I’ve always wanted to join a book club. I have no idea why. When I think of Book Clubs, I think of sweaters, coffee, and cats. Lots of cats. Unless the cats are wearing the sweaters, this is imagery is probably false and cliche.
Anyway, thanks to my current jobless dilemma, I finally had time to go to my FIRST book club meeting. No cats. No sweaters. I did drink coffee. My local library sponsored the event. Yay! Unfortunately, there was only two of us there: the librarian and me. Don’t get me wrong, I still had fun, but the event was anticlimactic, compared with the vision in my head.
We read and reviewed the YA novel Before I Fall, by Lauren Oliver.
*Warning: No vampires or sparkles. LOL
The cover didn’t do much for me.
Considering it’s published by HarperCollins, I would have thought they’d go with something more professional and less I made this myself with my camera phone. Maybe that was the look they were going for? If so, I am NOT their target audience. If it wasn’t on the library’s book club list, I wouldn’t have bothered picking the novel up, let alone reading it. However, I’m glad I did read this book because I LOVED it! Not only that, I’d recommend it.
The characters seemed shallow to me at first. Chapter One sets up the book, so have faith. The book wouldn’t work without it. I was amazed how much the characters grew, especially the main character, Sam. I want to give her a hug. Can you do that with a fictional character? Sure! There were a few sniffles from me towards the end of the book. It’s different than anything I’ve read before. Sam repeats the same day, over and over. She learns and grows over the course of the book. I would recommend this book to anyone, but especially young girls ages sixteen and up. I think there’s a lot of life lesson’s that can be gleaned from Sam’s experiences.
If anyone else has read this book or if anyone else has a YA book they’d like to recommend, I’d love to hear from you!
Have a great day! JH
JULI HOFFMAN 
Tricia Drammeh’s Spellbringer series is AMAZING!! There’s no vampires, and no glittering, but there is magic in a contemporary setting. I loved it, anyway.
Wow. Only two people. If you hadn’t gone the librarian would have been alone. That’s sad.
Yeah, I don’t like the cover very much either. It’s a bad photo to try to work with, for starters and then the font placement… when I first saw it as I glanced down the blog I thought it was an Indy book that needed help!
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I’ll have to put Spellbringer on my reading pile! Yeah…just me and the librarian. I’m so glad I showed up! That would have been terrible if NO ONE came. Standing up a librarian is bad literary karma! LOL That cover really does look like an Indie cover don’t. What does that say about traditionally published books? I’m not sure. It’s not good, but the book’s content is wonderful!
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Oh, thanks for the shout out, Jo.
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I’ve always thought it would be fun to be in a book club. However, my biggest fear would be that they would only want to read stuffy classics, and that’s just not my thing. I read for fun, and life is too short to read books I don’t like. Plus, I would be sitting there thinking, why can’t you pick MY book for the book club. LOL
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This book club was for adults who still read YA novels. I figured that would be the LEAST stuffy of my options. Perhaps one day you WILL have a book read by a book club. Wouldn’t that be a kick? 🙂
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I used to belong to a book club when I lived in Missouri. Great group of ladies! We read everything from YA to chick lit to classics. Then I moved to New Hampshire, and I haven’t found a new book club. I really miss it.
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It was a lot of fun! Something I’d like to do again. 🙂
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