Review: The Catastrophic History of You and Me



Title: The Catastrophic History of You and Me
Author: Jess Rothenberg
Series: N/A, Stand alone
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance
Publication Date: February 21st 2012
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Pages: 375
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
When Jacob, Brie's boyfriend, says those fatal four words, "I don't love you," her heart breaks. Not in a sad way, but as in a literal way. One moment she's eating pizza in a restaurant, next minute she's dead and looking over her family. When she is taken to, an almost gateway for new souls, she meets Patrick who introduces her to the five stages of grief; Denial, Anger, Sadness, Bargaining, Acceptance, and he aims to help her through these stages. But at the end of the stages, will Brie's heart mend itself, or will she never get closure? 
I found this book in Poundland, which is basically a shop in the UK where everything is a pound and I decided to buy it, it's a hardback too. I won't lie I wasn't expecting much, but I was completely blown away.

As this is only my second review on this blog and you all don't know me very well yet, I will give you a spoiler about my personality. I love Contemporary books. I adore them. Even though my genre is typically fantasy or paranormal, I'm a sucker for a cute contemporary and that's exactly what I got with this book!

Firstly, I loved it from the offset. Every title is labelled after a different song, and the author definitely has a good taste in music, as well as a great writing style. The story flowed so well and it sort of draws you in. You want to know what happened. You want to know what is happening. You want to know what will happen. To me, that marks a great storyteller.

Brie also wasn't as whiny as I expected, sometimes female leads in contemporary books can be self-obsessed and self pitying but Brie was just sort of relatable in a sense. But what I loved most was that there was humour in this book too, with the cheese related nicknames and Patrick in general. I loved his character in this book, acting not only as the comic relief in some places but also the voice of sense in other places.

By the end, I found myself tearing up slightly, I can't help it. I like a cute ending and this had a cute ending. My expectations were blown out of the water by this book and I recommend it if you'd like a quick, cute contemporary book to read.


4.5 Heart Breaking stars


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