Book Review: Gena/Finn by Hannah Moskowitz and Kat Helgeson

Genre: YA Contemporary
Publication: May 2016 by Chronicle Books
Acquisition: received an ARC at ALA Midwinter 2016

Synopsis:

The story follows the unlikely friendship of two young women forged via fan fiction and message boards, and is told entirely in texts, chats, and blog posts.

Gena (short for Genevieve) and Finn (short for Stephanie) have little in common. Book-smart Gena is preparing to leave her posh boarding school for college; down-to-earth Finn is a twenty-something struggling to make ends meet in the big city. Gena’s romantic life is a series of reluctant one-night-stands; Finn is making a go of it with long-term boyfriend Charlie. But they share a passion for Up Below, a buddy cop TV show with a cult fan following. Gena is a darling of the fangirl scene, keeping a popular blog and writing fan fiction. Finn’s online life is a secret, even from Charlie. The pair spark an unlikely online friendship that deepens quickly (so quickly it scares them both), and as their individual “real” lives begin to fall apart, they increasingly seek shelter online, and with each other.

(from Goodreads)

3 / 5 Stars

Wow - this book packs a punch.

I thought I was in for a light hearted tale of fandom and internet friendships. What I got was not really that at all.

Gena and Finn are 2 very different people. Seemingly, at first, the only things they have in common are their love for a TV show and the fan fiction and fandom that goes along with it. Their relationship exists online and IRL but we only really see the online side. Told in the format of blog posts, texts and emails, we, as the reader, never really get a first person narrative of what is going on with each of them. Rather, we see how they interact with each other - even when one of them isn't participating in the conversation (which was as confusing as it sounds).

So - pretty good from the start. Quirky contemporary with some really relatable bits. Online friendships and intense fandom (although, ga! the TV show they are both obsessed with? All I could think about was Supernatural because that's what it felt like - it was actually a little distracting) but anyway - sorry, yeah, relatable.

Until it wasn't.

There is this real life connection one of the girls has to the show, and an almost romance between the two which, honestly felt like it came out of nowhere. And then things got really dark and horrific. Like, almost instantly. No lead up, no foreshadowing - just bam! Everything is crap!

It took me a while to figure out how I really felt about Gena/Finn. The romance could have gone somewhere and I think it could have been really cool. The fandom part could have stayed nothing by fandom but it didn't. The IRL parts could have been realistic but felt really weird to me.

It's a good book but I had some issues. It's not a light hearted contemporary and it's a little too implausible and filled with drama.

Waiting On Wednesday: The Ones by Daniel Sweren-Becker

Waiting On Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and focuses on books we are super excited about!
Today's Pick

The Ones by Daniel Sweren-Becker
September 6th 2016 by Imprint GOODREADS
Why I'm Excited Futuristic, possibly dystopian - genetic engineering and political unrest...there is a chance this one may be a flop for me but I'm still excited to read it!

What are you waiting on today?

Hello from My House Land in...My House

I am so so so so so so so so so so so so tired!

ALA was so much fun but traveling is exhausting and I'm so happy to be home and I love working in a library and book people are the coolest people and, and, and

WOO HOO FOR BOOKS!

Ok guys - that's all I've got in me

Oh - here's a pic I put together for IG while waiting for my plane cause I'm a bad blogger library girl and posted hardly any of the pics I took during ALA

Most of the books I got at #alaac16 😊❤️📚 The sessions were fabulous. The people were fabulous. I had such a good time and I'm happy to be heading home today! #book #bookstagram #books #booksofinstagram #instabook #bookworm #booknerd #booklover

A photo posted by Emily De Maria (@wilowraven) on Jun 28, 2016 at 4:44am PDT

Oh - and ask me about the doubles if you really want to know rather then throwing a "OMG ALA bloggers were totally taking more then one copy of books and life is so unfair!" Or something similar ;) #jokingnotjoking #nodramallamahere

Happy Reading Everyone!

Hello from ALA Land in Sunny Orlando!

Hey everyone!

I'm heading to Orlando today to attend the Annual Conference of the American Library Association. While I do not have my MLS, I do work full time in an academic library and I find conferences such as ALA extremely important for so many reasons.

I hope to meet up with both colleagues and blogger friends, attend some sessions and of course, spend some time on the exhibit floor!

If you're in Orlando this weekend and want to meet up - send me a line!

I'll be tweeting (@WilowRedHouse) and Instagraming (@WilowRaven) as much as possible while enjoying myself and staying as far from the sun as possibly without actually burrowing underground :)

Hope everyone is having a fabulous Friday!

Blog Tour / Change Places With Me by Lois Metzger / Guest Post and GIVEAWAY!

