Readers United Book Reviews | Small Admissions and Hyperbole and a Half

Jamie Shin ‘20 returns with two entertaining reads that are sure to offer an escape from busy day-to-day life.

Small Admissions by Amy Peoppel

Small Admissions, by Amy Peoppel, is a realistic fiction novel that follows Kate, an overachieving college student with a supportive older sister and two best friends that seem to have her back. Most important to Kate is her French boyfriend, with whom she plans to move to Paris, dropping everything that was once significant to her. Her life seems all figured out, until she hits rock bottom and falls apart when her boyfriend breaks up with her at the Paris airport, leaving her with seemingly nothing. The only good thing about hitting rock bottom, though, is that things can only get better from there. Kate miraculously lands a job to work in admissions for one of the best prep schools in New York, Hudson Day School. She learns things about herself that allow her to not only mend her broken heart, but also allow her to end and fix relationships with people in her life.

The very last two paragraphs of the book are some of the most fluently and well written pieces of writing I have ever read in this genre. It felt as if all 356 pages were leading up to those two short paragraphs, and it was all worth it. Both parts were necessary for the moral to really touch the audience. After I finished the book, I put it down and just thought for a while. This story made me so much more aware of my actions and how they affect the people I care about, and vice versa.

While Small Admissions is a fun and interesting story, the pace is very slow, and the plot sometimes feels forcefully stretched out. At times, the storyline seems slightly repetitive. However, this can sometimes be a good thing. Repetition of a character's actions can put an emphasis on the character's personality, and, in this case, what kind of person they are.

Verdict: I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a chick flick but not romance, laughter but not comedy, and life lessons without lectures. Though not the lightest read, Small Admissions is breezier than most books its length. Amy Peoppel does an excellent job of balancing humor and seriousness to create an entertaining book.

Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Allie Brosh

Hyperbole and a Half, by Allie Brosh, is simply the funniest book I have ever read in my life. Rather than a traditional book, it is more a collection of short stories with simple illustrations that do an excellent job of capturing emotion. The stories come from and expand off of Allie Brosh’s blog post, Hyperbole and a Half. She splits the book into “chapters”, each chapter being a different story. She writes moments of her life, embarrassing, absurd, and even shameful, into episodes turned webcomic.

The topics range from light to dark. Amidst the humor, Allie Brosh also talks about her time going through depression. She speaks with brutal honesty, translating her struggle into something we can all connect with.

My favorite story was, “The God of Cake,” because I remember it as the one that made me read the book in the first place. My sister was reading it before me, and she would burst into sudden laughter every couple of minutes. This episode is the one she showed me pictures from that made me want to read it too.

Allie Brosh did an amazing job of portraying her emotions through her storytelling. I found myself cringing from second-hand embarrassment, gasping in shock, and laughing uncontrollably countless times.

Verdict: I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a good laugh through a very quick-pace and light book.

Readers United Book Reviews | Purple Hibiscus

Here with the second part of her book reviews this week is Jamie Shin '20! She shares another story of a teenager struggling through family issues.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Taking place in Enugu, Nigeria, Purple Hibiscus is a novel fifteen-year-old Kambili and her journey to find herself amidst her father’s physical abuse and the strict rules of her religion. Living in a wealthy household with her honored Catholic father dictating every move, she is trapped in a small world with high walls. However, in the story, Kambili's eyes are opened to a new world when she and her brother, Jaja, get to stay with their aunt, an open-minded and intelligent university professor. There, they discover the warmth of a world fueled by familial love.

Since the story is told through the eyes of a teenage girl, I couldn’t help but feel the book was dragging a little bit at the beginning. However, the pace of the novel quickly sped up a few chapters in.

It took me a while to realize child abuse was one of the biggest topics in the book, because it comes up so subtly at first. Adichie does a good job of hinting at it but not revealing it overtly until later. It turns out that the mother has has multiple miscarriages, Jaja has a crippled hand, and Kambili almost dies due to the abuse. Adichie then uses symbolism to represent how the mother and the rest of the family deal with the abuse.

Adichie’s artistic voice paints a vivid picture for the audience. My favorite line in the book is the creative simile on page 25. “It was the same way I felt when he smiled, his face breaking open like a coconut with the brilliant white meat inside." Who knew you could compare a smile to the inside of a coconut?

Verdict: I would recommend this book to someone who would like to explore the fine line between love and hate, between religious faith and extremism, and between childhood and adulthood.

Readers United Book Reviews | Bigger Than a Bread Box

We hope you welcome one of our new writers, Jamie Shin '20! She will be posting her book review posts in two parts; look forward to the second one on Sunday.

Bigger Than a Bread Box by Laurel Snyder

What would you do if you had a magic box that gave you everything that you wished for? Now think of that while answering this question—Would you still do it if you knew that everything that the box gave you was actually stolen from someone else?

In Bigger Than a Bread Box, twelve-year-old Rebecca is resentful because she has to move at a moment’s notice because of her mother. Although Rebecca knows that her parents are fighting and her mom just wants to get away from her dad, she does not want to leave.

Her life in her new town starts out terribly; Rebecca misses her dad and argues with her mother all the time. She becomes a rebel, disagreeing with everything her mother and grandmother say. Homesick and miserable, she wishes for seagulls one day when she is in the dusty attic of her grandmother’s house, since seagulls remind her of her old home. Suddenly, Rebecca finds a breadbox, and when she opens it, seagulls come out!

Slowly, Rebecca realizes the magic of the box, and starts wishing for everything she wants. She tries wishing for her parents to get back together, for her dad to be there with her, and many more wishes that cannot be fulfilled. It doesn’t work, and she thus learns that she needs to find her own way to be happy.

However, things take a turn for the worse when she finds out that every time she uses the magic box, all the things she wishes for are actually taken from someone else. Rebecca’s problems seem larger than life. Will she ever be able to be happy and get out of the trouble she has put herself in?

Verdict: Though Bigger Than a Bread Box is definitely a light read, it covers many heavier themes. I would recommend this book to young audiences that are looking for a good book to sit down and read on a Sunday afternoon. It prompts the reader to question whether or not one’s happiness is worth sacrificing for another’s by taking the reader through a journey of a teenage girl’s mind.