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Natalie Monroe's Reviews > Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
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Natalie Monroe's review
bookshelves: he-s-so-bad-but-he-does-it-so-well, great-but-not-quite-there-yet, hate-the-characters-hate-the-book, laugh-out-loud-humor, pleasantly-surprised, protagonists-i-want-to-laser-face, real-problems
May 04, 2015
bookshelves: he-s-so-bad-but-he-does-it-so-well, great-but-not-quite-there-yet, hate-the-characters-hate-the-book, laugh-out-loud-humor, pleasantly-surprised, protagonists-i-want-to-laser-face, real-problems
EDIT 17/10/2016: I am so horrendously late to the party, but the movie is awesome. It keeps the humor and self-aware nature of the novel and adds just a pinch of poignancy to make it feel worthwhile. Because the book doesn't take itself seriously enough and I love that about it, but I also love how the producers tweaked it for a more mainstream audience. They're both brilliant on their own.
Side mini-rant: How on earth did it gross less than The Fault in Our Stars? It's an outrage.
(Original review)
3.5 stars
Nice Natalie: I don't even know why we're here. This book is pure snark. We love snark!
Cynical Natalie: Not if the characters are assholes. Greg is like the worse version of that kid from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He's selfish, inconsiderate, and an all-around jerk.
Nice Natalie: What do you expect, he's a teenage boy. That's what makes him real.
Cynical Natalie: Just because he's a teenage boy doesn't give him liberty to be a douche. He treats Rachel like a burden, which I grudgingly accept because it is sort of realistic. But even towards the end when (view spoiler), all he thought about was how he didn't want her to die and it made him really sad.
Nice Natalie: Greg already warned us ahead of time this isn't the kind of book where he goes through Acceptance and receives some big epiphany about life or something. It's a refreshing change from The Fault in Our Stars.
And he's funny!
We haven't laughed this hard at a book in ages.
Cynical Natalie: You know what else is funny? The Big Bang Theory. We love it to pieces and ship Shamy obsessively, but that doesn't mean its jokes aren't sometimes sexist, racist, and borderline offensive.
Greg makes some pretty sexist jokes, like saying fourteen-year-old girls are psychotic and their hobbies include not eating and yelling at parents. I was a fourteen-year-old girl once and I'll kick him right in his experimental-film-loving nuts.
Nice Natalie: He wasn't that pretentious. Even you were impressed by how the author made him so relatable, even though his hobby is really indie. And the different formats are cool.
Cynical Natalie: Point taken. But Rachel, whom this book is supposed to revolve around, hardly has any personality.
Nice Natalie: That's because Greg never took the time to know her. It's part of his character and why he's realistic—
Cynical Natalie: —and there's zero plot. It's just a big flow of events.
Nice Natalie: Not exactly. According to literature class (Cynical Natalie: Here we go), the climax of a plot doesn't have to contain fighter jets or explosions, the MC simply has to come to a great realization. Greg realizes (view spoiler) It resembles real life.
Cynical Natalie: Yeah, but we read fiction to escape real life.
Nice Natalie: You secretly love it. You throw fits whenever endings are too happy. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is gritty and unapologetic.
Cynical Natalie: Whatever. I'm not watching the movie. The trailer leads me to think they made it a lot more The Fault in Our Fucking Stars than the original text and God knows we've had enough of that shit.
To quote this very book:
Nice Natalie: Oh, come on. I'm sure it won't be that bad.
Cynical Natalie: Hey, if we're going to tussle over the film, we're doing it off-screen. Come're...
Other Nice Natalie/Cynical Nataliebrawls reviews:
The Fault in Our Stars
A Girl Like You
If I Stay
Dreams of Gods & Monsters
The Martian
Catching Fire
All The Rage
An Ember In The Ashes
Harry Potter & the Cursed Child
The Hammer of Thor
The Ship of the Dead
Caraval
Warcross
The Last Namsara
Side mini-rant: How on earth did it gross less than The Fault in Our Stars? It's an outrage.
(Original review)
3.5 stars
Nice Natalie: I don't even know why we're here. This book is pure snark. We love snark!
Cynical Natalie: Not if the characters are assholes. Greg is like the worse version of that kid from Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He's selfish, inconsiderate, and an all-around jerk.
Nice Natalie: What do you expect, he's a teenage boy. That's what makes him real.
Cynical Natalie: Just because he's a teenage boy doesn't give him liberty to be a douche. He treats Rachel like a burden, which I grudgingly accept because it is sort of realistic. But even towards the end when (view spoiler), all he thought about was how he didn't want her to die and it made him really sad.
Nice Natalie: Greg already warned us ahead of time this isn't the kind of book where he goes through Acceptance and receives some big epiphany about life or something. It's a refreshing change from The Fault in Our Stars.
And he's funny!
“I entered Excessive Modesty Mode. Nothing is stupider and more ineffective than Excessive Modesty Mode. It is a mode in which you show that you’re modest by arguing with someone who is trying to compliment you. Essentially, you are going out of your way to try to convince someone that you’re a jerk.”
