Swapped By a Kiss - Luisa Plaja

Title: Swapped By a Kiss

Author: Luisa Plaja

Publisher: Corgi Books (of Random House Children's Books)

Category: YA

Release Date: 2010

Source: Sent to me (signed) by Luisa herself *smug*

Paperback : 344 pages

Summary:

Rachel hates her life and everyone in it - she even has suspicions that her on/off boyfriend David might not be entirely trustworthy. However, when David invites her to a music festival in England featuring their friend's band, she jumps at the chance for an overseas adventure. Hoping to surprise David, Rachel arrives at the festival early, where she runs into a nasty surprise of her own - she sees David kissing their friend Jo. Distraught, Rachel runs off, wishing she could leave her life behind...the next thing she knows, she's back with David. But not as herself...She's now in Jo's body! Can she keep the swap a secret from David until she can work out exactly what's going on and get her revenge? Over the course of a very weird weekend, Rachel puts herself in someone else's shoes and finds that her own maybe weren't as uncomfortable as she'd always thought. But can she ever be herself again?

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When I reviewed Split by a Kiss (here), I fell in love with Luisa Plaja's fun and sweet stories as well as her unique characters. I can't review Swapped by a Kiss without writing spoilers about Split by a Kiss though, so don't read further if you haven't read the first!

(I love my Spoiler Alert Bat =D)

As much as I loved the character of Jo, I found it harder to get into Rachel's head. Rachel is the tough cookie, she snaps before she says "hi" and she is, all in all, someone who makes it incredibly hard to love her. 
Never one to admit defeat in the face of adversity (yes, I just said that about a book), I have persisted in my quest to like Rachel, not only for her badass feminist attitude, but also for her real slightly hidden personality. The book is told from the alternate point of view of Rachel-in-Jo's-Body and of Jo-in-Rachel's-body (mostly as a journal). I loved the idea that both girls are highly unsatisfied in their lives and wish to be one another thinking the other has the perfect life. This is such a girl classic (not to like oneself that is) that I believe it comes as the trademark of all women alongside intelligence and an incredible sense of humour. Who's partial? 

In this book, you get to go beyond the wall Rachel built around herself and learn more about her, her demons and her past. I already enjoyed reading about her in the first book, and now I understand better why she is the way she is. Rachel and David's relationship appears rocky but they are so made for each other that it is insanely cute to read about them. 


The setting of the book is a Festival in the UK (as opposed to a high school in the US for Split by a Kiss) and I loved the cultural difference between Europe and USA and how Tori and Rachel have several culture shock-related events which made me laugh out loud. It was the same, though the other way around (British Jo in America) in the first book, and it is sooo hilarious!!
I find Tori's excitement so contagious, every time I read about her I just *squeeee* for no reason. She is most entirely awesome, and though she appears as an airhead, she is a great friend to Jo and then Rachel. Tori and Hailey fight for Jo's BFF status is hilarious! 
I loved discovering the relationship Rachel has with her mother, and how it evolves through the story. I found that the book was a lot about identity, and especially how our parents influence who we are. It makes one think about one's own life and identity. (I mean, let's be honest, my parents, who have a bookshop, are entirely to blame for my book addiction!)


This book is a sweet and fun read, you will laugh out loud when the characters end up in the funniest situations and will fall for all the characters, even the ones only present for a couple of pages. I cannot wait to read Luisa's other book Extreme Kissing!

Thanks so much to Luisa for sending me this book!!!

Just Listen - Sarah Dessen | BISP Month

Hello everyone,

I hope you are having a good week and can relax with the summer!

Just Listen is the first Sarah Dessen book I have read (and be assured, it won't be the last) and I had heard so many positive reactions from her books that I was really happy to find the occasion to read one for the Body Image and Self Perception Month. Again, if you want more information on the Month, visit Jo's blog at Once Upon a Bookcase.

Summary from Amazon:

I'm Annabel. I'm the girl who has it all. Model looks, intelligence, a great social life. I'm one of the lucky ones. Aren't I? My 'best friend' Sophie is spreading rumours about me. My family is slowly falling apart. It's turning into a long, lonely summer, full of secrets and silence. But I've met this guy who won't let me hide away. He's one of those intense types, obsessed with music and totally unafraid of confrontation. He's determined to make me listen. Will I ever find the courage to tell him what really happened the night Sophie and I stopped being friends?

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I am aware that this is the third book (out of four) of my Body Image and Self Perception Month selection that features a young girl modelling as a main character, as if only aspirant models had eating disorders and body-related traumas... But this story is incredibly beautiful and so well written that I have been entirely entranced from the very beginning. 

