Book Review: A Midsummer's Nightmare by Kody Keplinger

Author: Kody Keplinger
Series: N/A
Publisher: Poppy
Release Date: June 5th 2012
My Rating: 5 cups
Blurb (from Goodreads):

Whitley Johnson's dream summer with her divorcé dad has turned into a nightmare. She's just met his new fiancée and her kids. The fiancée's son? Whitley's one-night stand from graduation night. Just freakin' great.

Worse, she totally doesn't fit in with her dad's perfect new country-club family. So Whitley acts out. She parties. Hard. So hard she doesn't even notice the good things right under her nose: a sweet little future stepsister who is just about the only person she's ever liked, a best friend (even though Whitley swears she doesn't "do" friends), and a smoking-hot guy who isn't her stepbrother...at least, not yet. It will take all three of them to help Whitley get through her anger and begin to put the pieces of her family together.

Filled with authenticity and raw emotion, Whitley is Kody Keplinger's most compelling character to date: a cynical Holden Caulfield-esque girl you will wholly care about.

I love Kody Keplinger's books. With each of her books that I read I'm becoming more and more convinced I want to read every book she's ever published and every book she'll publish in the future.

The thing that I loved most about this book is that it was easy to understand Whitley. I am one of the lucky people that grew up with both parents, so I don't know firsthand the struggles that a child with divorced parents go through. I do have a glimpse into that drama through friends and one of my parents who came from divorced parents. Even so, Whitley's behavior was a bit understandable. I was so sad to see that Whitley's mom kept complaining about her ex-husband. I kept hoping that this woman, this ADULT woman would realize the damage she was doing to her daughter.

Whitley's dad isn't a role model either. She sees him as someone who can do no wrong and while I understand putting your dad on a pedestal, I had issues with how he treated this situation. He felt more like a buddy than a father to me and that didn't seem to help things.

I also found it easy to understand why Whitley had trouble accepting her dad's future wife. It felt like she was the kind of mother Whitley wished her own mom was. And it really is difficult accepting a stranger into that role.

Nathan is like a breath of fresh air. I liked the contrast between the two of them, how he tried to see past the anger and see the real Whitley. I really liked him. I also adored his little sister. I can only hope that we'll get a story for her in the future.

Book Review: Lying Out Loud by Kody Keplinger

Author: Kody Keplinger
Series: The DUFF Companion
Publisher: Hodder Children's Books
Release Date: April 28th 2015
My Rating: 4 cups
Source: Netgalley
Blurb (from Goodreads):

Kody Keplinger returns to the world of The DUFF in this brand-new companion novel!

Sonny Ardmore is an excellent liar. She lies about her dad being in prison. She lies about her mom kicking her out. And she lies about sneaking into her best friend's house every night because she has nowhere else to go.

Amy Rush might be the only person Sonny shares everything with— secrets, clothes, even a nemesis named Ryder Cross.

Ryder's the new kid at Hamilton High and everything Sonny and Amy can't stand—a prep-school snob. But Ryder has a weakness: Amy. So when Ryder emails Amy asking her out, the friends see it as a prank opportunity not to be missed.

But without meaning to, Sonny ends up talking to Ryder all night online. And to her horror, she realizes that she might actually like him. Only there's one small catch: he thinks he's been talking to Amy. So Sonny comes up with an elaborate scheme to help Ryder realize that she's the girl he's really wanted all along. Can Sonny lie her way to the truth, or will all her lies end up costing her both Ryder and Amy?

*Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Hodder's Children Books in exchange for an honest review.

I was ecstatic when I found out that Kody Keplinger was going to write another book set in the world of The DUFF. I absolutely loved that book and I wanted nothing more than spend more time with those characters.

What I like about Keplinger's books is that they always deal with important issues, no matter the age of the characters. Lying Out Loud, in my opinion, was about real friendships and lies. As Sonny found out, lies are so easy to tell. Sometimes they get discovered soon, sometimes they don't. But they are awfully easy to tell. And they ruin relationships. And it was also about true friendship, the one you can have with very few people in your life, the kind that will make the other person feel like a sibling. And how easy it is to lose it.

