I'd marry you in paper rings

Pardon me for only managing to post my ashamedly overdue today, it has been a hectic week with the new job and everything, so let’s just get on with it. #SPOILERALERT ~ As lovely, heartbreaking, and plain honest as the story undoubtedly is, I would give it no more than 3 out of 5 stars. I really enjoyed Gayle’s narrative from Mia’s at times confusing, at times surprisingly wise point of view, which to me describes perfectly accurately the mind of any 17-year old girl in her position. However, it was quite a let down as I felt that it didn’t develop enough into one of the crucial points of the novel - Mia’s reasons for opting to stay. Of course Adam, the unrealistically-perfect-boyfriend, gives her quite a nice speech on how she should not put him first and foremost in her decision, but it still seems that it is precisely what she does. In my opinion, Gayle Forman fails to develop on the rest of Mia’s family as her grandad has a very short, though, clearly, highly impacting, role in talking to her about it. It must be said that Kim’s touching message that Mia still had a family nevertheless, was brilliantly done. A great read overall, I can only the film does it justice - sadly, I haven’t managed to see it yet *sniff*

"So what do you do when you build yourself - only to realise you built yourself with the wrong things? You rip it up and start again. That is the work of your teenage years - to build up and tear down and build up again, over and over, endlessly, like a speeded-up film of cities during boom times, and wars. To be fearless, and endless, in your reinventions. And so you go out into your world, and try and find the things that will be useful to you. Your weapons. Your tools. Your charms. You find a record, or a poem, or a picture of a girl that you pin to the wall, and go, ‘Her. I’ll try and be her. I’ll try and be her - but here.’ You observe the way others walk, and talk, and you steal little bits of them - you collage yourself out of whatever you can get your hands on. And you will be quite on your own when you do all this. There is no academy where you can learn to be yourself; there is no line manager, slowly urging you towards the correct answer. And some versions of you will end in dismal failure - many prototypes won’t even get out of the front door. But one day, you’ll find a version of you that will get you kissed, or befriended, or inspired, and you will make your noted accordingly: staying up all night to hone, and improvise upon a tiny snatch of melody that worked. Until - slowly, slowly - you make a viable version of you, one you can hum, every day. You’ll find the tiny, right piece of grit you can pearl around, until nature kicks in, and your shell will just quietly fill with magic, even while you’re busy doing other things. What your nurture began, nature will take over, and start completing, until you stop having to think about who you’ll be entirely - as you’re too busy doing, now. And ten years will pass, without you even noticing.”

"Anger is just fear, brought to the boil. And the thing about scared people is, whenever you ask them for advice, on whatever subject, they only ever have one thing to say to you: ‘Run.’"

"I will learn the lesson of this fear: I will never tell anyone when I feel bad again. I will never confide a weakness. It does not work. It makes things worse. It’s really best not to tell people when you feel bad. Growing up is about keeping secrets, and pretending everything is fine."
So far, I’m very inclined to say the best thing about this book is Caitlin Moran’s polished yet blatant rudeness of speech through the young protagonist. This is a very, very good read indeed.