Woooo, finally read Lola! I had been saving specifically for the #boutofbooks readathon. So, I liked it – but not as much as I liked Anna and the French Kiss.
Basically Lola is a 17-year old girl in San Francisco who’s pretty cool – she dresses in fun, funky outfits every day, she has awesome parents, she has a mystery-loving best friend. She also has a rocker boyfriend that her parents aren’t crazy about, but that she is. And then one day Lola’s happy life is interrupted when her childhood friends and old next door neighbors move back home again. Now she has to face her old feelings for Cricket, the boy next door.
So, Lola is a fun character. I loved her kooky outfits and how she was a pretty happy, well-mannered teenager. It was awesome that she was so crafty – it’s pretty brave to be a 17-year old who sews that much. (I’m 24 and I sew, and my friends kind of pick on me for being such a little old lady.) I will say that she seems a little boy-crazy… and while that could be annoying, Stephanie Perkins has a way of reminding me vividly that that’s exactly what most high school girls are like. When you’re a teenager your romantic life is often your #1 preoccupation – kind of sad to look back on as adults, but true. I also loved Anna’s relationship with her parents – they’re awesome, and she’s close to them. I hate absent-parent syndrome in YA, so this was a refreshing change. Of course Cricket was an awesome boy character – tall and awkward, and I love that he was a science nerd (seeing as how I’m in love with one in real life). That’s another great thing about Perkins so far – her male romantic interests are always such genuinely good guys. And speaking of that, Etienne and Anna are in this book as well! Yay!
Soooo… there were a couple things that I didn’t really like. One is that Lola is too dramatic for me – not with the costumes and stuff, but just that everything then went wrong seemed to upset her SO MUCH and yeah… I’m a jerk but it got old for me. When girl characters cry a lot I kind of want to tell them to man up. I also hated how she behaved when she’s dating Max – sure he was kind of a dillhole in my humble opinion, but he also had some very valid reasons for acting that way and it was because of how she was treating him.
Anyways, this was still a cute, fun read and quick to get through. And I am amazed at how well Stephanie Perkins writes teenagers – probably the most realistic teenage characters I’ve seen in books in a looooong time. Also her setting descriptions are amazing – San Francisco sounded so wonderful and totally made me wish I could go there like right away. I do hope that her third book will be different. Lola and Anna have a LOT of similarites in broad plot outlines, and I’d like to see something a little different there.
If you have to choose which to read first, read Anna and the French Kiss.
Sarah Says: 3.75 stars
