Jessie Hearts NYC by Keris Stainton: Book review

Book title/ Author: Jessie Hearts NYC by Keris Stainton

Publisher/ Year: July 2011 Orchard Books

Genre: YA Contemporary

Series: Hearts series #1

Pages: 255

Rating: 3 stars out of 5

*This review may contain spoilers!*

Synopsis

Jessie's just arrived in New York, hoping to forget about her awful ex. New Yorker Finn is in love with his best friend's girlfriend. They might be perfect together, but in a city of eight million people, will they ever find each other?

My review

This book is perfect for lazy, hot days when you don't feel like reading anything that amazing, but it leaves you with a smile on your face.

I didn't have very high expectations for this book, and it turned out to be exactly what I assumed it would be: a cute, fluffy summer contemporary with not that much substance in it.

Now don't get me wrong, I liked the book. It's set in an amazing city (New York if you couldn't tell already), and filled with a relatable bunch of characters. It was also exactly what I needed at the moment, while the weather's nice for once in London and I had the time to sit down for a couple of hours and read a short book. It took me three short sittings to finish this book throughout the course of 2 days, which is pretty good for me, especially recently.

The chapters alternate between Jessie and Finn, the two main characters of the story. Jessie is an ordinary teen from Manchester, who has just finished her GCSE's. Finn is in the middle of uni, (college for you Americans), but isn't too happy with everything. A series of multiple events ensue and you are taken on this sweet journey through two teens' summer in New York City.

Out of the two, I actually really preferred Finn over Jessie, in terms of general personality and reading from their point of view, which was surprising as I naturally tend to enjoy reading from a female perspective. Although I liked Jessie, I found her to be quite naive sometimes, when it came to the whole Ben situation and for not realising that her mum did love her, and care about her, but she just isn't like normal mums.

Finn on the other hand, I had a lot of respect for. At the start of the book, you feel his struggle and him having to deal with working a job he hates and having to conform to being someone he's not to please other people. But as the story comes to a close, and things start to work out for him with Jessie, you see him become stronger and stand up to his dad.

Both Jessie and Finn have to deal with some unpleasant things during the course of the story and I really enjoyed seeing things finally working out for them, both family and relationship-wise.

One of my favourite parts of the book was the ending, and the whole feeling of all the pieces just finally fitting together.

A major reason why I am only giving this book 3 stars, despite liking it, is because I felt that Jessie had some character flaws that made me not enjoy the book as much as I could've done. Now I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but this is just my own opinion.

If you want a quick, light-hearted summer read, then I so recommend checking this book out!

Izzy