Hiya, everyone! Noreen here with a book review on “Into The Wild Nerd Yonder” by Julie Halpern.
I love romance as much as the next girl, but usually I think “sigh, let me guess boy comes into the picture and changes her whole world?” It makes it difficult to find a book of that genre appealing at all. How ever this book right here, is much more than that. It covers more than relationships, it covers high school life in general. The main conflict in this book isn’t how to two can’t be together or anything to that extent. The main conflict was how our main character Jessie has to adapt to her friends changing and finding new one in general. Also, Dungeons & Dragons. Its in this book and I love it.
I do have one complaint for this book however. The “nerds” of the book are the most physically stereotypical characters I have ever read. Personality wise they are fine, amazing actually. I’m sorry, we do NOT dress in tattered white tennis shoes and too short jeans. More often than not we have style. What I read made me feel as if the general population beleive we look a certain way. That we all have braces and we look like a fright. Maybe Halpern was trying to say “don’t judge a book by its cover’ but I still found it incredibly peeving.
However, good things about this book do outweigh the bad. Halpern didn’t write her female lead to be a Mary-Sue, they didn’t screw up D&D, and the characters were more often than not a pleasure to read. This book was more Jessie discovering herself than anything else. The book made me laugh which frankly is hard to do. The entire story was extremely well put together and made me feel like I wasn’t having a forced romance shoved in my face but more of a story about how a girl deals with change.
I can’t say that you can avoid any lovey dovey stuff, because you can’t. If you like romance or you are willing to look past it then this book is something that I really do suggest to many people. Its fresh and new yet feels right at home on my bookshelf. Halpern has quickly become one of my favorite authors. I have read her other books but “Into The Wild Nerd Yonder” will stay my favorite for a long time.
I loved how the book had things from real life in it. D&D, Denny’s and mentioning of Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies) just made me feel like the book was more realistic. That this stuff could very well be happening. Which in all fairness it could be. But the point is that I feel more at home and become wrapped up in the book because it sounds and feels more real. I can imagine a girl loving Rupert Grint, a group of punks at a booth at Denny’s, and just normal things like that. Its something that just pulled me into the book a little more.
Overall, this book was a huge surprise for me; it was something I really enjoyed reading and was very different than my normal choice of books. I’m really glad I picked it up. The book was incredibly enticing and had plot points that normally wouldn’t have been anything special. Jessie likes to sew, which is something so normal that you wouldn’t expect it to turn into something so crucial to the plot. It’s just the little things in this book that I have to love. It makes it seem like any normal person can have some fluffy love story. Also there’s D&D and LARP (Live Action Role Play) references galore which was incredibly interesting and fun to read. I suggest you look into this book and the author in general.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s book review. If you’ve read the book or you just have something to say, comment it down below (just be sure to mark your spoilers). Thanks for reading!
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