Character, dialogue and interaction: 8/9. lifelike
Plot, suspense and climax: 8/9. not that drama but not bad
It introduced Shakespeare’s famous play Romeo and Juliet to readers. The story followed a high school student who studied this classic work in basic English. The book detailed key scenes from Romeo and Juliet through her teacher’s explanations in the class. I found this part really useful for the writing was simple and easy to understand, so it was quite suitable for young adults.
At the same time, I found the other part of the book equally interesting. It mainly told the stories of the protagonist’s daily life, such as her female best friend and her sister who fell in love with other boys, as well as the protagonist’s own love story.
The protagonist had a long-term crush on a boy who however turned out to be rude and insincere: at first, he refused to be her partner in the biology class. Yet later on, he regretted his decision because his rashly chosen teammate was not as capable as the protagonist. He tried to reconnect with her simply because he needed her intelligence. Worse still, he even kissed the protagonist abruptly without her permission, which made her feel bad and protest that rude behavior. The boy’s subsequent crude complaints further made the protagonist feel disgusted with him and no longer have a crush on him.
Eventually, I believed Shakespeare’s play indirectly helped the protagonist find her true love. She first met her truelove because she needed to talk with her grandmother at the nursing home about Shakespeare’s works. It was in the same nursing home that she met a reliable boy, who often looked after his grandmother there. Interestingly, they actually grew fond of each other by reading the famous balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet — the part where the two characters kissed and declared their love for one another. As the protagonists in the play kissed, they kissed as well!
This book also depicted the love stories of her best friend and her sister. Both of their relationships ended up being futile.
Her sister fell in love with a boy who turned out to be a jerk, because he hooked up with other women and cheated on her. Her sister at first had a quarrel with her parents, because her boyfriend invited her to spend the Thanksgiving Day together with his family, but her parents didn’t want her to go. I thought the existence of her sister’s futile love was to showcase how irrational teenagers were and how easily they could fall in love with wrong people and worthless jerks. Not everyone was Romeo and Juliet who would give commitments and adhere to them. Most of people especially males (in the book) just stopped their love whenever new lures, troubles or obstacles came.
The protagonist’s best friend fell for a boy who already had a girlfriend wrongly. His girlfriend grew jealous and devised a scheme to frame the protagonist’s best friend. The girlfriend invited her to a party, called everyone else out, and got the protagonist’s best friend arrested by the police on juvenile delinquency charges, claiming she had broken into someone else’s house while drunk. Meanwhile, the girlfriend spread rumors that the protagonist’s best friend had been found naked in that house, aiming at ruining her reputation completely.
I thought this was the biggest conflict or difficulty that the protagonist needed to resolve through her knowledge of learning Shakespeare. And she managed to do it well. This was also the defining climax throughout the book!
After the protagonist learned the truth from her best friend, she first interacted with the girl who was the jealous girlfriend’s friend, obviously knew something about the incident and felt somewhat guilty for taking part in the scheme. So the protagonist approached her and persuaded her to tell the truth by quoting Shakespeare’s work, as well as the manipulating girl’s fondness or respect for their teacher in the Shakespeare English class, to get her to confess online so that they could clear her best friend’s name and put an end to unreasonable rumors.
Finally, with the protagonist’s help, her best friend eventually regained her reputation. In the beginning of the book, her best friend had gradually distanced herself from the protagonist, because of the best friend’s unhealthy infatuation with that disloyal boy and her new “cool” friends. In the end, her best friend realized the true nature of her new friends: one of them even framed her to the police! No doubt she finally came back to the protagonist’s side again, and the two finally made up with each other.
In my opinion, I do not think this book boasted a story as dramatic as the play Romeo and Juliet. However, it is extremely lifelike, rendering the daily lives of ordinary American high school girls vividly, with a wonderful protagonist who marvelously showed her intelligence and her kindness to use her wisdom to help her friends and families.
Of course this is not a thriller book or a perfect book, but overall, this is a good book perfectly fulfilling dual functions of the novel fun of learning the protagonist’s own story and education on Shakespeare’s original story in the form of key excerpts, class discussions and teacher’s explanations. To some degree, they made up for some of my misunderstandings or omissions when I read Romeo and Juliet in the past.