'The Fault in Our Stars'
Stars are people, too.
Summary: Girl meets boy. Girl and boy have cancer.
(show spoiler)
Review: This is probably a good book for teenagers to read to get them to think about death. It made my younger co-worker cry and re-think life. As for me, there were a few laughs but this book didn't do anything for me.
★★★ Interesting but not spectacular
'The fault in our Stars' is a bit pretentious. The characters scrabble for meaning and do not obtain victory in their quest. Maybe this is enough for the author and most readers, but to me this shows there is something missing in their lives. One of the places almost all the characters frequent is a church support group for dying people, but it is quite striking that the characters do not believe in heaven, God, or anything (except maybe each other). I find this quite sad. This is one library book I'm glad to return!
'Skip Beat'
Skip a beat into an off-kilter fairy tale!
SUMMARY: Skip Beat is the manga story of a young lady, Kyoko Mogami, who has her feelings crushed by her childhood friend turned pop star, Shotaro Fuwa, and is determined to cast off all love and gain revenge for the life she lost while pursuing her crush. In her quest for revenge (to become more popular than her childhood friend) she meets a man, Ren Tsuruga, who is sort of like coffee: tall, dark, and bitter. Will Kyoko ever look past fairy tales and her broken heart and gain a relationship?
REVIEW: I absolutely adore Kyoko as a main character because of the novelty of her approach to life. The author surprised me at a lot of the plot twists and even with all the re-reads I've done with this series, there is no doubt in my mind that this is one of my favorites. Because the main character is an actress, she is involved in varied scenarios, which helps keep a fresh vibe: quite interesting!
★★★★★ Definitely worth the read!
Skip Beat has been one of my favorite mangas out there. I'm working on collecting the whole series but I only own the first fifteen volumes. In the meantime, there are plenty of websites that host Skip Beat and actually are a lot more fun to read because they gather the information from a magazine that publishes it and the pictures are therefore much larger than the physical books.