Better Than Perfect audiobook

This book has a lot in common with Melissa Kantor's 2014 book MAYBE ONE DAY. Both are emotional rollercoasters with realistic friend/family/boy relationships and protagonists who make some bad but justifiable decisions. But BETTER THAN PERFECT's theme of choice (How do you know if the path you've worked so hard to stay on your whole life is right for you? Or if you and your long-term boyfriend are meant to last? Or who you should be?) rang so true to me.I found Juliet's personal journey intensely profound. I loved her introspection, her voice, her flaws. I was also an overachiever in high school, but unlike Juliet, I never questioned why I had to be perfect at school and my other pursuits. I think so many teens will see themselves in this book. With it, Melissa Kantor has earned a spot on my auto-buy list.There are so many great lines in this book, but this one I read over and over: "And then I thought that it wasn't fair that at seventeen you could make choices that you might regret for the rest of your life because you really had no idea what you were doing and the stakes were just too high."

Throughout Better Than Perfect, Juliet faced constant struggles within herself and with her family and friends. That said, the thing that set this book apart from other contemporaries was the female empowerment soaking every page. From beginning to end, Juliet questioned her relationship with different people, but realized it was her relationship within herself she ultimately needed to fix. The message Kantor sends all her readers is that you can't turn to someone else to find happiness, you have to discover it within yourself. Overall 4/5 stars; the ending may not satisfy all, but it was perfect for this book!

Thank goodness for the last part ^_^

TW - cheating, mental health / psychiatric It’s taken me a while to write my review on this book, it’s something I still think about. You can tell it was written a while ago as some of the terminology used regarding psychiatric treatment, patients and medicine was very outdated and not very well received anymore (for good measure) but it did open your eyes as to how the main character seen this disease It also shone a light on how the pressures of family and society can affect the mental health and happiness of young adults, especially as they leave high school and go out into the world. I do wish the cheating didn’t happen, it doesn’t show a very positive manner into the way relationships are respected. I did enjoy the book though, I was easily hooked and wanting to know what happened next

This book is a better than perfect read. I love how realistic and relatable it is, it just gets you. It shows so much of real-life situations such as having a broken family, feeling pressured due to schoolwork, feeling like the world is against you and making mistakes when you think you just can’t. I applaud Melissa Kantor for writing a beautiful book not only for teenagers but for people who are experiencing these things in general.I really recommend this book if you’re having family, school and maybe relationship problems. This book will help you, I swear. It’ll help you realize that sometimes, just taking a deep breath is all you need. See for yourself.Full review here.

Better Than Perfect by Melissa Kantor totally hit my sweet spot.Read my full review here Review goes live 11/9/16

3.5 StarsBetter Than Perfect ended up being a much more interesting story than I thought it would be. Juliet is your typical over achiever. Good grades, sweet boyfriend, a highly scheduled day, high SAT scores…I could go on and on. The catalyst of her new and painful chapter is her mother’s breakdown and admittance into a mental health facility. While trying to keep everything in her life going, she starts to see that the world doesn’t end when things don’t go as planned. This whole book is her gradual realization of this fact and through her parents divorce, her mother’s recovery, and her attraction to someone who isn’t her boyfriend, she makes a painful journey towards the understanding that it’s not always easy to make the right decision for yourself. I really liked Juliet. She was flawed and complicated. I thought her reaction to her mother’s actions and her conflicted feelings about her family were very real and relatable.The story did become a bit repetitive in the middle section. There was a chunk of pages when it didn’t seem to be moving forward, but it did eventually find its course again. I also wasn’t a fan of the way the character of Juliet’s boyfriend, who started out as a part of her perfectly planned life, was turned into “the bad guy”. It seemed like a cop out, quite frankly. Instead of really digging into Juliet’s character as it related to her boyfriend and how their shared goals might be diverging, the author simply made him unlikable all of a sudden. However, despite that, I did like the story. It dealt with a lot of heavy issues, and it was good to see a story about someone who was dealing with a mentally ill parent as well as dealing with the stigma of having a family member with a mental illness. I appreciated the way her mother’s recovery seemed to open Juliet up to the possibility that her life didn’t have to be planned down to every last detail. The ending was absolutely fantastic. It really gave the choice to Juliet, and it brought a very big smile to my face.

