serafina67 is the best

This was maybe the third time I've read serafina 67 *urgently requires life* straight through, cover to cover. It's long been my favorite go-to YA book; in terms of how I feel about the book, it's like the You've Got Mail of YA novels. It's an instant mood-booster, a wonderfully cute and compelling story, full of characters I love.

And this time around there was a bit of a different outlook reading it. Though I still love the book so much, I read it this time with the identity of the "mystery person" in mind. This is a plotline that, while it's important to the story, doesn't really become a thing until well, well into the story. However, reading the book with the identity in mind made me notice things I hadn't before -- warning, vague-ish spoiler-ish things below:

UK cover/title

-- like the fact that serafina, at times, is woefully ungrateful and wrapped up in herself. And that what the mystery person does is creepy, yes, but also stems from the best of intentions (and is sort of weirdly sweet, even while being woah creepy invasion of privacy) and realistic. I could easily see how something like this could get out of hand quickly.

and end spoilers!!


I love serafina. I love her story and the way she comes to grips with things, the fact that she wants to be happier and be a better person but so often fails and finds it difficult to get up again. (But she does get up again, and I think that's the important thing.) Her family story here is so real and so wonderfully written. The love story as well is one of my favorite YA couples, and the story with her best friend is something I can relate all too well to (eerily so, actually). Serafina still reminds me of myself, especially her craziness. And the whole story, still, is written so well, with all the different subplots fitting together so, so well.

Plus, I finished rereading this while waiting in the dentist's office. It was probably the only thing that held me together. So thanks for that, Susie Day. :)

Review: My Invisible Boyfriend

MY INVISIBLE BOYFRIEND
Susie Day
Scholastic Press

For the first time in her somewhat nomadic life, Heidi Ryder has friends. Real, actual friends. And she belongs. But when  those friends come back to school after summer break with significant others, Heidi feels herself slipping out of that belonging feeling she loves and, in a moment of panic, she maybe accidentally invents an imaginary boyfriend.

Of course, the premise of inventing a boyfriend (and then giving him an online personality/life) is one ripe for hilarious complications and hijinks. In Heidi's case it turns out that her super-sensitive boyfriend (who is actually her pretending to be an imaginary boy online) finds out more about her friends seemingly perfect lives than she herself does, leaving her in the awkward position of wanting to fix everything, when she's not even supposed to know anything. As she sets out, with the help of a fictional time-traveling detective character named Mycroft Christie, to figure out why her best friend isn't talking to her and who it is that her other friend's boyfriend might be cheating with, she discovers that not only is having an imaginary boyfriend super-confusing and difficult, but she maybe wants an actual human boyfriend. Add to this the fact that the tea shop where she works is closing down, the owner and her (super-super-cute) son moving to America, and Heidi's pretty much a mess.

It's a little impossible for me to not compare this book to serafina67 *urgently requires life* and the fact is that Heidi's quirky and weird in nearly the same way that Serafina is -- at least on the surface. She's in love with a fictional character (and then an imaginary boy she makes up), she has much online drama, and she's a bit awkward. But despite these obvious superficial similarities, unlike Serafina, Heidi never felt fully real to me. Her worries are very specific things and though her friends are all very unique and original, they all seemed a bit like charicatures of people. Some odd quirks, accessories, a specific role in her life and the drama that unfolds. The exception to this is her American boss, Betsy, and her cute-but-unavailable son, Teddy. The two of them give Heidi and the book itself a much-needed dose of reality.

Much of the book is full of Heidi's detective work as she tries to solve the mysteries of her friend's lives. Unfortunately, Heidi is an awful detective and while this is funny for a while as some of the answers to her questions really are surprising, near the end of the book it gets a little tedious, maybe because the answer to the last mystery seemed really obvious right from the start of the book. This is a short-ish book, but somehow it felt longer than it was. The single-minded character of Heidi is big on quirk, but doesn't quite have the depth to carry the full length of her novel.

And having said all of that, I should also say that I liked this book even if I didn't love it. It's cute and funny and endearing. And completely, totally unique and teenager-y. I wish I could have read it without internally comparing it to serafina67 *urgently requires life* because the similarities are a bit too many, with this book always falling short.

40 Day Book Challenge - Favorite YA (07)

Day 07 - A favorite YA book
You'd think this would be crazy difficult for me to choose, but it's really not. There are tons of YA books I absolutely love, but at the top of the heap is this one, that I can reread over and over again and always makes me laugh and is incredibly relatable for me. I really do think you should read it. See if you love it as much as I do.