Hello lovelies!

Welcome to my stop on the tour!

Lois Metzger is here sharing some thoughts on her fictional Queens neighborhood, Belle Heights. Being a Long Island girl, NYC will always be my city and I loved how Lois came up with her ideas on the neighborhood. I'll always be a New York girl so this was a real treat for me :)

There's also a giveaway at the end - but you have to read through the post to get there :)

I know you're only here for the details so let's begin!

Rose has changed.
She still lives in the same neighborhood with her stepmother and goes to the same high school with the same group of kids, but when she woke up today, something was just a little different than it was before.
The dogs who live upstairs are no longer a terror.
Her hair and her clothes all feel brand-new.
She wants to throw a party—this from a girl who hardly ever spoke to her classmates before.
There is no more sadness in her life; she is bursting with happiness.

But something still feels wrong to Rose.
Because, until very recently, Rose was an entirely different person—a person who is still there inside her, just beneath the thinnest layer of skin.

Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | iBooks | The Book Depository

ABOUT LOIS METZGER:

Lois Metzger was born in Queens and has always written for young adults. She is the author of five novels and two nonfiction books about the Holocaust, and she has edited five anthologies. Her short stories have appeared in collections all over the world. Her writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, and The Huffington Post. She lives in New York City with her husband and son.

Website | Twitter | Facebook

From Lois:

If you could live anywhere else besides Greenwich Village in New York City, where would it be?

I love my neighborhood and wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

However…

There’s a place I spend a lot of time in because it’s the setting for my novels, a neighborhood in Queens, in New York City, that’s rich in geological history but where there’s not a whole else going on. It’s called Belle Heights and it doesn’t exist.

The first time I wrote about Belle Heights was in my book, Missing Girls. To Carrie, the main character, “Belle Heights, out in the far reaches of an outer borough of New York City, felt more like an absence than a presence, a nothing instead of a something. It wasn’t quaint and friendly, like a small town. It wasn’t thrilling, like the center of a big city. It wasn’t hushed and beautiful, like the countryside. In fact, it looked washed-out, colorless—a smudge of a neighborhood.” Like most kids growing up in Belle Heights, Carrie can’t stand the neighborhood.

In my last novel, A Trick of the Light, the narrator, who actually likes Belle Heights, describes it as having “a pleasantly anonymous quality. Planes are constantly overhead, which creates a whooshing sound in the sky; the Belle Heights Expressway is always crowded, creating a whooshing sound on the ground. Some streets are hilly as roller coasters because back in the Ice Age glaciers traveled south, pushing rocks and sand and clay in front of them, and the glaciers stopped here before moving up north again. They left all their glacier junk behind, right here in Belle Heights.”

Change Places with Me takes place in the year 2029. Rose, the main character, even likes the neighborhood in the future: “Everyone said Belle Heights was so boring, a big chunk of nothing. Belle Drive, the busiest street, was a museum, a fossil, a dinosaur compared to neighboring Spruce Hills, which had giant stores like Target, Home Depot and Asteroid, and smaller, trendy stores opening all the time. But Rose decided she liked the fact that, except for the hydro-buses (and she could hear one wheezing behind her, a sure sign it was about to stall), long, winding Belle Drive had changed so little over the years.”

When I was growing up in the real neighborhood of Flushing, Queens, I found it crushingly dull. Now Flushing is a very different place, vibrant and diverse. But my imagination lives in the “old” Queens, which is why I had to invent Belle Heights, a place practically untouched by time.

The “Belle” comes from Belle Boulevard, an actual expressway in Queens, which like any expressway of course isn’t very belle. (Nor is the nearby real-life Utopia Parkway a slice of heaven.) The “Heights” comes from the equally real neighborhood of Jackson Heights, and suits fictional Belle Heights because of the steep hills left behind by the Ice Age.

The best thing about a dull, monotonous place is that it creates a strong contrast to the characters themselves, going through their own earth-shattering changes; and the uneven landscape of Belle Heights, full of highs and lows, is a perfect setting for characters having to navigate their way through their own rough terrain.

Thank you Lois for sharing this with us!

Giveaway:
3 Finished Copies of CHANGE PLACES WITH ME (US Only)
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:
Week 1:
6/13: Pretty Deadly Reviews - Review
6/14: Arctic Books - Floral Inspirations
6/15: Lekeisha the Booknerd - Review
6/16: Here's to Happy Endings - Guest Post
6/17: The Irish Banana Review - Review

Week 2:
6/20: Brittany's Book Rambles - Q&A
6/21: Pondering the Prose - Review
6/22: Red House Books - Guest Post
6/23: Literary Lover - Review
6/24: Storybook Slayers - Top 10