Love & Lies

Love & Lies

by Ellen Wittlinger

Synopsis:

Marisol Guzman from Hard Love is older and wiser. She has graduated from high school and deferred Stanford for a year so she can pursue her newest dream, writing a novel. She has taken an apartment in Somerville with her best friend Birdie, a waitressing job at the legendary Mug in Cambridge, and signed up for "How To Write Your First Novel" at the adult learning annex. 

But on the first day, she isn''t sure what is a bigger suprise, that Gio is in her class or that it is being taught by Olivia Frost, the most beautiful, intelligent woman she has ever laid eyes on. Between that; Birdie bringing home his new boyfriend (who is equally afraid of Marisol and the cat) to live with them; and Lee, a high school senior who has fallen head over heels for Marisol, she can hardly keep things straight. Especially once she herself falls into her first real relationship with the twenty-eight year old Olivia. 

As Marisol becomes more and more involved with Olivia, she begins to wonder if she is too blinded by love to see the truth.

My thoughts:

This novel was interesting at first and definitely took a while to acquire the characters and realize the theme but it is a very intense book because of many drama mishaps throughout Love and Lies. The characters grew on me eventually and all have unique personalities to admire. Specifically one of Marisol's best guy friends who is a generally round character. He has a good sense of humour and auspiciousness to him. Another character that brought my interest is her sister, even though she has a sassy attitude, that wit brought out her true personality which is always a good factor in any person.  I like the authors style of writing mainly because I found it easy to read and interpret what she was trying to convey. For example I definitely connected with the sense of humour she constantly had throughout the story and that helped me read it. The characters were mainly very well-rounded which is a plus and made it intriguing. There was a good amount of dialogue used which also connected me to the novel.

reviewed by C. M., Grade 10 Scona student