Book Review: Isla and the Happily Ever After

"I’m beginning to think that maybe it’s okay to be a blank canvas. Maybe it’s okay that my future is unknown." - Isla, Isla and the Happily Ever After

Isla and the Happily Ever After is the third and last instalment in Stephanie Perkins' YA contemporary romance series (which started with Anna and the French Kiss). It follows the titular character, Isla, as she goes through her senior year at the School of America in Paris (SOAP). Although the story largely takes place in the City of Lights, the novel begins in an inconspicuous pub in Manhattan called Kisment. And there she meets her long-time crush, Josh Wasserstein. She's ecstatic, of course - but witless from the medication having her wisdom teeth extracted. And so it goes - that the normally blushing Isla Martin strikes up a conversation with the normally out-of-reach Josh kick starts a long overdue romance.

At a glance, this novel is nothing special. It's your normal boy-meets-girl story. The same goes for the first two novels in the series. But this is what sets Stephanie Perkins novels apart from the rest. She takes a perfectly normal story but injects she with the sweetest of fantasies and just a tad bit of naivety. Her books are unpretentious and unashamedly optimistic. You know, just from the cover themselves, what you're in for: A love story.

Unfortunately, this book turned out to be the least compelling in the series. (Incidentally, how I would rank these books would be the same as the order they were published, with Anna and the French being the most swoon-worthy of the three. Granted, Lola and the Boy Next Door only lags behind by an inch.)

My Tokyo Dream

It's been a while since I last posted. School and other extra curricular activities kept me busy, but when summer break came, there was only one thing on my mind...

J A P A N
April 9 - 16, 2015
(✿´ ꒳ ` )

But first, a prologue:

Looking back on it now, a big part of my childhood was spent sitting too close to the television screen. I would sit cross-legged while spending hours on end watching anime. And though I never left the room, I felt like I was rarely in my house. My heart was in Japan - watching the cherry blossoms fall, experiencing high school as a first grader, making pastries with hard to pronounce names, and falling in love. 

There are times people express their surprise at the things I know, and rarely do I get the chance to say, "Oh, that? I learned that from an anime I watched". Although anime has a largely bad reputation I never grew out of it. Instead, I went even further and discovered the country behind my dream-like childhood - Japan. 

Fast forward:

Roughly two weeks ago from today, I realized my dream of visiting Japan. Although I knew it my heart that I was no longer in the Philippines, everything was touched with a tinge of familiarity. Of course I had never been to Japan before, and yet there I was, feeling like it was a part of the Philippines I was just not familiar with. 

And yet, every day was full of excitement, adventure, and exhaustion. We always came back to the apartment nearing midnight, but we always found the energy to wake up the next day for more endless walking and exploring. We went to places whose names I only heard on TV -- Shibuya, Harajuku, Odaiba -- and then more, to places I have never even heard of. 

I never wanted to leave. But alas, all good things come to an end.

...

And all good things give way to even better things.

...

If everything goes according to plan, this time next year (as part of our school's Junior Term Abroad program) I'll be back in Japan. And I simply cannot wait!

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Here are a couple of shots I took while I was in Japan, complete with my stupid commentary: