Burn for Burn trilogy - Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Let's ring in 2020 with a review from a terrible trilogy, shall we? I promised a review of the full trilogy, and you'll get it, but before we dive in, content warning: This book centers pretty heavily around suicide and also touches on sexual assault, both in a way that is ludicrously casual and blase. I gave the first two books three stars, but honestly, if Goodreads allowed half stars it would have been lower. Overall, I'd rate the entire trilogy at about a 2.3. There are some good elements and there were opportunities to open a dialogue about some difficult topics that young people face, but instead.......it all kinda went off the rails.

Now...the administrative stuff. My rating for each book and the descriptions. Be warned: Spoilers ahead. Also be warned: This review is very stream-of-consciousness. I'm tired, and I'm tired of these books.

Burn for Burn:
⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

Postcard-perfect Jar Island is home to charming tourist shops, pristine beaches, amazing oceanfront homes—and three girls secretly plotting revenge.

KAT is sick and tired of being bullied by her former best friend.

LILLIA has always looked out for her little sister, so when she discovers that one of her guy friends has been secretly hooking up with her, she’s going to put a stop to it.

MARY is perpetually haunted by a traumatic event from years past, and the boy who’s responsible has yet to get what’s coming to him.

None of the girls can act on their revenge fantasies alone without being suspected. But together…anything is possible.

With an alliance in place, there will be no more “I wish I’d said…” or “If I could go back and do things differently...” These girls will show Jar Island that revenge is a dish best enjoyed together.

Fire with Fire:
⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

Lillia, Kat, and Mary had the perfect plan. Work together in secret to take down the people who wronged them. But things didn’t exactly go the way they’d hoped at the Homecoming Dance.

Not even close.

For now, it looks like they got away with it. All they have to do is move on and pick up the pieces, forget there ever was a pact. But it’s not easy, not when Reeve is still a total jerk and Rennie’s meaner than she ever was before.

And then there’s sweet little Mary…she knows there’s something seriously wrong with her. If she can’t control her anger, she’s sure that someone will get hurt even worse than Reeve was. Mary understands now that it’s not just that Reeve bullied her—it’s that he made her love him.

Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, burn for a burn. A broken heart for a broken heart. The girls are up to the task. They’ll make Reeve fall in love with Lillia and then they will crush him. It’s the only way he’ll learn.

It seems once a fire is lit, the only thing you can do is let it burn...

Ashes to Ashes:
⭐⭐

From the cover:

New Year's Eve ended with a bang and Mary, Kat and Lillia may not be prepared for what is to come.

After Rennie's death, Kat and Lillia try to put the pieces together of what happened to her. They both blame themselves. If Lillia hadn't left with Reeve... If Kat had only stayed with Rennie... Things could have been different. Now they will never be the same.

Only Mary knows the truth about that night. About what she is. She also knows the truth about Lillia and Reeve falling in love, about Reeve being happy when all he deserves is misery, just like the misery he caused her. Now their childish attempts at revenge are a thing of the past and Mary is out for blood. Will she leave anything in her wake or will all that remain be ashes?

💭      💭     💭

So...yeah. These books are a little bit of a soap opera. The "alliance" formed between the three girls is pretty flimsy, especially since it's clear pretty early on that Alex is a decent guy and for sure should not have been lumped in with Rennie, the actual worst person in existence, and Reeve, her evil twin in worstness. Which brings me to one of my issues with this trilogy: the character "development" is all over the place.

Reeve and Rennie are pretty firmly established in the first book as the worst kind of bullying garbage human, people who are horrible for no reason but to be horrible, controlling even with their friends, and basically treat everyone but each other like shit. Then you get toward the end of the second book, and there's a pretty hard pivot to try and make them, Reeve especially, sympathetic characters. I'm fully on board with there being two sides to every story, you never know what's going on in a person's life to make them who they are, etc, etc, etc...but you have to at least give GLIMPSES of the better side to someone's personality earlier on, otherwise I just don't buy it. Readers didn't see a different side to Reeve or Rennie...the authors created a whole new character and swapped them in for the old ones. Nah.

Beyond the sloppy character development, pretty much everything about this book was just...all over the place. It felt like multiple genres mashed into one, like there were so many ideas for the plot and the characters that instead of choosing a few and following them through, the authors decided to squeeze them all in. At the same time, the plot often moved at a glacial pace. The first two books were, for me, kind of like the book equivalent of the saying about passing a car wreck that's so bad, you want to look away but you can't. Things were so off the rails, that I couldn't help but want to keep reading, just to see how much nonsense could be stuffed into a book. I read the first two books out loud to my husband, and no lie, we would read together and crack up every time some bonkers thing was thrown in. This entertainment factor wasn't enough to keep my husband's interest, though, so I read the third book by myself, and oof, I'm glad it did, because it was...bad.

