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A review by veelaughtland
Paulina & Fran by Rachel B. Glaser
1.0
It's been a while since I rated a book 1 star, and I did wonder if I was being a little too harsh with this one. Ultimately though, I have to be honest, and although I didn't hate this book, I would not recommend it to anyone in any shape or form.
The book follows two characters, Paulina and Fran, who meet while studying at art school, and the book follows their tempestuous relationship and how it affects them in later life post-college. On paper this book should have been perfect for me - it had all the elements I love in a book: campus novels, art school with pretentious art students, sex, LGBT themes, self-discovery, etc. But this book just did not deliver on these things. What it did deliver were two of the most annoying characters known to man.
Paulina is a mess, and a terrible person, and normally I quite enjoy unlikeable characters but there were genuinely no redeeming qualities to Paulina whatsoever. She was the ultimate mean girl, and she was completely self-obsessed and inflated with her own sense of superiority to the extent that it was just embarrassing. Fran on the other hand was bland bland bland - she didn't ever stick up for herself, and hung on to a clearly toxic friendship which made me feel like shaking her to wake her up.
LGBT themes? Few and far between. There's one character who is a lesbian, and the two main characters dabble but it felt completely and utterly pointlessly inserted into the plot in order to spice things up.
I wasn't blown away by the writing particularly, and the story felt unrealistic and slow. Don't get me started on Paulina's future endeavours (read the book if you want to find out, but it's highly improbable and cheesy). And GOD don't get me started on how much the two characters go on and on about their curls. I don't care. End of.
This honestly makes me sound like I hated the book, and I don't. I didn't struggle to read this - I pretty much zipped through it, and it was a very easy, light read. However, the problem was that I just didn't really care about anything or anyone in this book, and if it hadn't been so easy to read I probably would have put it down. Would not recommend this at all.
The book follows two characters, Paulina and Fran, who meet while studying at art school, and the book follows their tempestuous relationship and how it affects them in later life post-college. On paper this book should have been perfect for me - it had all the elements I love in a book: campus novels, art school with pretentious art students, sex, LGBT themes, self-discovery, etc. But this book just did not deliver on these things. What it did deliver were two of the most annoying characters known to man.
Paulina is a mess, and a terrible person, and normally I quite enjoy unlikeable characters but there were genuinely no redeeming qualities to Paulina whatsoever. She was the ultimate mean girl, and she was completely self-obsessed and inflated with her own sense of superiority to the extent that it was just embarrassing. Fran on the other hand was bland bland bland - she didn't ever stick up for herself, and hung on to a clearly toxic friendship which made me feel like shaking her to wake her up.
LGBT themes? Few and far between. There's one character who is a lesbian, and the two main characters dabble but it felt completely and utterly pointlessly inserted into the plot in order to spice things up.
I wasn't blown away by the writing particularly, and the story felt unrealistic and slow. Don't get me started on Paulina's future endeavours (read the book if you want to find out, but it's highly improbable and cheesy). And GOD don't get me started on how much the two characters go on and on about their curls. I don't care. End of.
This honestly makes me sound like I hated the book, and I don't. I didn't struggle to read this - I pretty much zipped through it, and it was a very easy, light read. However, the problem was that I just didn't really care about anything or anyone in this book, and if it hadn't been so easy to read I probably would have put it down. Would not recommend this at all.