“And if a jock. God forbid, witnesses you hobnobbing with theater kids, he will immediately assume you are gay, and there is no force on earth greater than the fear jocks have homosexuals. None. It's like the Jewish fear of Nazis, except the complete opposite with regard to who is beating the crap out of whom. So I guess it's more like the Nazi fear of Jews.”
We haven't laughed this hard at a book in ages.
Cynical Natalie: You know what else is funny? The Big Bang Theory. We love it to pieces and ship Shamy obsessively, but that doesn't mean its jokes aren't sometimes sexist, racist, and borderline offensive.
Greg makes some pretty sexist jokes, like saying fourteen-year-old girls are psychotic and their hobbies include not eating and yelling at parents. I was a fourteen-year-old girl once and I'll kick him right in his experimental-film-loving nuts.
Nice Natalie: He wasn't that pretentious. Even you were impressed by how the author made him so relatable, even though his hobby is really indie. And the different formats are cool.
Cynical Natalie: Point taken. But Rachel, whom this book is supposed to revolve around, hardly has any personality.
Nice Natalie: That's because Greg never took the time to know her. It's part of his character and why he's realistic—
Cynical Natalie: —and there's zero plot. It's just a big flow of events.
Nice Natalie: Not exactly. According to literature class (Cynical Natalie: Here we go), the climax of a plot doesn't have to contain fighter jets or explosions, the MC simply has to come to a great realization. Greg realizes (view spoiler) It resembles real life.
Cynical Natalie: Yeah, but we read fiction to escape real life.
Nice Natalie: You secretly love it. You throw fits whenever endings are too happy. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is gritty and unapologetic.
Cynical Natalie: Whatever. I'm not watching the movie. The trailer leads me to think they made it a lot more The Fault in Our Fucking Stars than the original text and God knows we've had enough of that shit.
To quote this very book:
“When you convert a good book to a film, stupid things happen”
Nice Natalie: Oh, come on. I'm sure it won't be that bad.
Cynical Natalie: Hey, if we're going to tussle over the film, we're doing it off-screen. Come're...
Other Nice Natalie/Cynical Natalie
The Fault in Our Stars
A Girl Like You
If I Stay
Dreams of Gods & Monsters
The Martian
Catching Fire
All The Rage
An Ember In The Ashes
Harry Potter & the Cursed Child
The Hammer of Thor
The Ship of the Dead
Caraval
Warcross
The Last Namsara
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Quotes Natalie Liked
“If after reading this book you come to my home and brutally murder me, I do not blame you.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“Girls like good-looking guys, and I am not very good-looking. In fact, I sort of look like a pudding”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“Look, I was an idiot. I didn't want people to think that I had a crush, so I decided to give everyone the impression that I truly, honestly hated Madison Harter. For no reason. Just thinking about this makes me want to punch myself in the eyeball.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“It's like when a kitten tries to bite something to death. The kitten clearly has the cold-blooded murderous instinct of a predator, but at the same time, it's this cute little kitten, and all you want to do is stuff it in a shoebox and shoot a video of it for grandmas to watch on YouTube.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“I entered Excessive Modesty Mode. Nothing is stupider and more ineffective than Excessive Modesty Mode. It is a mode in which you show that you’re modest by arguing with someone who is trying to compliment you. Essentially, you are going out of your way to try to convince someone that you’re a jerk.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“Are you done eating that?"
"What?"
"You shouldn't finish that, Dad's gonna want some."
"The hell he will."
"He will."
"It's so nasty. Son, it's so nasty."
"Then why are you finishing it?"
"Taking a bullet.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
"What?"
"You shouldn't finish that, Dad's gonna want some."
"The hell he will."
"He will."
"It's so nasty. Son, it's so nasty."
"Then why are you finishing it?"
"Taking a bullet.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“One thing I've learned about people is that the easiest way to get them to like you is to shut up and let them do the talking.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“So in order to understand everything that happened, you have to start from the premise that high school sucks. Do you accept that premise? Of course you do. It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. In fact, high school is where we are first introduced to the basic existential question of life: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad?”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“And if a jock. God forbid, witnesses you hobnobbing with theater kids, he will immediately assume you are gay, and there is no force on earth greater than the fear jocks have homosexuals. None. It's like the Jewish fear of Nazis, except the complete opposite with regard to who is beating the crap out of whom. So I guess it's more like the Nazi fear of Jews.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“If this were a video game, you could just break everything in this room and a bunch of money would come out of it, and you wouldn’t even have to pick it up, you would just walk into it and suddenly it would be in your bank account.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“So. If this was some normal fictional young-adult book, this is the part of the story where after the film, the entire high school would rise to their feet and applaud, and Earl and I would find True Acceptance and begin to Truly Believe in Ourselves and Rachel would somehow miraculously make a recovery, or maybe she would die but we would Always Have Her to Thank for Making Us Discover Our Inner Talent, and Madison would become my girlfriend and I would get to nuzzle her boobs like an affectionate panda cub whenever I wanted.
