Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Kannika

The Principles of Love is fairly not your everyday young adult novel--that much I can say. First of all, Love Bukowski is not your usual teen heroine (as she is, more often than not, bound to tell you in the novel)--not the pretty girl-next-door, not the best friend of the pretty girl-next-door who is decidedly less pretty, not the ugly girl who later becomes too stunningly beautiful it's not hard to believe she's a different person, literally. She's a total mix-up of personalities. She's not all around intelligent, but she's got a quick tongue. She's not broody and philosophical, but she can be. Her musical references are a joy--I have yet to meet another young adult character like her. In short, Love Bukowski is your seemingly ordinary girl--the type you probably sat next to in algebra who seemed like she didn't have a life--who actually has a life. She's the unexplored side of young adult literature. And the fact that she's so well-rounded actually makes you think that you know her after reading the novel. I know this much has been said about a lot of fictional characters, but Love and her sometimes annoying habit of inserting parenthetical remarks (they're kind of jarring, and yes, I'm doing it right now) and her life-as-a-movie state of mind are so consistent, it's like talking to a childhood friend who had habits you hated so much but who is so endearing with his/her habits you can't help missing them.

What I didn't like, though, about the book, is the happy endings that seem to be unworked for in the whole novel. I'm all for the Jacob-Love relationship, but it just seemed that Love getting over Robinson and his cheating because of a guy who knows her so well is just too abrupt. Is this the state of attention spans of teenagers nowadays? What I love, though, about Love's relationships with both guys is that the reader is really made to like both the state of their, er, affairs. Maybe also the fact that Robinson the filmmaker, and Jacob the musician, mesh so well with Love's artsy side contribute to the appeal of the romances. And while I like Jacob (I mean, who doesn't like a silent guitar-slinging guy with dark blue eyes, right?), I just wish the author had made him more complex, or rather, make him stand out from all the other silent guitar-slinging guys that seem so prevalent in all young adult movies and books.

Our fiction prof always makes it a point to tell us about payoffs in stories, and I guess with The Principles of Love there are lots: musical references, boarding school routines, open mike nights at cafes, voice-over carreers. All of them are so well-blended in with the story a reader would rarely notice them, but the thing is, after getting to know Love a while, it's even impossible not to see them all in her life. And the author manages to make them all seem normal, and at the same time, worth making a story about. Sure, maybe Love's story has been told many times, but this one, it's worth reading.