A Little Something Different

A Little Something Different – Sandy Hall

Genre: Contemporary, Young Adult

My Rating:

The creative writing teacher, the delivery guy, the local Starbucks baristas, his best friend, her roommate, and the squirrel in the park all have one thing in common—they believe that Gabe and Lea should get together. Lea and Gabe are in the same creative writing class. They get the same pop culture references, order the same Chinese food, and hang out in the same places. Unfortunately, Lea is reserved, Gabe has issues, and despite their initial mutual crush, it looks like they are never going to work things out.  But somehow even when nothing is going on, something is happening between them, and everyone can see it. Their creative writing teacher pushes them together. The baristas at Starbucks watch their relationship like a TV show. Their bus driver tells his wife about them. The waitress at the diner automatically seats them together. Even the squirrel who lives on the college green believes in their relationship.

Surely Gabe and Lea will figure out that they are meant to be together....

This book completely met my expectations in many ways, but it was also completely different to what I expected. I expected that you’d get some of the main characters viewpoints mixed in with the various onlookers to their blossoming relationship, but you didn’t. I expected various viewpoints, I didn’t expect to witness Lea and Gabe’s romance from the perspective of a bench or a squirrel. I expected the book to be slow and the romance slow to happen, but I didn’t expect it to be quite so slow and frustrating.

 

I loved this book despite the things that I didn’t like. I may have felt that it was a bit pretentious the various viewpoints, with the squirrel and the bench viewpoint. It did feel like I was reading someone's homework for Creative Writing where they were demonstrating their excellent ability to write from various perspectives about the same events and demonstrate how perspective can alter your perception of a scene, or something equally intellectual sounding. Yes, that book is a bit like that, it’s different though. I think the fact that the actual thing you are getting various perspectives on is a couple and their blossoming romance helps to make the pretentious side of things such a none issue. If this book wasn’t a contemporary romance I would have found it irritating, but because of what it is and how it’s written and what it’s about you don’t care, because it just comes across as sweet. That is the sign of a good author. An author who may have realised how this book could come across and combatted that issue by writing about something so many love to read about, life and love.

 

As a whole, this was a fun and enjoyable read. The characters were likable enough that I could ignore the flaws. I liked watching the romance from everyone's varying perspectives and was as eager as everyone else to see something happen. It was fun and filled an enjoyable couple of afternoons.