The story is told from the point of view of Annabel, the youngest of three sisters that have been modelling on a local scale ever since they were toddlers. The eldest sister Kirsten is very dynamic and bubbly, while the second Whitney is more moody and withdrawn. Annabel, the youngest, tries not to disturb her family by doing what she is expected to do.

Annabel was friends with Clarke for several years, but one summer, she falls under the tyranny befriends Sophie, and her entire life changes. Sophie is the typical evil girl who thinks way too much about her own worth and believes everyone should be in awe in front of her. She isolates Annabel from her other friends and makes her an accomplice of her actions. It is not in Annabel's personality to start, and even less participate in, conflicts, so she stays behind Sophie because being against her would be way worse. One summer, Annabel's precarious world falls apart because of an unnamed (but quite predictable and later disclosed) reason. Sophie suddenly hates her and since she had no other friends, Annabel finds herself facing high school by herself.

Annabel is also haunted, at home, by the eating disorder of her sister Whitney and the fragility of her mother after the death of her own mother. The three sisters are very different one from the other and hardly communicate. It is interesting to read as their behaviours towards one another shift slowly and where they learn to love themselves for who they are.

I liked the character of Kirsten but I was fascinated by Whitney and how she fights (or doesn't) her eating disorder. I found that the theme was well brought into the story and it looked like any real-life story of people I knew. It was interesting to read which treatments are given and the different possibilities a person chooses to heal with. 

She meets Owen, the guy with a slight anger management issue who is seen as a complete beast in school. Outcast herself, she gets to know him, his fascination for music and his brutal honesty. I loved how they were so different but so alike and how they help each other go through their bad reputations at school. No matter how people see them or what they might have done in the past, Owen and Annabel are just people trying to do what they can under the circumstances (I'm quoting Owen).

I believe that the strongest message in this book is to never bottle up inside your feelings or some events that occured in your life. Talking, sharing, debatting about something is the best way to put it into perspective or find closure. Families and friends are made for this and Annabel tries to shield them from the truth but hurts herself in the process.

Telling people also makes whatever it is real, which is why, sometimes, it is harder said than done. Not talking about something is the best way to persuade oneself that it never happened and that less people know, the easiest it is to forget. From what I have read, and from experience, it never works. Ever. At all. The secret eats you from the inside and makes you walk through life as if a grim reaper was hanging over your head waving hello. Or maybe I am being overdramatic. Owen's advice is to be honest and just let it out.

Annabel sees herself as a person lying about her feelings in order not to hurt people. The perception she has of herself has been plagued by the people surrounding her and some events. Because she is too caring, she forgets herself for the others. Sarah Dessen has the incredible talent to write Annabel's story and how she decides to live her life.

I have been completely blown away by this book and Sarah Dessen's story-telling and characters. I cried like a baby during the second half of the book. Not that I would ever admit it. I would advise this book to everyone reading YA and interested in character-driven stories which present some diversity in them. You might also like the issues of eating disorder, rape, as well as the importance of studying and talking to others.

I will be reading all Sarah Dessen's other books and probably reread this one. Which probably tells you a lot more than anything I have written above.

Writer Event - Cressida Cowell author of How To Train Your Dragon Books

A funny thing happened yesterday, I was at work and one of the events taking place there was the Oxfam Bookfest. Nothing too surprising you'll tell me, but one of the speakers was children's author Cressida Cowell who is most famous for her How To Train Your Dragon series. 

When I saw the film, I wasn't aware that it was adapted from a book, less that there were 8 books in this series! I absolutely loved the film and wanted to discover the author behind the story! Since I was at work, I could hardly go in my *writer groupie* mode but I did listen and it was amazingly interesting!


Cressida: her inspiration and personality

Cressida is a very lively and fun person, there is so much energy coming out of her that everyone was soon entranced by her speech! She explained how she came up with the idea of the Vikings and the dragons: ever since she was a little girl she had a very creative imagination and was living "adventures" with her dad going on a boat and fishing the most weird-looking creatures (she showed us picture - mega weird) as well as spending days on a deserted island.
Many details of the story actually come from real life experience (like training a dragon which happens to me every other weekend too) and she showed us for example some pictures of a cliff shaped like a man's profile, which ended up in the book. Many of her dragons look like real sea animal species, she says that there are so many unknown species that imagination is sometimes unnecessary to beat Nature's own work!
She thought that dragons should be a species with various races (like dogs), so she started designing funny dragons and the story slowly developed itself. She first published the books in 2003 and she said that it was quite an unusual story at the time and had a hard time getting published.
She says to aspiring writers to write every day and to never lose confidence in themselves despite the rejection letters which are sent to everyone (she gave the example of J.K. Rowling who had 15 rejection letters before getting published). 


