Me and Earl and The Dying Girl- Book Review

“You’ve got the best excuse in the world right now but you can’t use it”

WARNING THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews is all about Greg Gaines and his relationship which his film making co worker Earl. Greg is trying to get through high school unnoticed and is doing a surprisingly good job. This is until his mother makes him rekindle a childhood friendship with Rachel who has leukaemia.

So this book took me I’d say a month to read. I don’t know if it was because of trying to manage my other blog as well as this one or if it was just a slow book to get through. Regardless I have my thoughts pretty well summed up.

·        Earl is surprisingly my favourite character in this series. At first, he was Greg’s only sorta friend but as the story went on, he really grew and became a better person. He shook Greg with the reality when no one was bothered-  that the world didn’t give a shit about him and he needed to stop caring about what other people thought about him.  Also, the message he gave to Rachel was really surprising. It shows how his family life may have hardened his exterior but he still has emotions and Rachel gave him an outlet for that.

 

·        As to Greg not gonna lie I found him pretty irritating. I think it may have been Andrews intention though. He was one of the characters with the least amount of development in my opinion. I understood why he wanted to stay invisible and it was nice to have a realistic image of a high school.

 

·        The mother though oh my god! I felt Greg’s pain with the movie screening. What was Mama Gaines thinking ?! Like surely you know how secretive your son is. Who decides “oh yes I’m going to force my son to face his fear in front of his ENTIRE SCHOOL”?

 

·        The writing style was decent. I grew tired of the constant self-deprecation and it dragged in places. I loved chapters like when he was telling us about his films and breaking down the high school dynamics. Also the slower parts of the books added to the reality of life not being action packed.

 

The book overall was good and it was a nice contrast to The Fault in Our Stars. It showed that every cancer relationship isn’t deep and meaningful. The writing style just wasn’t my favourite.

                   

Hope you enjoyed the review

See ya around.