That is why fiction sucks. None of that happened. Instead, pretty much everything happened that I was afraid of, except worse.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
That is why fiction sucks. None of that happened. Instead, pretty much everything happened that I was afraid of, except worse.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“So the rich kids aren't the alpha group of the school. The next most likely demographic would be the church kids: They're plentiful, and they are definitely interested in school domination. However, that strength -- the will to dominate -- is also their greatness weakness, because they spend so much time trying to convince you to hang out with them, and the way they try to do that is by inviting you over to their church. 'We've got cookies and board games,' they say, or that sort of thing. 'We just got a Wii set up!' Something about it always seems a little off. Eventually, you realize: These same exact sentences are also said by child predators.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“I think I might have a disorder where your emotions frequently malfunction and a lot of the time you're sitting there feeling something inappropriate. It should be called Emotional Moron Disorder”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“it's just never a good idea to compliment a girl's boobs. [...] "You have nice boobs." Bad. "You have two nice boobs." Worse. "Two boobs? Perfect." F minus.”
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
― Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Reading Progress
May 4, 2015
– Shelved
May 4, 2015
– Shelved as:
to-read
July 30, 2015
–
Started Reading
July 30, 2015
–
10.0%
""Everyone used to look at me and think, 'Greg! He's one of us.' Or maybe something like: 'That guy's on our side.' Or at the very least: 'Greg is a guy who I am not going to flick ketchup at.'"
I want to marry this book. Everyone's invited to our wedding.
"
I want to marry this book. Everyone's invited to our wedding.
"
"
August 1, 2015
– Shelved as:
real-problems
August 1, 2015
– Shelved as:
protagonists-i-want-to-laser-face
August 1, 2015
– Shelved as:
pleasantly-surprised
August 1, 2015
– Shelved as:
laugh-out-loud-humor
August 1, 2015
– Shelved as:
hate-the-characters-hate-the-book
August 1, 2015
– Shelved as:
great-but-not-quite-there-yet
August 1, 2015
– Shelved as:
he-s-so-bad-but-he-does-it-so-well
August 2, 2015
–
Finished Reading
Comments Showing 1-15 of 15 (15 new)
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message 1:
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Sakina
(new)
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rated it 4 stars
Aug 03, 2015 08:04PM
Hilarious review Natalie!!! All points were spot on whether by Cynical Or Nice Natalie. Amazing debate skills they both have. I enjoyed reading your review, it was amazing!
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Sakina wrote: "Hilarious review Natalie!!! All points were spot on whether by Cynical Or Nice Natalie. Amazing debate skills they both have. I enjoyed reading your review, it was amazing!"Thanks! ^^
Worse than Greg from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid? Lol? Haha, great review, Natalie. Cynical is still winning my heart. Sorry, Nice one.
Great review
Vane wrote: "Worse than Greg from the Diary of a Wimpy Kid? Lol? Haha, great review, Natalie. Cynical is still winning my heart. Sorry, Nice one."I love Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but Greg is awful. And Cynical Natalie is preening hahaha.
Pisey wrote: "You know why I am here *smirk*"WELCOME, OLD CHUM!
message 7:
by
♫✯Em loves Hollenstein✯♫❤the summertime and butterflies all belong to your creation❤
(new)
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rated it 5 stars
love the review :) this is the one book i'm able to say is my favourite.
message 8:
by
♫✯Em loves Hollenstein✯♫❤the summertime and butterflies all belong to your creation❤
(new)
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rated it 5 stars
and don't worry, the movie isn't too TFIOS. It is a tad more emotional than the book- just in one scene- but pretty close to the original anyway
♫✯Aria loves #PriceField✯♫❤Put on your war paint❤Only fools fall for you, only fools wrote: "and don't worry, the movie isn't too TFIOS. It is a tad more emotional than the book- just in one scene- but pretty close to the original anyway"It hasn't come out where I live yet. I'm definitely watching it!
I want to do a review inspired by this (which will be fully credited to you). Is that okay with you? It's fine if you don't approve, love these nice/cynical Natalie reviews no matter what.
Sarah wrote: "I want to do a review inspired by this (which will be fully credited to you). Is that okay with you? It's fine if you don't approve, love these nice/cynical Natalie reviews no matter what."Of course! I'm flattered. :D
The movie was written by the same author as the book, and since it's third person, it allows for a better view of all the characters involved - it actually allows you to see that Greg isn't quite as big of a jerk as he thinks he is, since the whole book is from his perspective. Also, they don't add a love story, which I was also worried about. If you liked the humor in the book, you'll like the movie.
Grace wrote: "The movie was written by the same author as the book, and since it's third person, it allows for a better view of all the characters involved - it actually allows you to see that Greg isn't quite a..."That's awesome. Definitely watching the movie.
Have you seen it yet Natalie ? Cause I saw it twice in a row and I loved it ! gotta read the book now :)
Noina wrote: "Have you seen it yet Natalie ? Cause I saw it twice in a row and I loved it ! gotta read the book now :)"Not yet! But I want to.