Remember the content warning from the beginning about suicide. Yeah, the third book is rough and does an incredibly shitty job of handling discussion about suicide. We're going to get into it now, so for real, CONTENT WARNING. Please do not read this (both my review and this ridiculous trilogy) if suicide is a trigger for you.

For starters, you find out at the end of the second book that Mary, the character who had attempted suicide, actually completed suicide and is, in fact, a ghost. A ghost, we learn, who didn't actually intend to die by suicide...she was just mad at Reeve for being a dick and wanted to make him feel bad, so she was going to *pretend* to attempt suicide, I guess? (this whole plotline gets a yike from me). Then, because Mary is still so furious at Reeve for taking her life away from her, she spends most of the third book trying to force Reeve to also die by suicide. (Let's award another few yikes for that!) And finally, we get to the last chapter, where Mary first forces Reeve to slit his wrists (YIKES) and then immediately realizes that it wasn't Reeve's fault she died, it was hers! She was the one who made the decision to attempt suicide, so she was the one who bore the guilt of ending her life (YIKES YIKES YIKES YOU GUYS!) It's all bad. It's so bad. No.

Honestly, if I hadn't used Ashes to Ashes as a #FirstPageFriday, I would never have finished it. Looking back, I should have stopped reading it and just said in the review that I couldn't finish it, but in case it took a turn for the better, I didn't want to judge it too harshly without actually knowing how it ended. I should have figured, after the first two books, shit wasn't going to suddenly improve, but you know...gotta hope for the best, I guess. Lesson learned. 10/10, don't read this trilogy. If you want something by Jenny Han, read To All the Boys I've Loved Before. Watch the movie too, while you're at it. I've never read anything else by Siobhan Vivian, but if you have and you enjoyed it, let me know. I'll give it a shot. For now, I'll be on the hunt for a palate cleanser. Too bad I already reread Fangirl, aka, the most perfect book of all time.

Two Boys Kissing - David Levithan

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"New York Times  bestselling author David Levithan tells the based-on-true-events story of Harry and Craig, two 17-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record—all of which is narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS. 

While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teen boys dealing with languishing long-term relationships, coming out, navigating gender identity, and falling deeper into the digital rabbit hole of gay hookup sites—all while the kissing former couple tries to figure out their own feelings for each other."

First off, David Levithan is an amazing narrator. I want him to read everything to me. Second, this book is not a light read, but my damn, it is amazing. The main narrative is about Harry and Craig as they try to break the Guinness World Record for longest kiss, but the story branches off to follow several other boys--Peter and Neil, a couple in a long-term relationship, Avery and Ryan, who meet at the start of the book, Cooper, who is only out online and struggling with his mental health, and finally Tariq, who early in the book is attacked on the street for being gay. Like I said...not a light read.

The narration by the "Greek Chorus" of gay men lost to AIDS took a bit for me to get used to, but after the first couple of chapters I was hooked. All the stories have their heartbreaking moments, but a few hit me particularly hard, like Avery and Ryan's experience at the abandoned mini-golf place, Neil's experience with coming out to his family, and basically everything about Cooper's story. Also, I've never kissed someone for 32 hours before (oof, no thank you), but Harry and Craig's experience was so descriptive that I felt what they felt. Reading about their aching backs, their thirst, their discomfort made me feel those things. And what I really felt was the support of their friends and family throughout the experience. When the theater group worked together to get more lights for the broadcast, when they formed a wall to protect the boys after someone drove by and egged Harry...seeing the way everyone pulled together to show their love for the two of them was beautiful. This book will make you feel everything. It's amazing. You should read it.

Paper Towns - John Green

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs into his life—dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows. After their all-nighter ends, and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues—and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew..."

So Quentin Jacobsen loves his next door neighbor from afar for most of his life, even though they stopped hanging out at a fairly young age. Then one night she drags him into an epic andventure before disappearing abruptly the next morning. Following her disappearance, Quentin, his two best friends, and Margo's best friend-turned-Quentin's-weird-friend's-girlfriend all begin trying to solve the mystery of her disappearance. At first Quentin worries that she committed suicide, but the more he finds out, the more he hopes she's still out there somewhere...waiting for him.

Mehhhhhhh I just don't know. I wasn't overly enamored with this book, but it had its good points. At times Quentin was kind of a whiny jackass, but he and his friends also had pretty good senses of humor. The thing I liked the most about the book was the emphasis on how your perception of a person =/= who that person really is. Overall, it wasn't a bad read...just not my favorite.