Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland

Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland
Release Date: October 4, 2016
Pages: 313
Rating: 💜💜💜💜💜
Buy it: Amazon | Book Depository

First love is an epic disaster Henry has never been in love. Then he meets Grace Town, the elusive new girl in school, who wears oversized boys' clothing, walks with a cane, rarely seems to shower, and is hiding crushing secrets. She's hardly who Henry expected his dream girl to be, but when the two have to edit the paper together, sparks fly. After all this time, Henry's about to learn just how disastrous the road to first love can be-and that sometimes it's the detours that end up mattering more.

I honestly wasn't expecting to like this book. I picked it up on a whim because I'd heard about it online and thought I needed to read every book that booktubers like to be a good reader (I now know that is 100% false and I should just read what I like). After I picked it up I put it straight on to my TBR shelf and then promptly forgot about it. Until this month.

I was expecting something like Me, Earl and the Dying Girl, with dark humour and a predictable love story, but it was so much more. 

This is an anti-love story. The whole story is based around Henry and Grace's relationship but it is the biggest pile of anti-love to have ever been written. It is a poisonous love story that shows everything that is wrong with young love and I adored it. YA contemporaries tend to idealise romance, making first love seem unrealistically brilliant and perfect whereas it is actually a big mess of both people trying to figure out what they want from the relationship and inevitably getting it wrong. This book showed the raw, emotional side of love, the side that isn't always perfect, the side that needs alcohol to make it better. And it was glorious.

It was also the biggest compilation of pop culture ever. I thought nothing could top Simon when it came to popular references but I was proven wrong when reading this book. Both of these characters are geeky and reference heavy. It is always nice when you're reading a book and then the characters randomly start talking about a Pixar film because you feel like you can...relate. Every time a reference came up that I knew I felt a little burst of excitement because it made me feel like these characters weren't so different from me. There weren't an overwhelming amount of references in the book, with the author going 'look at me I'm quirky and relatable', but there were enough that it felt like an integral part of the novel.

Overall, this book was incredible and well worth a read. the characters were flawed and real, the plot took enough twists that it kept you hooked and the ending was shocking enough that it will stick in your mind. If you want a romantic contemporary with  a twist I would recommend having a go at this book because it ticks all those boxes.