Book Buddies Review: Even In Paradise

Posted June 22, 2015 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 3 Comments

book buddies

Book Buddies is a discussion-style review that takes place with one of my two buddies. (Learn more and see past reviews here) We both read the book and then have a private discussion about it. We post our discussion as a review on the last Wednesday of each month. You’ll be able to see our similar/different opinions on the overall book, characters, writing style, etc. – just like a regular review. The first half our discussion will take place right here, and the second half will be on Cristina’s blog! (Link at the bottom)

l and cBook Buddies Review: Even In ParadiseEven In Paradise by Chelsey Philpot
Genres: Contemporary, Young Adult
Published by Harper Collins on October 14th 2014
Format: Hardcover (360 pages) • Source: Purchased
GoodreadsAmazon Barnes & Noble
three-stars

When Julia Buchanan enrolls at St. Anne’s at the beginning of junior year, Charlotte Ryder already knows all about the former senator’s daughter. Most people do... or think they do.

Charlotte certainly never expects she’ll be Julia’s friend. But almost immediately, she is drawn into the larger than-life-new girl’s world—a world of midnight rendezvous, dazzling parties, palatial vacation homes, and fizzy champagne cocktails. And then Charlotte meets, and begins falling for, Julia’s handsome older brother, Sebastian.

But behind her self-assured smiles and toasts to the future, Charlotte soon realizes that Julia is still suffering from a tragedy. A tragedy that the Buchanan family has kept hidden... until now.

View Cristina’s part of the discussion here.

Some spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution.

Do you see this as a Great Gatsby “retelling” or just a book that makes a few parallels to it?
Cristina: For the first 80% of the book I thought it merely had some parallels to Gatsby (such as Charlotte paralleling Nick, the outsider looking in), but at the end of the book, especially with the twists, it seemed to become much more of an adaptation. I sort of thought the first big “twist” was a good nod to Gatsby, but the additional one at the end felt a little too excessive, like it was trying too hard to emulate the novel.

Lauren: I agree. I think the book was trying a little too hard. I could tell that some kind of tragedy was brewing for the end, but I didn’t think it would so closely resemble Gatsby. I did like the parallels of Charlie to Nick, because I think lots of people can relate to that “outsider” feeling at times. Frankly I don’t really understand how Charlie even ended up in that whirlwind family either. (More on their friendship later…) I liked the big parties that the family had and how their kids tried to make them more interesting by playing “one up,” but they didn’t seem as crazy as Gatsby’s. Some parallels were obvious and some were slightly less fleshed out. I feel like there needed to be a bit more balance.

Did you feel a sense of foreboding or tragedy coming, based on the style in which the book was written (or even in drawing comparisons to Gatsby)?

Cristina: This book reminded me a lot of We Were Liars, and knowing that that had a tragic twist at the end sort of primed me for this one. When the referenced a tragic event that had rocked the Buchanan family early on in the book, I immediately had that sense of foreboding, because it’s unusual for that big of a plot element to be introduced so early on without the “everything is not as it seems” trope.
Lauren: I know what you mean. For a while I wasn’t sure if the “tragic event” was just the death of Gus, their daughter/sister, or if it meant another tragic event was coming. Either way, I felt a major sense of foreboding more and more with each chapter. The story left me on edge a lot of the time because I didn’t really feel like much was happening, if that makes sense. I kept thinking “okay, the next chapter is going to have some big event/tragedy” but it didn’t really happen.

What did you think of the friendship between Julia and Charlie? Was it healthy? Why do you think it “worked” ?

Cristina: I actually really disliked the friendship between Julia and Charlie, and it didn’t work for me at all because it WAS so unhealthy. They both felt a bit one dimensional to me (the crazy, damaged beautiful girl and the good girl turned social climber). I actually felt more dislike toward Charlie than Julia though, because I felt Charlie allowed herself to be used, and there were several times in the book where she had the opportunity to say no, and just let herself get sucked back into the family, even after they start treating her poorly. I also disliked how the book handled Charlie’s other friendships, the ones she ditched to be with Julia, and how they were sort of reconciled at the end. I think there should have been more consequences for both Julia and Charlie.
Lauren: I completely agree. Their relationship didn’t feel real or fleshed out at all, and neither did their personalities. Charlie was an artist with a “poor” family. Julia was a rich girl who had been through a tragedy. They didn’t have anything else going on! Charlie continued to get pulled into their world, despite being unsure of it, and their relationship wasn’t healthy. She sacrificed a lot and spent so much of her time trying to pull Julia out of her slumps. Also, yes, I agree about the other friendships – I feel like in “real life,” it wouldn’t happen like that. Those girls wouldn’t welcome her back at all. She completely ditched them to be in a codependent relationship with someone else. Charlie wasn’t able to balance anything. The biggest question I had throughout the book was WHY did Julia choose Charlie? Because she knew that she’d end up being her puppy dog that would do anything? Charlie didn’t have much of a personality herself, and I think Julia liked that she could just take control and do everything. Charlie completely messed up her future to go along with one of Julia’s plans…and it didn’t even end up happening. At the end of the book, Charlie’s life had been negatively impacted SO much because of Julia and her family.

Were you satisfied with the ending? Did you see it coming?

Cristina: I didn’t exactly guess the twist, but I had a vague idea of how everything was going to go down, and with the Gatsby parallels it wasn’t very surprising. Once the twists were revealed I wanted to know more about how the family dealt with the fallout once I knew the truth as the reader, and how that impacted the Buchanan’s relationships with each other, but sadly that was never really explored.
Lauren: I felt like the ending was really drawn out. First, you find out the major twist about the accident (which I had predicted from the beginning). Then, the family experiences the other tragedy. And finally, the book shows what happens after everything else and where the relationships stand afterwards. I’m not sure how I felt about the very end with Sebastian, because I feel like their relationship was also very one dimensional and boring. I didn’t ship them or even care about that aspect at all.

Why do you think the meaning behind the title of the book is?

Cristina: I think the title is a nod to the idea that “even in paradise,” even among the lives of the rich, famous, successful, etc., tragedy and misfortune can strike; no one is immune to them.
Lauren: I competely agree. People who live in “paradise” and have everything they could ever want, they have issues. Nothing is perfect.

Favorite Quotes

Because my favorite thing about this book was the writing, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite quotes. I definitely found myself jotting down more quotes than usual!

“The air was swollen with music, shouting, and something I couldn’t place – a feeling of happiness, but happniess with an edge, a sense of joy that was all the more meaningful because it was so fleeting.” (141)

quote even in paradise

“I felt a part of a world that was so large and so strange I could never understand it, and that was okay. I was happy to give myself up to it.” (264)

Final Thoughts

Alright, so everyone knows at this point how stoked I was for this book. And how long I waited to read it. And how much I built it up in my mind. Usually, when I get hyped on a book, I ruin it for myself. I get too excited and build it up to be this epic masterpiece that’ll end up on my favorites shelf. Usually I give the book a mediocre rating because it didn’t meet my already-way-too-high expectations. This actually wasn’t the case for this book, shockingly. The similarities to The Great Gatsby were interesting even though it seemed a bit forced (especially at the end). The similarities to We Were Liars (angry review here) were annoying. The whole book was set up to be some broken family and their tragedy, but I don’t feel like anything really happened. I definitely predicted the “twist” and was overall pretty unimpressed. I don’t think my personal hype ruined it for me for once. I just don’t think this was the book for me. I was impressed with the writing style, it was engrossing, and I finished it quickly – but that’s really it. Sad. Sad. SAD.

3 responses to “Book Buddies Review: Even In Paradise

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