Gemstone Reviews [Closed for Catch up]

Review #40-Boys of Suburbia

Title: Boys of Suburbia

Author: hometowns-

Genre: Teen Fiction

Rating: PG-13

#of chapters: 16

# of chapters I read: 3

Summary/Blurb:

"It's a cold and scary world out there. Find your light and you'll do just fine. "

Two boys from a small suburbia, both wandering in a world they're stuck in, found each other by fate.

But once their personal emotions come intact with their new-found friendship, an indescribable feeling might just bloom on its own, leaving them with something so unsure yet so hauntingly beautiful. 

Summary/Blurb: 

Review:

Cover:

#aesthetics (as are all your other covers, I've noticed)

I like this cover because of that, and because the teenager on the cover does look like a small-town boy. Even though a lot of HS stories take place in suburban areas, making a point of it here shows that they story will mostly revolve around their experiences in living in a small town. Which is great, because we usually only ever get the high school aspect of a teen's life, and really forget about everything else (reality—that not every teen's high school life is saturated with drama)

Even the background looks like the front of a suburban house, and the subtitle "leave the blue neighbourhood" makes me think that the protagonists live in a blue collar area (aka whose parents work labour-intensive jobs. Rather than white-collars, such as office-workers). This is another important factor that is usually overlooked, since for some reason, people like to read about rich kids and their shenanigans. So what about someone in low/middle-class?

Bottom-line, I found this cover very appealing, and it does fit the plotline. 

Blurb:

I was immediately hooked by the opening line, "It's a cold and scary world out there, find your light and you'll do just fine." because not only because of the meaning behind it, but also because you managed to connect this to the rest of the blurb. You didn't just add it in to make the story look "hipster".

The blurb is concise, but without lacking any important information, and despite the fact that it may be a little vague when it comes to the names of the protagonist, this doesn't pull me out of the blurb. The anonymity helps me connect to their situations a little more, since it seems to me that this will be a sort of coming-of-age story. A lot of the plot will revolve around character development and the protagonists relationships between one another, and these are all things which we all experience in life (hence there's no need for specifications).

This may come across as biased, but I'm always a sucker for these type of stories, because they tend to get very philosophical. It's nice to read something that makes you think every once in a while.  

Now, for the story!

First Impression:

The first thought that came to mind was "Woah, the chapters are short!" But after reading through them, they seem to be the right length. There are some things which I think could use a little more development, but I'll talk about these later.

Anyway, the opening of the first chapter was unique and it drew me in as a reader, because it's one I haven't seen before. I found it lovely how patient Andy was with his little sister, and despite taking over 2 hours for her to get the hang of it, he never lashed out her (I could understand why Andy is so proficient at skating, especially since he practically lives nearby. Although I wonder why his sister isn't as good as him. Maybe she wasn't interested in ice-skating?).