36 Questions That Changes My Mind About You by Vicki Grant
Who could have thought that a psychology experiment could actually make people fall in love with each other?
I am not sure if it is because of the colors of the cover, but everyone just generally seems intrigued by this novel, I now that I was, but I mean, who would have thought that all of my teachers would be really interested in the book? And may I mention that all of them are male teachers? Also, they all thought that it was super interesting, so in a sense, it receives kudos for looking so intriguing and making me look so cool for two days. But they are all correct, 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You by Vicki Grant is a very interesting novel. I believe that what makes everyone be interested in this book is the cover. It doesn´t have the most complicated design, but the colors it has, in this case, bright green and dark pink, is very pleasing to the eye and it is very easy to lay your eyes on it.
Vicki Grant tells us the story of Hildy and Paul in an unforgettable adventure created by a psychological test.
Hildy is a high school student that signs up for a psychological test because she is greatly interested in the area of study, but when she gets there, she realizes that maybe the test is not for her once the instructor tells her that the test can spark a little romance for both subjects that are testing. But later, she impulsively decides to take place in the study, which is when she meets Paul.
Paul seems to be the exact opposite of Hildy and of course, the beginning of their relationship is rather bad, their conversation and answers are small and they are not enjoying each other´s company, which makes their idea of finding love by answering 36 questions almost impossible to think about.
After Hildy and Paul have a disagreement, Hildy explodes and leaves, yet after a couple of hours, Paul is able to find her Facebook and they are able to talk again, but only because Paul really wants to receive his payment by answering questions, even after Hildy threw a fish at him.
Their conversations suddenly start changing and they start becoming more friendly with each other once their layers start fading away with their laughter.
Interestingly, their conversations seem to always come back, even after all of their disagreements, almost as if it was meant for them to meet and talk to each other.
My favorite thing about this novel is the plot and the way the story progressed.
I thought the plot of this novel was very creative. I mean, a story was created based on a psychological study. It was interesting to see how science inspired a story, which makes me believe that eventually, novels such as this one will take over the YA world.
Similarly, I really enjoyed the story because although other sides of the characters were not really shown to the readers, we saw small glimpses of them, such as Hildy´s family and all the drama that was surrounding her. Also, reading a little bit about Paul´s family made him much more human. And although I would have loved a more complete story for both characters, I was pretty satisfied with what I got since the novel is written creatively and different from traditional novels.
Honestly, I really liked the family drama since it made the story much more fun and interesting than I expected from small dialogues.
However, my favorite part of this novel was the story itself. I really enjoyed interesting characters and the ways the story progressed. The way the characters fell in love was beautiful and everything that they did together was just ADORABLE! Also, the way the story actually pushes the two characters to be together was very interesting and fun to read, and at the same time, it sounded very normal, it didn´t sound like something out of a book or a movie, on the contrary, it seemed more as if Hildy and Paul were actually meant to be together.
In addition, I liked the characters, although I didn´t love them. I mean, Paul is cute and interesting, but there was nothing that caught my attention and made me obsess myself with him. On the other side, Hildy was pretty interesting, but I did find her to be a little too plain and a little too predictable and common. But a character that I really liked was Max, Hildy´s friend because he is super funny and made everything in the story better, although again, there is nothing much about him either.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed the writing and the drawings. I found it very interesting that the novel was mainly written by dialogues because I am one of those readers that just understand what is happening through dialogues and being able to do that with this book felt different and refreshing. It was interesting to see how readers get to know the characters and the story by reading their dialogues. This story made me want to read more stories with more dialogues and I hope that this novel helps to have more novels published through dialogues.
In addition, I really liked the drawings because they made the story very special and they made me laugh A LOT, but I did want more of them. I enjoyed that we were able to see Paul´s drawings because I think that they made the novel way more special. Although I would have wanted more of them throughout the story, I think that made me treasure them more.
Overall, 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You by Vicki Grant is a short, creative, refreshing and fun novel with good dialogues and funny drawings, along with characters that are just charming! You will want to finish Paul and Hildy´s story in a sitting, and the best thing is that you actually can since it isn´t a long novel! 36 Questions That Changed My Mind About You will open new doors for new novels.
