Seventeen-year-old Mimi Wallingford, of the Broadway Wallingfords, has a life most girls can only dream of—complete with the starring role in her family’s production of Romeo and Juliet. But acting is not her dream, and she’s fighting for the right to trade her script for a scalpel and become a doctor.
Fourteen-year-old Juliet Capulet, of the Verona Capulets, has lived a lonely life—imprisoned by the feud that consumes her family and by her iron-fisted mother’s forcing her into an unwanted marriage. She will do anything to avoid her betrothed, even if it requires faking a boil on her bottom—or something more dangerous.
During the play’s final performance, Mimi’s wish to get away actually comes true when she and her heartthrob costar, Troy Summer, are magically transported into Shakespeare’s Verona. Now that she knows the real Juliet, Mimi doesn’t want to stand by and allow the play to reach its tragic end. But if saving her new friend means changing the ending of the greatest love story of all time, will she and Troy ever make it back to Broadway?
I liked this book immensely. It was quite well written compared to the last Romeo and Juliet in the 21st century book I read. I found myself easily able to relate to Mimi–her awful stage fright, the fact that she wants to break out of the role she’s been born into. If your parent’s, sibling’s, or even grandparent’s name outshadows your own, you’ll definitely be feeling Mimi’s pain.
The coming-back-to-Verona twist was very cool, and I did like the brief moments of a MimixBenvolio pairing (although I was satisfied with the romantic outcome, no matter how obvious it was).
The only thing I did disagree with were the few times that Mimi spoke directly to her audience. Some authors can speak directly to their readers and pull it off–Rick Riordan in Percy Jackson, for example–but here it just felt a little awkward.
So the book was great and I really did love how the characters of Romeo and Juliet were brought to life and given personality.
Big Reread Update: I finished the first Clique book today. I should finish the rest quickly.
I was a bad girl this week and I did not read any of my Reread Challenge books. This week I will definitely, definitely, definitely start on the Harry Potter books.
However, I did get through a Georgia Nicolson book (And Then He Ate my Boy Entrancers) and the newest Pretty Little Liars book, Heartless.
As far as teen mystery/suspense/thrillers go, I think the Pretty Little Liars series definitely surpasses the Private series. For one, PLL is a tad more realistic than Private. The Privateverse involves ridiculously exclusive, out-of-control parties and characters receiving death threats/getting murdered on a daily basis. The PLL-verse is a place you can envision yourself more easily in. The girls are being stalked and recovering from the death of their best friend…while trying to keep their grades up in AP Econ.
So I really did enjoy Heartless and it warmed ze cockles of my heart that some of the sadder loose ends were tied up (before becoming unraveled again in the end…The Hastings ignoring Spencer just gets to me). I loved the twists and turns it took and I never felt like the characters’ perspectives were whiny or boring (unlike Reed Brennan). It ended on a cliffy of course–every single chapter ends on a cliffy–and I’m a tad confused, but that’s typical. And now I’m dying for the next one to come out.
So…I reread all five Percy Jackson books in five and a half days.
Okay.
(I’ve never read a series so fast. That’s roughly 400 pages a day.)
I think I’m going to do Harry Potter next. Also, I’ve decided to not reread the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson books because to be honest, I haven’t actually read all of them yet. So instead I’m going to definitely reread the first Warriors books and both of the Alice books.
We’ll see how far I’ve gotten this time next week.
I love new books, of course, but I like rereading old books even more. So this morning I decided that I’m going to challenge myself to reread my six favourite series by April 1st. That’s 37 books in roughly 73 days. Totally and completely doable. The series are as follows:
Harry Potter by JK Rowling
His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan
The Clique Series by Lisi Harrison (omitting the Summer Collection)
Confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison
At the end of each week I’ll post which books I’ve read and/or which series I’ve completed.
I also challenge you to do the same. You can do the same ones I’m doing or pick your own series (if you do pick your own series, tell me about them! I need a new good series of books to read).
If I end up finishing all of them before my deadline (which I seriously doubt, considering I never finished re-reading His Dark Materials the first time around), then I’m tacking one more series onto my list: the Warriors series by Erin Hunter–probably the originals + the New Prophecy.
Possibly one of the best parts of Fanfiction (other than the writing for fun part) are the reviews! I’ve gotten several over the course of this year that I l-o-v-e and reread again and again and again. They are as follows:
Seventeen-year-old Mimi Wallingford, of the Broadway Wallingfords, has a life most girls can only dream of—complete with the starring role in her family’s production of Romeo and Juliet. But acting is not her dream, and she’s fighting for the right to trade her script for a scalpel and become a doctor.
As far as teen mystery/suspense/thrillers go, I think the Pretty Little Liars series definitely surpasses the Private series. For one, PLL is a tad more realistic than Private. The Privateverse involves ridiculously exclusive, out-of-control parties and characters receiving death threats/getting murdered on a daily basis. The PLL-verse is a place you can envision yourself more easily in. The girls are being stalked and recovering from the death of their best friend…while trying to keep their grades up in AP Econ.
