Flipped — Wendelin Van Draanen

“I felt as though someone was watching me. It took me until nearly midnight to understand what it was. It was me. Watching me.” 

Synopsis:

The first time she saw him, she flipped. The first time he saw her, he ran. That was the second grade, but not much has changed by the seventh. She says: “My Bryce. Still walking around with my first kiss.” He says: “It’s been six years of strategic avoidance and social discomfort.” But in the eighth grade everything gets turned upside down. And just as he’s thinking there’s more to her than meets the eye, she’ s thinking that he’s not quite all he seemed.

This is a classic romantic comedy of errors told in alternating chapters by two fresh, funny voices. Wendelin Van Draanen is at her best here with a knockout cast of quirky characters and a hilarious series of misunderstandings and missed opportunities. But underlying the humor are two teens in transition. They are each learning to look beyond the surface of people, both figuring out who they are, who they want to be, and who they want to be with.

Opinion:

The dedication was enough to make me feel it was going to be a great book.

I had to admit that I had already seen the movie before I read the book. But, actually, this is my favorite love movie. So because of how much I love the movie I decide to read the book, and I will say that the book is as perfect as the movie.

Also I think that almost everything that is in the book it is on the movie, this is a really good adaptation. But the best part of books is that the story last longer.

This is not just a love story, but also how to kids start knowing them self’s and discover that life is determine from the decisions they made every day. Simple, funny, lovely. Those words describe the whole book, and just that, is enough to say this book is much more than the sum of its parts.

Quotes:

“Who make me feel like so much more than the sum of my parts.”

“She married a dreamer, and because of that, one of the two of them will always be unhappy.”

“A girl like that doesn’t live next door to everyone, you know.”

“I see the day that my view of things around me started changing.”

“I’d never seen Juli cry before. To me, Juli Baker had always been too tough to cry.”

“One’s character is set at an early age, son. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can’t swim back.”

“Some of us get dipped in flat, some in stain, and some in gloss… But everyone in a while you find someone who’s iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.”

“I’d spent so many years avoiding Juli Baker that I’d never really looked at her, and now all of sudden I couldn’t stop.”

“It’s that way with people too, only with people it’s sometimes that the whole is less than the sum of the parts.”

“I felt as though someone was watching me. It took me until nearly midnight to understand what it was. It was me. Watching me.”

“It was like the silence connected us in a way that explanations never could.”

“And now I was seeing that there was something really cool about that family. All of them. They were just… real.”

“Dude, you have flipped, you know that?”

“She’s the same as she’s always been; you’re the one who’s changed. And, son, from here on out, you’ll never be the same again.”

Score (5/5)