Falling in Love with English Boys by Melissa Jensen

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Title & Author:
Falling in Love with English Boys by Melissa Jensen
Publisher:
Speak
Publication Date:
December 23, 2010
Pages:
272

Plot:

Characters:

Writing:

Overall:

Sixteen-year-old Catherine Vernon has been stranded in London for the summer—no friends, no ex-boyfriend Adam the Scum (good riddance!), and absolutely nothing to do but blog about her misery to her friends back home. Desperate for something—anything—to do in London while her (s)mother’s off researching boring historical things, Cat starts reading the 1815 diary of Katherine Percival her mom gives her—and finds the similarities between their lives to be oddly close. But where Katherine has the whirls of the society, the parties and the gossip over who is engaged to who, Cat’s only got some really excellent English chocolate. Then she meets William Percival—the uber-hot descendant of Katherine—and things start looking up . . . – Goodreads

I was really excited for Falling in Love with English Boys prior to its release, but was a little wary because I’d heard mixed things. I’ve heard it had mature content, was a little boring, etc. And after reading it? I’m so glad I didn’t let those reviews stop me.

The modern-day protagonist, Cat, is awesome. She’s sassy and witty and I always get annoyed when I read about teen girls complaining about spending their summer in Europe, but it was totally different with Cat. She had actual reasons and issues to not want to, which I appreciated. She loved chocolate and I loved reading her adventures to the newspaper stand down the street. At first it was just a minor thing, but the characters Cat met at the newspaper stand began to play a real role, and I thought that was a very well written segue. And those characters totally rocked. I was a huge fan of Cat’s British friends and I would love to see more of them if Melissa Jensen were to write another book in this world.

I loved Will. He’s British – what’s not to love? And I loved Cat’s interactions with Will. I thought their relationship was well formed and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of romance in this book. I’m a moron, though, because how could I NOT get that from the title? Their text conversations bugged me, but that’s just because I hate the level of emoticons they went to, as well as abbreviations.

I was a little annoyed with the historical-fiction-diary-flashback bits at first, because they sort of interrupted Cat’s flow for me, but then I really got into them because they allowed the reader to root for another protagonist, Katherine. I also liked how connected the diary was, because rather than just being some random diary Cat found, it was related to her mother’s work, and was more believable.

As for the character/storyline in the historical-fiction-diary-flashback bits, it took me a while to warm up to them. Katherine seemed super shallow at first and so did all of her friends, but as it continued on, I was really rooting for her and the [guy] which I will not spoil here!

Overall, Falling in Love with English Boys definitely did not let me down! I’m so glad I read it right when I’m leaving for London too. Such a cute and fun book, and I recommend it for fans of contemporary YA, for cute YA, or even for people who just like reading books in foreign settings!