It was easy for me to relate with Sonny, mainly because I could see through her lies and figure out that they were about her trying to protect herself. Against what, I didn't know. However, at some point, I started wishing she'd get better at telling the truth. The lies eventually started to bother me a little.

I loved Amy. I really want a book from her POV, because she's a great character. I liked that she found it in herself to have a real talk with Sonny and tell her everything that was bothering her. Basically, she stood up for herself. I kept wondering, however, if she didn't have a crush on Ryder. I don't know why that seemed like what she was going through. Of course, she later explains in a conversation with Sonny why she was acting the way she did and I realized she was just scared of losing her best friend.

Ryder was such a hard character to like. He had no in-between, he was either hating something or someone, or loving them. That bothered me a little. Also, he could be a bit of a jerk. He hated everything small town for no good reason and he kept having that "I'm better than you" air about him. Maybe that too was a defense mechanism. Because I only got to meet him through Sonny's eyes, I can't be certain about that. But who knows, maybe there were other things that made him act the way he did.

What I loved was that every character from previous books make an appearance in this one. And I love it when seemingly unrelated books share some common link.

I keep hoping that Amy will get her own book, because she needs to be braver than she is right now. I thought she did a good job of defending herself and demanding the respect she deserved, but she still needs more. She needs to have that same courage with strangers in my opinion.

Anyway, I very much enjoyed this new book from Keplinger and I can't wait to read more books from this author.

Book Review: The Duff by Kody Keplinger

Author: Kody Keplinger
Publisher: Poppy
Release Date: January 1st 2010
My Rating: 5 cups
Source:Netgalley
Blurb (from Goodreads):

Seventeen-year-old Bianca Piper is cynical and loyal, and she doesn’t think she’s the prettiest of her friends by a long shot. She’s also way too smart to fall for the charms of man-slut and slimy school hottie Wesley Rush. In fact, Bianca hates him. And when he nicknames her “Duffy,” she throws her Coke in his face.

But things aren’t so great at home right now. Desperate for a distraction, Bianca ends up kissing Wesley. And likes it. Eager for escape, she throws herself into a closeted enemies-with-benefits relationship with Wesley.

Until it all goes horribly awry. It turns out that Wesley isn’t such a bad listener, and his life is pretty screwed up, too. Suddenly Bianca realizes with absolute horror that she’s falling for the guy she thought she hated more than anyone.

I'm sitting here trying to figure out a way to adequately express how much I enjoyed reading this book. I loved it, actually. The DUFF is one of those books that surprised me, because I did not expect to like it this much.

The first thing that stood out while I was reading this book was how real the entire thing seemed. I felt like I myself was back in high school (thank God I wasn't!). The dynamics were all there, the relationships were there, everything that I remember high school to be was in this book. It might have to do with Keplinger's age while she was writing the book, but still, she had an amazing ability to capture all of that and put it on paper and make it seem genuine.

I adored Bianca and Wesley. Bianca is the type of girl that has a mildly bad time in high school. She's not the popular one or the pretty one. She doesn't fall for every line guys her age through at her, which I personally thought was awesome. She seems like the girl you'd deem "the crazy one", until you actually get to know her and understand her. I was so sad because of her family situation.

Wesley is a difficult guy to like at first. I didn't quite understand him in the beginning, but then certain scenes made me realize he is so not the guy I thought he was.Yes, he was always chasing girls, but what teenage boy doesn't? I liked how he respected Bianca's wishes and how he didn't try to push her to open up about what was bothering her. And eventually, like Bianca, I ended up liking him a lot.

There are so many good themes in this book: sex, alcohol abuse, bullying. And they are presented not in a preachy way, but in a natural, "shit happens sometimes" kind of way. However, the most important thing in my opinion, is when Bianca is shown that everybody has self esteem issues and that everyone has that something they don't like about themselves. That I think was the best lesson Bianca got in this book and that is why I loved The Duff so much.