The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet by Kate Rorick and Rachel Kiley

Hey guys! I'm back with another review! I know it's been a while since we've posted a review here so I decided to review this book I borrowed from the library a while back. This book is also based on the Lizzie Bennet Diaries webseries (check out my review to the companion book to that series, The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet, here) but it focuses more on the youngest Bennet sister, Lydia (who, coincidently, shares the same name as me so don't get confused haha).

The novel picks up after Lizzie's last vlog as Lydia tries to move on from her online scandal while preparing for college. She struggles to deal with the negative judgement and discrimination from her schoolmates as well as her own insecurities. As she tries to get her life back on track, she learns to trust others again and the importance of family.

I love how this book tells Lydia's side of the story and develops her character to become more mature. If you watched the Lizzie Bennet diaries series, Lydia was the ditzy, air-headed sister who loved clubbing, drinking and hooking up with boys. But now, she's really matured a lot and she's making a conscious effort to change the image others may have had of her before. The authors have said that they chose to focus on Lydia for this novel as they felt her story was the only one left incomplete by the end of the webseries. I'm glad they did, cos it gave me a lot of insight into her side of the story and how the scandal has affected her emotionally and mentally.

I haven't read Pride and Prejudice myself yet but from what I've gathered, Lydia Bennet wasn't a favourite character in the book for most people; she was just this frivolous wild child. So I'm glad that the webseries fleshed out Lydia's character a lot more and showed her more gullible, insecure nature. However, she still has that loud and sassy personality in her and it shows in the book as well, through her signature slang and way of speaking.

Plus, this book also features quite a bit of Mary Bennet, the Bennet sisters' cousin in this adaptation and a minor character in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries series but she's been in a lot of Lydia's personal videos on her YouTube channel. This book goes more in depth about her relationship with Lydia. Overall, it's a story about finding yourself again and becoming a better you and I highly recommend it if you enjoyed the webseries or the first book and you're curious about Lydia's development after the scandal.

Lydia

The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su and Kate Rorick

Hey everyone! I'm back with my second book review, as promised. Today, I'll be reviewing this book from a webseries The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet so I thought of doing something a little different this time. In this review, I'll be raving quite a bit about the webseries since it accompanies the book.

This book is the companion to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries webseries on YouTube, which is a modern adaptation of the classic, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, in a series of vlog-style videos by the protagonist, Lizzie Bennet. It follows the three Bennet sisters Jane, Lizzie and Lydia (Mary Bennet becomes their cousin and Kitty Bennet becomes Lydia's cat) as they handle their mother's old-fashioned views of wanting to marry off her daughters. Along the way, doubts about what love really mean pop up, true personalities are revealed and the sisters eventually learn to accept one another and those around them. If you loved Pride and Prejudice, you'll definitely love this clever adaptation!

I love how the webseries has so many Easter eggs and tiny subtle references to the original classic - it still nuanced the 19th century English lifestyle and beliefs but put it in a more modern, relatable context. As someone who's not a big fan of classics and has never read Pride and Prejudice before, this webseries made me curious about the original classic and I went to do some research about it so I could understand the adapted story and the relationship between the characters better.

As for the novel itself, it acts not only as a written screenplay of what went on in the webseries episodes but it also reveals some details that were glossed over in the episodes. It lets you see the story from Lizzie's point of view and lets you see her inner thoughts and feelings that she didn't want to reveal on camera to her online audience. After reading the novel and watching the accompanying episodes, I was able to understand the whole storyline a lot better when the missing links not revealed in the videos were filled in by Lizzie's diary entries in the book. The book acts as a backstory to the events documented in Lizzie's vlogs, explaining why she said the things she said and why she did what she did in the vlogs.

The characters are also very 4-dimensional. Each character has so many layers that they reveal over time, you see different sides to them coming out and you learn so much more about who they are on the superficial level and on a deeper level. That's what makes this whole series is so good, each character is more than meets the eye and are all developing characters in their own ways. The team behind the series even made social media accounts and individual separate YouTube channels for the characters so you can see how far they went to make the characters as "real" as possible.

Overall, I highly recommend you guys check out this series and the novel as well. The way the book and the vlog series tie in so well together with the small details and add depth to the entire storyline. The webseries was created by Hank Green (if you're familiar with the stuff he does on his own or with his brother John Green, you know what to expect haha) and it's even won an Emmy in 2013 so that should be enough proof of how good this whole project turned out to be. I love how adaptations like these bring such classics to life in a modern way and it makes "nerdy" topics like these more relatable for a younger audience. Definitely a must-read for fans of the classics and casual readers alike!

Lydia

Paper Towns by John Green

Hey guys! Lydia is back!! It's been a while since I've written on this blog! Today, I'll be reviewing a book I've wanted to read for quite a while and finally managed to, Paper Towns by John Green.

I've been wanting to read this book ever since news of the movie came out and when I finally managed to get my hands on it, it didn't disappoint. This book is about a teenaged boy called Quentin Jacobsen aka Q who's had this huge crush on his neighbour Margo Roth Speigelman since young. Margo is a mysterious girl who loves adventure and has spent her childhood escaping home to wherever her impulsiveness takes her. One night, Margo crawls through Q's window and brings him on a crazy hit-and-run adventure around the neighbourhood to get revenge at her cheating boyfriend and her fake friends.

The next day, Margo disappears again and as the days go by, she still hasn't returned and Q starts getting more and more worried. But Margo is known to leave clues about where she's going so with his best friends Ben and Radar, Q is sure Margo left those clues for him and is determined to find her. On the day of their high school graduation, the three boys with Ben's new girlfriend and Margo's friend Lacey take the long drive to a non-existent "paper town" called Agloe, New York. Do they eventually find her? You'll have to read the book to find out.

I like how this coming-of-age story kind of turns into a mini mystery as the three friends try to get into Margo's mind and understand the clues she left behind. The characters in the book also all have their own individual personality types that make them memorable - Q as the introverted shy guy, Ben as the hyper, loud, slightly horny friend and Radar as the geeky one. I particularly love Margo's carefree, YOLO personality and how she's not afraid to break free from society's restrictions so she can find herself.

As expected from an author like John Green, his humour and fun personality that I get from watching his videos is clearly evident in this book. He writes from a teenager's perspective so well and I can almost imagine the characters' voices and images in my head as I read the story. That's what makes this story so much more relatable to me as a teenager as well and just brings the whole story and its characters to life.

Overall, it's a story of love, friendship and finding adventure in our everyday life, with elements of maturity and growth balanced with the somewhat frivolity of teenaged life. I'm even more curious about watching the movie now after reading this book cos I heard that it's a little different from the book and I'd like to see how they adapted the book for the movie. So that's it for my long-overdue book review, I'm in the middle of reading another book right now and I'll definitely review that once I'm done!

Lydia