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Review: Frogs & French Kisses

Frogs & French Kisses Frogs & French Kisses by Sarah Mlynowski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Welcome to my 300th book review!!! It felt like going from 100 to 200 reviews took no time at all, but finally getting to 300 has felt like a looong time coming. In reality the time between both of those was 16 months.

I didn’t rate this second book as highly as the first one in this series because I couldn’t think of anything I didn’t like in the first book, whereas the same cannot be said for this one. I had some problems with some characters in this book, as well as the content.

Miri… Was… Pretty annoying. Always trying to save the world and all. Like, please, calm down. Their mom was kind of annoying too, but Miri really stole the show. Both of them just went way too extreme with their magic. Content-wise, I guess I didn’t care about it as much? The whole thing was very focused on Rachel and her (view spoiler), and on the Prom. I didn’t hate anything that happened, I just didn’t feel all that invested in any of it.

(view spoiler)

I still ended up having a pretty good time listening to this book, as is reflected in my rating. I’ve noticed that a lot of people’s biggest problem with this series is that they don’t like Rachel, because they think she’s a huge asshole and they don’t enjoy reading from her perspective. I on the other hand have no problems with Rachel, and actually like her.

The first reason I like her is because she’s different. So so SO many books have some terribly average goodie-goodie Mary Sue as the main character who would never even dream of hurting a fly. Talk about BORING. Basically every single book I read has this girl as the main character, and I’m so over it. Rachel’s character is usually reserved for either the sidekick/best friend, or the villain. So seeing her actually front a series is a breath of fresh air I can’t get enough of.

The second reason I like Rachel is because she reminds me a lot of myself, and reading a character like me in a book not only feels validating, but also makes her feel super real. That's why I don't mind when she's a jerk, because I totally understand why and could see myself acting the same way in the same situations. Hm. I've always taken a liking to asshole characters in books, I guess this is probably why. They’re the more realistic characters who have other motivations besides just blindly doing what’s “good”.

I never talked about the audiobook in my first review, so I’ll say it here: The audiobook is great! Ariadne Meyers is a great actress who really brings emotion and life into the character’s lines. The only problem was that listening to it on the loud train was really painful because I had to turn the volume up in order to hear, but every time Miri spoke it busted my eardrums because it’s so high pitched. Usually actors/actresses don’t yell in audiobooks which ends up sounding really awkward when the actor/actress says “They yelled” except they don’t actually yell the line. Well, I kind of see why now. Ariadne yelled the lines that were supposed to be yelled, and they killed me. I really recommend these audiobooks to be listened to in a quiet environment, because the emotive-ness is really great, but otherwise maybe hold off.


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Click to read my other Magic in Manhattan reviews:
Book 1 | Book 2* | Book 3 | Book 4

*Current review


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