Reading Reflection #8

Book: Perfect Chemistry

Author: Simone Elkeles

Pages Read: 1-20

Dear Fellow Readers, yep, another book has been started. I never read books like these, teen love stories, so I'm finding it kind of hard to read. It seems like the characters and very stereotypical. A rich cheerleader with blond hair, blue eyes, is very rich, as a convertible, and has the perfect boy friend. Then the next main character is a Latino Blood, kind of poor, is the tough guy at school, rides a motorcycle, with a bad attitude. Oh, but I can't forget, they both feel like they're putting on a mask to the outside world, hiding who they truly are. How unheard of. When I read this book, its almost as if I know what the characters are going to say and do before they do it, its the predictable...but my friend told me that it gets really good, so I'm just curious to read what happens which is why I want to keep reading this book. She also read it in Grade 7...so there is quite the age difference going along with her recommendation...so I guess I'll just have to see what all the talk is about. So, my first prediction I have for this book is that these two characters are going to get together. Surprised? They are from opposite worlds, different sides of town, and there will be a lot of controversy and problems when they get together. They will fall madly in love and maybe one of the characters will die. Since one of the main characters, Alex, is Latino, they use a lot of Spanish words in the book in replace of English words. I know very little Spanish so its kind of difficult to follow at times and I just sort of get the idea of what the word meant from the context that its in. I find the use of these Spanish words interesting because since this book takes place in the U.S.A, a lot of people are accustomed to basic Spanish words, meanwhile in Canada we know french as our second language. It just goes to show the cultural difference between our countries. One aspect of the main characters life that I related to was Brittany's relationship to her mom. For a lot of the time she'd rather be out of the house so she doesn't have to deal with her...and I kind of find myself in the same situation. The moms not abusive at all or really mean for all that matter, just very judgmental and you never know if they're going to be in a good mood or a really bad mood that day...its better to be out of the house. One reference in this book that I found interesting was the in Alex's family, his siblings are mentioned in context as soldiers, such as soldier number one and soldier number two. I really liked this because it is most likely that these kids will become gang members, so I liked the contrast between the two different fighters and the groups they would belong too. Overall, I don't know if I like this book a lot...but I don't think I dislike it either. Since I last read part of this book for this reflection, I am on page 110 and still haven't really made up my mind about it...but we'll see how it goes!