Member Reviews
I wanted to fall in love with this book so badly. I remember working in a grocery store myself when I was in college (with both high school age and college age coworkers), and I could just SEE this entire book play out in my head. I could see Chris at war with himself over his state in life: too old to be working at the grocery store, needing to move on to a more permanent job, moving on from his ex-girlfriend that treated him poorly and did him wrong, and beginning to look for the type of girl that wants to settle down and commit. I could see Chris as a good-looking guy just having friendly banter with a younger teenage girl that he was tasked with training on a cash register, and the girl crushing-then-falling-for him. I could see Amelia reading nearly all of his interactions in the wrong way. <b>I could visualize this situation just being exactly what it was.</b> Except in my head, it was far more emotional and the potential outcomes felt like more of a sucker punch when I thought about it than when I actually read it. This emotional scene that I created in my head? THAT is what I wanted from the book. But the more I read, the further disconnected I became to the story.
<u>So, why the disconnect</u>?
- I didn't feel any emotional pull to either Amelia or Chris. I liked them both very much as characters, and in some weird way, I really <i>wanted</i> it to work out for them (totally not sure how that would have happened, by the way, but I was somehow here for it). But they were both very flat on the page. And for me, I need to be emotionally connected. Here, the story was good with good potential, but nothing really stood out with Amelia and Chris: no major plot points, no full development to these characters.
- The use of alternating POV's: I liked it in the beginning, but began to not like it as the story progressed. Amelia's story is told in narrative and Chris tells his story by way of journal entries, which is a nice surprise. However, the switch in POV tells and retells the same period of time, and then tells and retells the same period of time, and so on. It was so jarring for me because I kept forgetting that both Amelia and Chris were telling their own views of the same period of time. I can appreciate that there was no redundancy between the two narrators, but the time frame needs to be more obvious because I kept forgetting that Chris was journaling the same period of time that I just read about until I recognized a scene that Amelia described in her narrative.
Still, I did very much like the narrative vs. journaling aspect. That was really cool.
- I loved that Amelia and Chris were able to have engaging conversations because it is important to have friends that challenge us and stimulate us, right? But I lost so much trying to keep up with Chris teaching Amelia about feminism. I am not anti-feminism at all (and neither is Chris, which is awesome) but this portion of the story read so much like a textbook to me that it really detracted from the emotion of the story. Is this book about the relationship between two people or is it about feminism?
Several of my friends and many other readers have loved this book for several different reasons, so I recommend that potential readers seek out other reviews besides mine. When I have a hard time connecting with all of the characters, it tends to sway everything else about a story for me. I feel, <i>I really feel</i>, like if this book had been available to me in audiobook format, I might have been able to connect to it in more ways because audiobooks tend to draw more emotion from me (more senses are used!) but sadly there is no audiobook available as far as I am able to discern.
The cover is really cute, but I could not get into the book at all. The writing style just wasn't my cup of tea, and maybe I'm too old for this book at this point. Thanks for the opportunity though.
This was wonderful, I really loved it. The dual narration was so effective and both characters were both incredible relatable and endearing. And I loved the writing! I never seem to go wrong with Australian YA novels, I don't know what it is. Highly recommend this beautiful story!
I really enjoyed reading Love and Other Perishable Items. This book is honestly a favorite read of mine now. I couldn't put this book down and I know a lot of people say that but honestly, I didn't put this down not even to cook dinner. I had to know what was going to happen next! I also must say how funny this book was, I laughed so many times that I couldn't even keep count.
I didn’t enjoy this, I didn’t like the writing style and so I did not finish this book
In my quest to read “books I’ve owned forever and want to get off my shelf”, I finally read Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo. This is an Australian coming-of-age YA about 15-year-old Amelia, who works at a grocery store and falls in love with Chris, who also works there but is unfortunately 21. Despite the large age gap, they have a genuine friendship. But Amelia still hopes of something more.
Love and Other Perishable Items tells the same story from both Amelia and Chris’ perspective, which is usually not something I enjoy, especially since it is really repetitive in terms of plot in this case, but in this case it’s also really about characters and not plot, so I enjoyed it. I really loved the character of Amelia, who is introspective, without seeming unrealistic. Buzo’s book is slow-moving but I really just think the writing is so good and charming. I’m not sure if I love it because it’s Australian, but it definitely felt different than a lot of YA, even if the plot wasn’t that unusual. That said, considering the many ways that the storyline could have gone, I really appreciated the ending. I’ll definitely try to pick up Buzo’s other novel, Holier Than Thou, if I can track it down in Canada in the future.