On drawing maps

This is a point that Cressida feels very passionately about: drawing maps of the locations of your story when you are a writer. She explained that many (if not the majority) of writers and even film directors draw maps of fantasy worlds or special buildings to know how to organise the story and how the characters can go from one imaginary point to the other. She said that drawing a map of the Isle of Berk and the Barbaric Archipelago helped her create the story and bring a richer dimension to the characters and the plot.

I am only writing that for the aspiring writer in you :)


On illustrations

This is a point that is for her very important. Cressida has made the illustrations of some of the books she wrote (though not all of them). She loves the fact that she can immediately visualize her characters. She is also not one of those author's to freak out when other illustrators draw *her* characters and they don't look like what is in her head. There are some good and some bad surprises!


On film vs book

There were some major changes in the film, the dragon Toothless for instance had a complete makeover and some characters were created. Cressida didn't mind and actually knew that some changes had to be made to go from the book format to the screen format. She is very satisfied with the film and told us a second film is in the works and should be out in 2012/2013. Yay!

You can visit the series' website here, it is insanely cute and with plenty animations for kids!

Shrink to Fit - Dona Sarkar | BISP Month

Good morning everyone!

You are extremely lucky this week because I will be reviewing two books for the Body Image and Self Perception Month hosted by Jo at Once Upon a Bookcase. Yay!

Summary from Amazon:

Losing weight is the solution to all basketball star Leah's problems, or so she thinks. Getting super thin will help her game, make her look like America's next top model and get the attention of the school hottie. At first it seems great - she gets the attention of the guy and everyone says how good she looks. But the problem is that Leah doesn't feel good - and her life's taking a turn for the worse, despite her new "perfect body"...

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This is a powerful story that needs to be read. I found that the plot and the characters really gave the theme of anorexia and eating disorders an interesting dimension without making it look negative or disgusting.

The story is told from the point of view of Leah with a third person narrator. There is enough distance for the reader to feel for Leah and think "But what are you doing to yourself Leah?" at the same time.


I thought the characters were really well developed and all very different one from the other. I really liked the fact that there was so much diversity in the book, it looks much more real than the stories plagued by complete uniformity. It was also interesting to read about the various characters' origins and how they lived with their own traditions in the American society. I really felt it is one of the strongest point of the book in the sense that no matter their origin, the idea of being thin to fit a certain canon of beauty is the same. The book reflected that all the girls, no matter how beautiful they are, want to look like someone else to fit in. Leah's confusion resonates in all the other female characters and it makes the issue of eating disorders universal and not just a question of "being thin". Instead of praising individuality and personality, the beauty advertised in magazines and in the media is specific, hence what I call the clone invasion thanks to plastic surgery. You probably have walked in a street in a big city and feared to have entered another dimension because all the girls look the same.


I found that the process which Leah goes through is a bit quick but believable, in the sense that Leah doesn't aim at being anorexic, she just aims at being thinner and fit in, not do the "extreme stuff anorexics do". The fact that Leah constantly denies being anorexic or even having an eating disorder is interesting. There is one point on which I feel I need to comment though: there is a difference (a bridge, a mountain and three oceans) between being an anorexic and eating junk food. I don't understand why it has to be one or the other. Maybe it's easier for me to say that since I may have a different approach to food and eating (I've noticed the difference when I went to live in the US for a while), but you can eat delicious healthy meals which don't make you fat and where you don't need to starve yourself. I found that the book didn't really talk about that and I found it was a shame, because you can eat, you just need to eat healthy food full of what your body needs. I'm not entirely sure the book succeeds in not making eating look like a sin or something you should repent.


It was interesting to read that guys don't like skinny girls in the book and that the whole concept of them actually liking girls because they are skinny only exists in girls' imagination. If you read too much books like me you would definitely see a conspiracy by evil forces to encourage girls to care about their weight in order for them not to think about being independent and taking the power (which is rightfully theirs - of course). I liked also the reaction (even if late) to Leah's weight loss by her love interest Jay and her mother. 




I would definitely advise this book to people. The theme of anorexia is treated with a lot of sensibility and the book is very well written and presents a very interesting diversity in terms of culture. But I would advise a healthy food cooking book to read along :).

Deenie - Judy Blume | BISP Month

Hello readers!

I hope you are all doing fine and that the summer is looking like you'll be able to chill and read as much as you'd like!

I apologise for my constant absence of the blogosphere these past weeks, work has been literally crazy and I have just enough time to be sleep-deprived :) I can't believe I received a million cool books and haven't been able to post an IMM... The next weeks look better though and I'll finally be able to read more than 2 books a week!!! Wouhou!

