Again, But Better

“What about lamppost?” I propose. “It’s innocent, catchy.”
“Lamppost?”
“Yeah, as in, lamppost will be our always.”

Rating

Review

So, Jaye and I had the unique opportunity to read an ARC of Again, But Better by Christine Riccio, more commonly known to the blogging community as PolandBananasBOOKS or Xtinemay. When her book deal was announced last year, both of us were cautiously optimistic. We’d been burned by another Booktube book and while we knew Christine was a different person, we didn’t know how much the book would be affected by Christine’s popularity. I think it’s an important preface to this review (which will contain mild spoilers so there is your warning) that there are complications that can come from a book being published by someone with a following. There are going to be doubts cast as to whether the publisher saw it as easy money and simply didn’t devote as much resources to something they knew would sell. Christine has been making writing videos about this book since 2016, however, and so we went into this knowing that on Christine’s end, at least, a lot of work had been done.

Unfortunately that work didn’t result in a book we loved, and so we’re going to have a conversation review about what didn’t work for us. Enjoy!

-Janel

: My issue is, the writing is pretty bad if I can say that in the nicest way possible. It's really cringey, super awkward, and immature. In no way do these characters seem college aged (or mid 20s later on in the book). The pacing is also off and entire events were summed up in a few paragraphs sometimes via journal entries and sometimes even not. Most of the book was just Shane going on trips every weekend to different countries, taking selfies, and making idle banter to the love interest and her roommates. Repeat repeat. I'm pretty sure this book was also supposed to be funny and cute but I didn't laugh or smile a single time. Even parts that were supposed to be emotional just fell flat because the author didn't know how to do it realistically. And ALL of the dialogue in this book was so weird and no one speaks like this, anywhere.

: Exactly! The plot is something that, as soon as I could understand where it was going, became so irritating to me that I couldn't stop putting the book down to spam send you question marks as we kept reading. When a contemporary book decides to throw magic into it without explanation and the major prelude to it is a strange British woman showing up constantly, I would hope that, eventually, there would be some reason for WHY Shane, WHY this kind of magic, WHY these rules at all - but it's handled so sloppily that I'm just left to accept that we're in a Jennifer Garner movie halfway through. Having the "spirit guide" just fuck off every time a question is raised isn't good storytelling and only left me more flabbergasted as to why the plot was so messy.

God and the DIALOGUE - I’m not going to quote from the ARC of course but there’s a REASON most writing classes tell writers to read their dialogue aloud. I tried with a few bits and it sounded so horrible that I couldn’t help but snicker.

:The characters weren't fleshed out, besides maybe Shane. And the only reason Shane was fleshed out was because she was exactly Christine herself. Shane was also super clumsy and she flailed, flopped, and floundered too much. It honestly didn't seem like Christine tried to make a character at all, instead just insert herself in the story. Everything Shane likes whether it is music, tv shows, books, and even clothes is Christine. There are so many references to Cassandra Clare's books and Harry Potter was mentioned even more. Don't get me started on how many times The Beatles were name-dropped while they are living in London and acting like clueless Americans. Half of the book was bad pop culture references of Christine's real life favorites and I cringed every single time.

: Right? I think one of the most disappointing aspects of Again, But Better, for me, is how uninspired the character of Shane feels to me as a reader who has watched Christine's videos. Perhaps to a reader that hasn't subscribed to PolandBananasBOOKS, Shane will come off differently, but when I was reading, the similarities between Shane and Christine made this book feel semi autobiographical. From her favorite Starbucks order to her interests and favorite television show, Shane WAS Christine, and that's not something that works for me. Being inspired by your life is one thing, but when I can't separate fiction from the author, it becomes uncomfortable.You’re right with the Harry Potter and Clare references too - I felt at some point that Cassandra must have paid her to namedrop City of Glass so much.

:Honestly it's hard to imagine someone with no knowledge of Christine's quirkiness actually liking this. It feels like you have to absolutely love her personality to ever like this character and her shenanigans.

: You could be right - maybe the Xtine fandom will help this book stay successful, but we’ll need to wait till the book is out and test it on some unsuspecting people who have never watched her. ;)

: Also, Shane has multiple roommates and they all have strange names, and they are all kind of interchangeable. Sure they were different kinds of diverse but without them ever feeling real, it doesn’t matter. You don’t get extra points for having a side gay character when they are background scenery. Meanwhile her love interest is named Pilot Penn and she decides she wants to call him Pies. The romance was also super lackluster, insta-lovey and didn't even make any sense. Plus he had a girlfriend for most of it while still flirting and even kissing Shane. A few times they just stopped talking for months while pretty much living together and that was really weird too.

: For me, the biggest issue that sticks out to me, cast-wise is the use of disposable side characters that maintain no dimensions and are around merely for plot reasons. This happens constantly, and two of the characters are significant others that exist to be either boring or rude before getting cheated on. Which is another big NOPE for me. You know why it's so hard for a story like this to humanize the girlfriend that the main character "competes" with? Because if they're layered and fleshed out, it becomes impossible to hide how shitty the protagonist and her "dreamy" boy are being.

Her parents have one mood in this and even when they “change” at the end, we as the reader don’t see it, we get a summary from a blogger who gives us JUST the weirdest amount of information for the epilogue. This comes back to what Jaye said about the journal entries - any moments where we would see development, progression, really anything that wasn’t cringy dialogue or Shanetine being quirky - was sent off to the journal entries or the blogger’s epilogue to avoid actually presenting it in the narrative. It was a strange choice to include the blogs in this story, since the narrative point of them could have been explained in a way that didn’t lead to this much reliance on the protagonist telling us the point of the plot away from the timeline. Their biggest contribution to the plot involves our Mean Girl is Mean character and that was super unnecessary, so it all ended up feeling dumb and lazy.

: The ending was also super obnoxious and very wish-fulfillment as well but alas. If you are a super fan of Christine, I'm sure you'll love it. Sadly I value better writing, better characters, and a better plot over youtube videos. A big miss for me but congrats to her for getting published, really.

: Yeah, I hope there are people that love it but for me…. Hard pass.

: We did try to enjoy it, rip.