Monday, 16 November 2015

4 REASONS WHY TO READ HELLO? BY LIZA WIEMER

Hello? by Liza M. Wiemer
Published by: Spencer Hill Contemporary

Genre: Young Adult Realistic Fiction

Release date: November 10th 2015

Purchase: Amazon / B&N / Indigo

        
         
One HELLO? can change a life. One HELLO? can save a life.

Tricia: A girl struggling to find her way after her beloved grandma's death.
Emerson: A guy who lives his life to fulfill promises, real and hypothetical.
Angie: A girl with secrets she can only express through poetry.
Brenda: An actress and screenplay writer afraid to confront her past.
Brian: A potter who sets aside his life for Tricia, to the detriment of both.

Linked and transformed by one phone call, Hello? weaves together these five Wisconsin teens' stories into a compelling narrative of friendship and family, loss and love, heartbreak and healing, serendipity, and ultimately hope.

Told from all five viewpoints: narration (Tricia), narration (Emerson), free verse poetry (Angie), screenplay format (Brenda), narration and drawings (Brian).

MY REVIEW:





Storyline of Hello? simply cannot be summed up in couple of sentences or paragraphs. So instead of telling you about plot of this book, I’m going to give you four reasons why you should be reading this book right now:

#1 Not A Single Reader Will Stay Untouched


Hello? Is deeply moving and emotional story that will grip your heart with its moments of potent intensity. This isn’t fluffy or light story. But if you want to experience all the feels from grief, rage, fear, guilt, shame and desperation to love, hopefulness, forgiveness, kindness and courage to deal with stuff; Hello? is the book for you.

#2 Five Is More Than One


Five life-stories, five perspectives to experience this story from. I have always loved movies that feature multiple separate stories, only to be coincidentally connected by some sort of life-changing event. This is my first book which follows similar pattern and I truly enjoyed it.

#3 Unique Narrating


Five narrators, five different voices. Literally. While Tricia’s and Emerson’s chapters are in prose (Emerson also uses lists and plenty of inner monologue), Angie’s were in free verse. Than there were Brenda’s screenplay chapters and Brian’s drawings mixed with prose. All these unique narrations gave Hello? a personal vibe and helped me to easily distinguish between individual voices of characters. I loved it.

#4 Realistic Fiction At Its Best


Teenagers in this novels deal with a lot. Heaviness of responsibility, finding right place in the world, PTSD, death of loved one, jealousy, broken hearts, relationship struggles, bullying, self-consciousness...List goes on and on. Author didn’t sugarcoat anything and showed us real imperfect people with human’s struggles and believable problems. In Hello?, you won’t find over-the-top drama or flawless characters. This gem of a book is perfect example of YA realistic fiction and I believe that it holds power to affect readers and help people to find motivation for dealing with their own real-life problems.

DO YOU ENJOY MULTIPLE POVs IN BOOKS?
DO YOU LIKE TO READ REALISTIC FICTION?

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Lucia @Reading Is My Breathing

Lucia is 29 years old passionate reader and reviewer who enjoys talking about all bookish things. Currently she lives in Prague, works in business industry and dreams of starting her own publishing company. Her weakness? She can never say no to cake, coffee or good novel.

Comments (36)

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I love the format of this review. I’m totally sold. I always check out books with multiple POV, and this novel sounds very interesting.
1 reply · active 489 weeks ago
Ohhh I had no idea this had multiple Povs done in such different styles like that! :D That actually makes me reeeally want it. I like multiple POVs in fantasy, but not usually contemporaries? But this sounds like it does it really well. hehe. And I just added it randomly on goodreads yesterday so WOOT. Hopefully one day I get to it!! *glares at ominously tilting TBR*
1 reply · active 489 weeks ago
Sounds like an emotional novel that deals with some tough issues, which I'm always willing to check out. I'm a little wary of the multiple POVs but I think as long as they stuck out and had unique voices it would be okay! Great review :)
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1 reply · active 489 weeks ago
I adore multiple POV books, probably bc the manuscript that I'm toiling over is dual POV, ^.^

I also just finished If I Stay last night. Usually I read fantasy/sci-fi but venturing into realistic fiction was amazing. It was so refreshing and this book really sounds awesome!

