find her and explain his feelings. Now she's back, he wants to make his move, but she is determined to cling to the calm and collected façade that she built during her time away, to protect the old, impulsive Ella who couldn't handle her life anymore.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed that I'm quite positive about the concept of 'New Adult'. As much as I love YA and always will, I've been wanting for years to read more coming-of-age stories about characters in their twenties. I like the idea of a marketing category for books like this to make them easier to find - I think anything that helps people find books they might enjoy is a good thing. When I was invited to read and review The Secret of Ella and Micha, a New Adult title that has already made the bestseller lists in the USA, I jumped at the chance, because I hadn't read any New Adult books before and I wanted to see what the hype was all about.

The Secret of Ella and Micha is essentially a romance, albeit one in which the protagonists also have serious family issues to deal with. Unfortunately, this book was the next book I read after the wonderful Pushing the Limits, which probably set it up at a bit of a disadvantage, especially as it features similar issues. The Secret of Ella and Micha is definitely more adult, and maybe more realistic in some ways, but I have to admit that it didn't move me in the way that Pushing the Limits did.

The Secret of Ella and Micha is a much shorter book, and the characters are all drawn more quickly. My favourite thing about this novel is the setting. Ella and Micha's background is almost completely different from mine, and I enjoyed discovering this small town where the young people have nothing much else to do than throw parties and go drag racing. I thought Lila, Ella's roommate, was really intriguing and enjoyed finding more out about her.

When it came to the romance, I often wished that Ella and Micha would just get on with it, instead of acting up around each other and attempting to resist the inevitable. Many readers will probably enjoy the drawn-out tension, but I found myself wanting the story to hurry up so that I could find out how things would work out once they decided to date, and see how they would handle all the challenges of life together.

I didn't feel like the story really needs to be New Adult, because although Ella is a university student, almost all of the action takes place in the town where she grew up, and apart from her student status providing a reason for her to have left town for several months, and to return bringing a stranger (Lila), it doesn't add anything to the story. Ella might as well have been a teenager who moved away with a parent or other relative and then came back. The story was more about resolving issues from her past than negotiating her future, and I think I would have been more excited about it had it been the other way around, because that's the kind of content that I want to see in New Adult. Maybe Ella's future is dealt with more in the sequel, The Forever of Ella and Micha. I'll have to read some reviews and find out.

This is quite a minor criticism, but I think the text could have done with an extra proofread or two - I spotted several spelling, grammar and formatting mistakes.

I'm not entirely sure that The Secret of Ella and Micha was my kind of book in the end, but if you're looking for a romance that touches on tough subjects, it might be one for you. Honestly, it seems likely that I'll skip the second in the series, but I might keep an eye out for the third, The Temptation of Lila and Ethan, as I found Lila and Ethan, Ella's roommate and Micha's best friend respectively, to be quite likeable and interesting, and I wanted to know what was going on between them when they went off alone.