After a busy few weeks, I finally have time to sit down and write a post. I finished two books in that time, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares both by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn. They were both good teenage love stories, and even though they had similar plot structures, I thoroughly enjoyed them both.
Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist follows the story of Nick and Norah, who meet one night at a club. Nick asks Norah to pretend to be his girlfriend for 5 minutes, to avoid his ex-girlfriend, and that leads to a night of crazy adventures. Their love of music leads them to interesting places around the city, and they both have the night of a lifetime. Yes, there was a movie made from this book, but I have yet to see it. I will have to watch it to see if it’s as good as the book. From my experience, I’m going to guess that it isn’t.
While this book was kind of a light read, and it didn’t take much to really follow it, I found that it was the perfect book to read during midterms. I could take a break from reading and come back and still know what was going on. The characters themselves were also pretty good, though I didn’t really find anything that really made them stand out. It was your typical young adult love story, I felt. Good, but not spectacular.
Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares has a similar plot line to Nick and Norah. Dash and Lily both didn’t know each other, and then some crazy event brings them together. I must say, I think I liked this book a little better, just because it was more centered around books. Dash finds a red notebook in a bookstore with a list of dares for him to follow. He does, and leaves his own dares for Lily (the one who left the notebook). This brings them on a crazy adventure about the city, eventually bringing the two together. It was something that I would love to happen to me.
One thing that I really liked in this book was how Levithan and Cohn added in things from Nick and Norah that you wouldn’t realize were references unless you read the other book. I thought it was fantastic how they connected the two stories together, in a very subtle way. I’m betting if you read the other books they wrote together, you would find similar references. The other thing I liked about this book was the character of Dash. He was such a word/book nerd, and I absolutely loved it. I wish more people existed like him. He was a great character. The combination of the story line, the references, and the character of Dash made me Dash and Lily better than Nick and Norah.
The next book I will be reading is Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. I guess I’m on a David Levithan kick. Until next time, happy reading!