Anyways! I will now continue my participation to the Body Image and Self Perception Month hosted by Jo at Once Upon a Bookcase with the book Deenie by Judy Blume about a young girl with scoliosis as well as a little paragraph from someone who has been through the same problems (who is none other than my sister :))!

Summary from Amazon:

Mrs Fenner has very fixed ambitions for her daughters. Deenie is 13 years old and gorgeous. Her mother wants her to be a model – but Deenie's not so sure.

So when she's diagnosed with scoliosis – curvature of the spine – Deenie's almost relieved. No more traipsing round modelling agencies, no more living up to her mother's expectations. But she has to wear an ugly, uncomfortable back brace for the next four years. And she's convinced that it will put an end to normal teenage life – including her blossoming relationship with Buddy Brader . . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The only reason why I chose this book is because my big sister has had a serious case of scoliosis and had to wear a brace for a while, and since it is hereditary I was regularly checked for it. Though it's not a very talked-about condition, it is quite common.

The story revolves around 13 year old Deenie who is being bossed around by her mother to become a model. She had had a few comments about her posture by model agents and after some exams, Deenie is diagnosed with scoliosis and needs to wear a brace for 4 years. 

I found this story very touching and sweet. Judy Blume takes a fairly overlooked theme - scoliosis - and builds this story about Deenie that isn't just about back problems. The story is told from Deenie's point of view and I found that it showed the anguish that goes through a young girl when she goes from childhood to her teenage self.

For as long as she can remember, Deenie has been considered by her mother the Beauty and her big sister Helen the Brain. From this simple constatation, Deenie's life has been predestined to modelling by her mother's expectations and Helen to academics, to the point that Helen would be chastised to do her homework and no one cared if Deenie did hers.

More than talking about the issue of scoliosis and body image, the book talks about the opinion of others on one person and how their attitude shifts depending on that opinion. In clearer terms, Deenie's mother is guilty of ruining her daughter's life because of her archaic vision of life. This is the polite version by the way. 

I most entirely hated the character of the mother, I mean, how can someone be so blind? And I liked how her character was balanced by Deenie's father who actually cares about his daughter and believes her health and well-being are more important than modelling. 

Sometimes you think that the kids are the ones obsessing on their physical features, but I believe that a healthy family environment actually helps soothe those obsessions. Here, it is the contrary, Deenie's mother makes it harder for Deenie to cope with her brace. Thankfully, her sister, her father and friends make her think that there are more important things in life.

I found it interesting how Deenie is afraid and sometimes disgusted by people with medical condition, like a woman with a bump on her back or a girl with eczema in her gym class, I found that her entire process of understanding of others' conditions actually helped her understand her own. 

I liked the fact that Deenie wanted to make something of her life with her brain and not just want to make a living on her body. That's exactly how it should be :)

This book is very sweet and I believe is targeted to the younger audience of the young adult readers (11-15 years old), but I think that some parents should read the book because their "wanting the best for their children" sometimes is counterproductive. Just saying.

~~~~~~~~~~

Since I reviewed this book as part of the Body image and Self Perception Month and that the aim of this month is to talk about those problems rather than keep them bottled up inside, I have asked my sister Audrey, who suffered from scoliosis and had to wear a brace, to write a little paragraph on how she felt and how it was perceived. I translated it from French, so excuse the poor quality of it!

When the doctor announced that it would be either an operation or a brace, I was speechless and mortified. It was horrible news to me. At 14 years old, wearing this thing was impossible. The process began, I couldn’t do anything else than undergo it. Always the same questions: why me? why life would make me go through this? Didn’t I go through enough already? The day arrived where my mother and I went to the paediatrics part of the hospital, decorated with the brightest colours, as if nothing serious would happen. When the secretary brought us to the room, my heart crumpled. They had to mould my abdomen and it was painfully hot, but because of the pain I was obliged to wear at least two shirts under the brace. I was at first worried about announcing this to my middle school friends, but I was pleasantly surprised by their understanding. They immediately nicknamed me Robocop and were impressed by my iron abs which they would playfully hit. There were many constraints to wearing the brace (heat, excess laundry…) but I actually keep a good memory of the whole thing since now my back is straight and I am less in pain. I believe that there are worse things in life, especially when you are sitting in the paediatrics aisle of the hospital where scoliosis is hardly a problem compared to the others.

That's it for today sweethearts, have a lovely evening and don't forget to hop by Jo's blog for the latest articles of the BISP Month!!

And thanks Audrey for sharing this with the readers of the BISP Month!!