My Reviews 2013

5. Jack and Yani love Harry Potter

Book – Jack and Yani love Harry Potter
Author – Mary Twomey
Star rating – ★★★★★
Would I read it again – Yes
Plot – Excellent
Characters – Lovable, fun, full of quirks and very realistic.
Movie Potential – ★★★★★
Ease of reading – Simple, yet very well written. Very enjoyable.

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About the Book - 

Best friends Jack and Yani do everything together. After Yani's thirtieth birthday party, however, she decides to leave town on a spontaneous vacation to visit all the sites of the young adult fiction novels she loves, hoping that when she returns, she'll have buried the secret flame she has for Jack. Forced by his friends to go on a road trip to track down Yani, Jack learns a lot about his best friend by reading the novels she's been obsessed with. From vampire hunting in Forks to searching for wizards in Florida, Jack confronts his greatest fears -that he just might love Harry Potter...and perhaps, Yani.

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Recommend to – Twilight and Harry Potter fans, fans of romance, fans of sci-fi, fans of blogging and candy. If you like a good romance, or if you just want to go along on Yani’s book tour with her, give it a read.

Review –

Jack and Yani love Harry Potter is one of those books that I found completely by accident, but which has turned out to be a new favourite read of mine. It will definitely have a place on my January Blog about the best books I’ve read in 2013.

Of course, having just finished reading the Harry Potter series for the who-knows-how-many-time I figured this was exactly the kind of follow up book I wanted, before delving into Twilight, for the very first time. And I have to say, it has certainly put me in the mood to read the series.

This is one of those books that I wish I had written. I had me hooked from word one, and I literally only put it down because I was starving and needed to eat. Once I picked it up again, it didn’t get dropped until I was finished. That’s how good this story is. I laughed out loud, felt the anguish and wanted to do some slapping and hugging of my own, throughout the story.

Here’s the low down –

“Best friends Jack and Yani do everything together. After Yani’s thirtieth birthday party, however, she decides to leave town on a spontaneous vacation to visit all the sites of the young adult fiction novels she loves, hoping that when she returns, she’ll have buried the secret flame she has for Jack.
Forced by his friends to go on a road trip to track down Yani, Jack learns a lot about his best friend by reading the novels she’s been obsessed with. From vampire hunting in Forks to searching for wizards in Florida, Jack confronts his greatest fears –that he just might love Harry Potter…and perhaps, Yani.”

Yani and Jack’s friends remind me of my own when I was a teenager. We would so stupid stuff like ‘the slapping’ scene and then find one of us was going to get into trouble for it later. I love how the relationship between Jack and Yani, however, is such an unspoken secret between everyone. Yani loves Jack and Jack loves Yani. Everyone knows it, but no-one admits it, until Jack’s best friend Nate steps in to take action.

Jack works at a technical support call centre, and reads ‘real’ literature quotes poetry while Yani reads fantasy, science fiction novels and is obsessed with Harry Potter and Twilight. Sadly, this is the only obstacle between them. Together they write a blog about candy bars, which really reflect their feelings at the time of writing. I think the best part about this book, is the way that it combines Jack’s serious reading list, with Yani’s whimsical one. She’s just turned thirty, but she’s still a big kid and she likes that. But she also knows that her friends, and especially Jack, don’t understand that side of her.

By the time Jack throws her a surprise birthday party, Yani can’t take much more of the missed moments between her and Jack. She believes that he doesn’t feel anything for her, so she leaves a note pinned to his door, to say that she’s gone off on a book tour, to visit all the places where her favourite books and films took place…oh, and that she hopes it will help her stop being in love with him. Which is exactly how he finds out how she feels. She begins at Forks and makes her way around the places she’s so longed to go.

Meanwhile, Jack is depressed about her note, her escape and the ‘cowardly’ way she told him she loved him. Until his best friend Nate comes to the rescue. He shows up and demands that, as friends, they all go on a road trip to find Yani, so that Jack can profess his love for her. Jack is, at first, unwillingly dragged alone until, the more times they just miss her, the more he realises that he can’t be without her.

Some very interesting characters make appearances on their journey and for the Twi-hard and Hogwartians out there, they will absolutely love Yani’s and Jack’s venture into the Comic Con. It’s worth reading the whole book just to get to that part .

What really makes me love this book, is not only the utter romance of Jack going everywhere he thinks Yani will go, in order to find her and profess his love, not only the best friend bromance between Jack and Nate that makes Nate such a good friend to suggest the road trip, but the fact that everyone of the characters begins to understand Yani better through the trip.

With only one friend of the group married, with a baby, the wife Kelly has to stay at home with the baby, Hannah, so her two best friends stay with her too, and two boys, who can’t get the time off work. In their own way, they take the same road trip as Yani and Jack do, separated from their friends by miles, but coming closer with each day the road trip goes on. They all realise, Jack’s friends on the road trip and Kelly and her friends at home, that they’re never really been fair to Yani. They’ve treated her fantasy book and movie obsession like something they had to suffer, not realising how much she has to hide her true feelings and joys to keep them happy. The girls decide to take the road trip too, watching all Twilight movies and five of the Harry Potter films that they refused to let Yani make them sit through.

Meanwhile, on the road trip, Nate’s come up with the brilliant idea of the whole gang listening to the audio books of the Twilight and Harry Potter series. To their own surprise, each and every one of them finds themselves sucked into the stories and realising why Yani loves them so much. That still doesn’t help them when they come to the Comic Con, though, and have no idea why they have to dress up in Team Jacob t-shirts. Possibly one of the funniest moments in the whole book is when they go into the Comic Con, but it’s also very sweet, that they’re even willing, by this time, to enter such a place in search for their friend, and the love of Jack’s life.

You know me, by now, I find it hard to give good book reviews without at least teeny little spoilers. That’s only because I feel so passionately about the book that I want everyone else to understand how I feel about it too. But I’m not going into spoilers here. They’re too much fun when you come across them at 1 o’clock in the morning and you have to hold your hand over your mouth to stop you from waking up the whole house with your laughter. Read the book, then leave me a comment with your view. I can’t wait for you all to read it.