LitPick Review
Riley is the main character of the novel and lives in a town where each person plays a role in a novel. There is a 'reader world' where authors will write their books and use these literary tropes to fill in characters as they write. Riley is supposed to represent the quintessential 'dream girl', except he is a boy and doesn't enjoy his job as a literary trope. This lands him in group therapy where he meets his love interest, another pixie dream girl, named Zelda.
Opinion:
I personally was not a huge fan of this book, but as a high school librarian, I do think teenagers would enjoy it. To be honest, I was a little confused at first having read summaries of what the book was about and not really understanding what I was getting into when I started reading. I found it a little bit tough to follow, but I think it was cleverly written in the sense that the characters are not necessarily real people, but sort of artificial. This book could almost be described as a work of metafiction which can be hard to grasp if new to the genre. I read other reviews where the book was described as being funny and entertaining, but I honestly found it rather strange. It was even hard to connect with the characters as they didn't really have their own thoughts, but their thoughts were being written by the 'author' using them in their novel. I won't be recommending this to other adult readers, but I do think it's an interesting read for teenagers, especially being a book about books.