Juliet's perfect life is crumbling all around her. It starts when her father moves out and in mother sinks into depression. It escalates when she finds her mother on the floor of her bathroom after suffering an accidental, or deliberate, overdose of the prescription drugs that she had been taking for years. Then she meets a boy - Declan - and they form a connection but he isn't Jason, the boy who has been her steady and soul mate since eighth grade.Juliet is the upper class kid whose every moment has been scheduled for her. Between swimming, debate, SAT prep classes, and homework from all the AP courses she's taking, she doesn't have a moment to breath. She and Jason have been determined to get into Harvard. She is unhappy but is sure that happiness will come when she reaches her goal. Her routine is greatly disturbed when her mother is placed in a psychiatric hospital. It is disturbed again when Declan and his sister want Juliet to join their band. Juliet finally has to stop and take a look at what she really wants out of life. She has to figure out for herself if what she has been working so hard for is what she wants or if it is only what has been expected of her.This is a great story about a girl who needs to stop, take a look at her life, and determine the path that will really bring her to happiness.

One Girl, Two livesBetter than Perfect follows Juliet Newman on a journey through her senior year of high school. With perfect grades and a dream school of Harvard, Juliet appears to have her life put together in school, but at home it is the exact opposite. After her Dad moved out, Juliet is left to take care of her mom.Juliet's family was the ideal family, the one that everyone else admired and strived to be, but all of that crumbles when her mom ends up in the hospital. Juliet tries to reclaim her life, but, as she slowly finds out, everything she was doing was because someone wanted her to do it or expected her to, whether it be for her dad or her boyfriend. I think the author stayed true to the emotions of a teenager in high school. I don’t like the character of Jason, Juliet’s boyfriend; he is too selfish trying to get Juliet to do everything so that they can go to school together and get married and live together. He doesn’t give her the space or time to deal with the things that are happening in her personal life. To him, it is all about his love life and school work. I liked the book and found it slightly relatable with the stress of high school and college.

Making big decisions is hard, and Juliet finds herself overwhelmed by them. What I liked about the book was how imperfect the main character is. She's not completely likable, but she's still relatable. She's dealing with the same kind of doubts most teens feel, and her situation doesn't help matters. The story does get a little over dramatic at some points, but it earns four stars for that heart-soaring, thrilling ending. Full review on TheYoungFolks.com soon.

As the title of the book suggests, this isn't perfect. It's better than perfect.

3.5"I couldn't help wondering if maybe some things,once they're broken,can never be made whole again."

d'awwwww

Look, I know that you're making a big leap of faith by reading this book. It's fairly long for a realistic fiction novel, and the cover is a picture of a wobbly girl in what looks like a bright red trench coat. But it's actually one of the best books that I've ever read. That's truly saying something, coming from a girl who literally has a book addiction. The novel is centered around a senior in high school named Juliet Newman, who struggles to find her way amid her parent's devastating divorce. She meets the rocker bad boy named Declan who leads her to question her identity as a perfect Harvard bound student with a straight A boyfriend. While this book is saddening at times, the romance and chemistry between Declan and Juliet are undeniably firework-worthy.For me, this book tackled the myth of perfection. Being perfect is an illusion, a false goal sculpted by the very people who struggle to be true to themselves in such an unforgiving world. Juliet's story is so relatable that I literally kept picturing myself in her place over and over again until our names were blurred and the stories interchangeable. So to Melissa Kantor, I salute you. Juliet Newman has become my personal avatar. Whether that's a good or bad thing I can't say, yet I feel that thanks to you I have more resolve to stay true to my identity. So, to all the people out there who say that my weirdness freaks you out, hang tight because I've got plenty more where that came from.

"Maybe some things, once they're broken, can never be made whole again." I liked this book. I totally enjoyed reading this book. This book proved that not everything we see in ourselves and in others are really perfect. Sometimes things are not as perfect as they seem. Juliet is relatable. Even though I'm not a student anymore I can relate to her in terms of her life especially when everything around you seems to be falling apart. I hated her for cheating on her boyfriend and how she didn't tell him the truth. I was expecting her to tell everything that happened with her and Declan but she never told him. Jason deserved the truth and I know that he is very strict and controlling but he deserved to know. I liked the character development of Juliet. I liked how she survived everything that she went through in her life and how strong she is. I think I learned in this book is life sucks--- we all struggle and life isn't really perfect. We just expect it to be.