Love and Other Perishable Items By: Laura Buzo

Originally released in Australia under the name Good Oil (meaning Useful Information).  15 year-old Amelia works at a grocery store and is in love with her 21 year-old co-worker Chris.  She knows this can never work out... it's hopeless!  They become really great friends because they are both naturally inquisitive and because I think Chris liked having a pupil. 

As time goes on Chris continues his hunt for the perfect woman and wonders where the hell his life is going to go once he's done with "uni".  Amelia and Chris's relationship grows stronger until one night everything changes.  Amelia's heart  is broken... SMASHED!  Now as Chris prepares to move on the the next stage of his life, Amelia is left wondering why and trying to accept the way things are...



 


My Thoughts:

LOVED. THIS. BOOK.  I had very low expectations going into it and then all of a sudden I'm crying???  I guess I just couldn't help but remember being that young age and feeling rejection like that.

I loved that Amelia was mature but also naive.  I think that's a hard balance to portray and this author did it well.  I also loved that this book explored that time in your life when you have no idea what you are going to do when you have to "grow up".  It's a scary time between college and real life and I don't think it's touched on very much in YA.  The best part of this book for me was the alternating viewpoints.  I didn't even know Chris was going to be narrating because the first third of the book is all Amelia, but then it goes back and gets Chris's take on the same time period.  I have to say the strategy was brilliant because outwardly Chris seems so confident, positive and all-knowing, but then we get to see that he actually kind of hates himself.

This was a surprising book for me for many reasons.  First of all if you would've told me that I would read a book and actually root for a 21 year old man and a 15 year old girl to get together, I would've laughed at you.  That sounds icky, right?  But by the power of this author creating amazing characters, it didn't feel wrong at all.  I really loved all of Chris's terms that he came up with like "youngster" and "Land of Dreams", it just made me love him more!  Plus the Aussie slang was great!

The way this book ended was just perfect!  I'm not going to give anything away but it's not neatly tied up.  Usually that would piss me off, but with this book it made sense, and even if there is no sequel I'm cool with that.  I have my own ideas about what happens to these two and I'm perfectly fine with not actually knowing everything.

I feel like this author had the confidence to write a book that didn't have to be about a lot of things... don't get me wrong there's definitely stuff going on in this book, but not overly-dramatic or insanely edgy.  It was just a realistic book about what it's like to be at these two different stages of life.  This book just has that emotion and something extra that hooks you without having to have some crazy event happening.

OVERALL:  I SO Recommend!  It's not a book with a lot of action, but it's definitely not boring.  It's about LIFE and really cool people trying to figure out how to navigate through it. 

My Rating:

 

 

 

 

Date Published: 12/11/2012 (US)

How I got this book: NetGalley