4 out of 5 stars
Love, Sua
Paradox Bound by Peter Clines
Time-traveling through history and future. Doesn´t it sound exciting? I discovered this novel by searching for a book to request through Blogging For Books and the best thing about actually discovering it was that it isn´t the type of novel that I would pick for myself, I mean, it does sound super exciting and adventurous, but it just doesn´t seem like the type of novel that I like, which are usually romantic novels or contemporaries that make me laugh, or even some women fiction titles. I am going to admit that Paradox Bound surprised me in a very positive manner. The novel kept me intrigued and eager to know what happened next, although I didn´t absolutely love it, I fairly enjoyed.
Peter Clines tells the story of Eli, who lives in Sanders, a small city in Maine, and encounters a strange woman and an old car in his neighborhood, which seems weird since there aren´t many visitors in his town. A couple of years pass and Eli keeps encountering the same mysterious woman, who always seems to look exactly the same and travels in the same vehicle throughout all those years! But he decided to change that one night when he encountered her while on the road with some of his old friends. Eli is the same awkward kid on the inside, except he is now an adult and actually has a job and when he encounters Harry, the strange woman that he keeps noticing throughout his life, Eli decides to approach her once again and after that, there is no turning back, he has invited himself in a journey that will change his life forever.
After Eli approached Harry, a faceless man appears at his work the next day and he is wanting answers about Harry, that´s when he decides to go all the way to Boston to save her and tell her that men are looking for her. Once he finds her after a long chase from the faceless men, they are on the road finding the country´s dream, which gives the power to control the country and change it in any way they want to the person holding it.
When Harry realizes that she has no other option than to have Eli with her, she decides that it may not be that awful to have a companion, and soon before they can realize it, they are traveling through time and through the country in search of the most precious possession of any traveler: the dream.
First of all, I want to apologize for the short summary, but the truth is that there are just too many things that make this exciting story that there isn´t a specific point where I know what is too much to mention in a review, that´s why I have decided to keep it short to actually give the readers more freedom to understand and take in everything that happens in the novel.
I want to talk about the characters first.
I really liked Eli as the main character because he is different, he is not the perfect professional character that everyone expects to find in this type of stories, he is actually pretty normal and has a story that people could identify with. My favorite part of him was that it was shown how he was afraid of staying behind, but at the same time afraid of jumping to a lifestyle in the unknown, but at the same time, he always acted so passionately for the things he cared about and he was fearless when he needed to be. I think that I really enjoyed Eli´s character and this is something that has happened to me for the first time with these type of novels because I believe that novels that contain a lot of action and lot of things to narrate tend to forget a lot of how a character may change throughout the novel, yet I believe that Clines did an excellent job with Eli.
On the other hand, I really liked Harry because she was fearless and although she was cold at times, there is something inside her that seemed so familiar and so soft and warm. Yet she has seen so many bad things that instead of breaking her made her become fearless and create a barrier for herself against everyone else.
In addition, there are a lot of other characters throughout the novel with different traits and different things that change the story, but there are too many that it seems hard to talk about them all and actually review them.
Although I really enjoyed the many characters that were part of the story, I expected some more character development from every character and I know that it is very hard to do with characters that only appear once or twice in the novel, but I did come across with the realization that maybe the story was too focused on introducing the complicated story to the readers that it left very little opportunity for the characters to grow.
Moving on to the story itself, I found it a little bit confusing from time to time because there were too many things to understand at the same time in the story because the story is very broad and there is a lot to cover in a single novel, which at the same time was very interesting because it really felt like entering a new world.
However, I did like how the author made everything in the story work and how he planned the novel throughout the pages and how we are given certain scenes and how everything is lined up because those are the things that make this story so unique and creative.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed having several parts of the story told, for example, we got stories narrated in third person point of view but concentrated in a certain character, like Eli, Harry or Zeke. I think that by having these, readers got the chance to read about all the things that other characters were explaining in other chapters.
Also, the plot is so creative and entertaining that it will be hard to put the book down, although it is a very heavy reading.
Overall, Paradox Bound by Peter Clines is a fun and creative novel that narrates a story about time traveling while trying to save the world and all while overcoming personal fears and problems. The novel is similar to the many adventures that Dan Brown writes by including elements of adventure, culture and a new understanding, all of these under the pressure of saving people and staying alive.
Paradox Bound will keep you reading until the very end.
In addition, I would like to thank Blogging For Books and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to review this amazing novel.
4 out of 5 stars
Love, Sua
Who could have thought that a psychology experiment could actually make people fall in love with each other?
