Rating: 4/5
Buy/Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of Team BKMRK (Out now)
Sol and Hanna were best friends at primary school and after reuniting at college, they spend approximately seventy per cent of daylight hours together.
When disaster strikes at a New Year's Eve party and Hanna sees new boyfriend Danny Dukas kissing Lizzie Banks, a New Year's Resolution is formed. Sol and Hanna will watch one film a month for twelve months until the next New Year. After all, films hold answers to life's hardest questions. Maybe they'll figure out why they are both members of the dumpee club.
Only Sol Adams has a new year's resolution of his own: to kiss Hanna Bergdahl before the year is over.
Will Sol ever defeat the Friend Zone?
I just want to thank Team BKMRK for this gorgeous finished copy - it came with popcorn and hot chocolate, which made for a very happy reader. I had been in a reading slump for almost a month and was struggling to make it through the first sentence of a book, until this came through the door.
What I loved most about this book was the ease of it. It was very light-hearted, very cheesy and cliched - but that is what I adored about it. Sometimes you just want a book that is easy to delve into, doesn't require much thinking - but one you can get utterly lost in. And this book provided just that.
The story focuses on 17 year old's Hanna and Solomon, and chapters alternate between their POVs. I sometimes struggle with dual perspectives, but the characters' voices are so unique, you have no trouble distinguishing the two. Solomon has just returned from America and is hopelessly in love with Hanna. Naturally, Hanna is completely oblivious, as the two have been best friends since they were little. She couldn't possibly see him as anything more than a brother...could she?
This book felt very realistic. Growing up with male best friends, I was all too familiar with the jeers of, "he must be gay if you two aren't together" or "when are you two going to admit you love each other". I felt their friendship was very genuine, and really reminded me of me and my guy best friend. Don't worry, we're not secretly in love with each other - not any more anyway!
The story doesn't just focus on them and their revelations of their feelings for each other; it has a lot of sub-plots and explores the difficulties of growing up as a teenager nowadays - it definitely doesn't seem to be getting any easier! A lot of moments in the book resonated with me, from when I was a teen, which really made the book feel more authentic.
The book spans over a year and it's incredible to see how much changes throughout the year. At the start of the year, Hanna and Sol vow to watch a movie with each other every month, until the end of the year. This was tied in perfectly to the book and their movie choices each month expressed how they were feeling, subtly and beautifully.
I'm so pleased this book has released me from my reading slump and it was a fantastic book to kick 2018 off. Funny, realistic and a utterly gorgeous teenage love story.
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