Also, do you design these pretty graphics!?!?! I love this one and ALL of the ones you had on your SoC review!
My recent post You love me. Real or not real? | Ten Quotes From YA That Give Me Serious Feels
1 reply · active 489 weeks ago
OMG yes, you totally should be! I loved all the elements you pulled to create them. How do you do it? Or better yet, would you consider posting a tutorial on how you make your images, bc I would love to learn from you?!?!
My recent post You love me. Real or not real? | Ten Quotes From YA That Give Me Serious Feels
1 reply · active 489 weeks ago
I thought you were using Photoshop! Your graphics are just the best and sooooo lovely! Your graphics for SoC actually inspired me to make my own for a book review that is going up sometime this week (I forgot when, opps) so I really appreciate you breaking it down for me.

How do you find copy right free images? That was the biggest trouble I had. (That and finding things that worked, lol, but that's a different sort of struggle I think ^.^)
My recent post You love me. Real or not real? | Ten Quotes From YA That Give Me Serious Feels
1 reply · active 489 weeks ago
I just finished this one today and loved it. Really touching, emotional story and I loved all the different POVs and styles of writing. Love your graphic so much!!!
1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
I can't lie Lucia, I've got major Adele feels reading your review *laughs*---i'm sorry! You had to have expected it!
Okay, but in all seriousness I hadn't heard of this one before but i' definitely interested if you say you say it's an emotional story. I've been meaning to get back to 'heavier books'.
1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
Oh, wow. To be honest, I was a bit iffy about this book, but all these four reasons are making me excited! I'm really intrigued about the different POV styles--I don't think I've read anything similar (except for 5 to 1, where one POV was in prose and the other in verse), so that's pretty exciting. :D And realistic YA fiction? Heck yes! <3
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1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
This sounds like an interesting novel. I do like realistic fiction when I'm in the mood for it, so I'll have to keep this one in mind. Thank you for sharing :)
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1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
oh man all these glowing reviews of this book ;/ and its already out? /sigh okay I am just going to have to go and look this one up in my bookstore!
My recent post Review: Soundless by Richelle Mead
1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
Yayyyyy!!! I love seeing people loving this book!! :) This was my favorite read of 2015. It completely blew me away and touched me so deeply. Liza is so amazing, and I love to see her work getting so much praise. I'm so glad you enjoyed it too!! <3
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1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
I have been hearing a lot of really good things about this book, which has me intrigued. I already have it on my TBR and am looking forward to seeing in what way this book will reach out to me personally. It seems like everyone is feeling touched, and because there are five different stories we get to know different characters and narratives incredibly well too. So glad to know this one reached out to you and I can't wait to see how it is for me!
1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
Ooh this sounds pretty good! I'm not a big fan of contemporaries, but the writing style and multiple perspectives make me especially interested in reading it. Seriously, different styles for each voice? Definitely bring it on. Super review Lucia! :D
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1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
Reason #3 is definitely going to be my #1 reason if I want to dive into this book (see what I did there? LOL!). I like it when the narration is told differently - sometimes you can get to the heart of things better that way if you show it in another angle. I'm the type of person who isn't willing to read a story that gives you so much angsty feelings, though. But I will definitely check it out when I feel more up to feeling ALL the feels, literally.
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1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
Nick loved this which means it's 99.9% likely that I'll love it too. This wasn't on my radar, but now it is :)
1 reply · active 488 weeks ago
it is one of the favorite book of mine.
Love your graphic so much!!!
1 reply · active 371 weeks ago
Good one..! Thanks for sharing this post.

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