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Book Review: Almost Midnight by Rainbow Rowell and Simini Blocker

Book Review: Almost Midnight by Rainbow Rowell and illustrated by Simini Blocker


Quote: More like...skipping ahead. If you like someone, you should have to make an effort. You should have to get to know the person--you should have to work for the first kiss.


Almost Midnight is the story of Mags and Noel, it's a glimpse into their lives through that one day of the year, for the next four years. On every 31st of December Noel and Mags go Alicia's house for new year's eve party and every year Mags refuses to dance with Noel, and Noel always kisses different girls at midnight bell.
We see them through these snippets, Mags and Noel are thick as peanut butter sandwich, and Noel is allergic to nuts so Mags is his proxy food tester. The brownies and lasagnas he can't have, Mags eats them all for him. She is always on alert about the food he is gouging on. They have a close intimate circle of friends, Simini the shy, Pony the tall emo, Natalie, Frankie, Cornor the confused.
In hardly forty pages, Rainbow gives you two love stories, one that you want to happen badly and one that happens sweetly on the love seat, this is a coming of age story and a story of change as well. They all graduate, some move to universities far from home, Noel goes to Notre Dame, Mags stays in her hometown. Yet it's Noel who worries that Mags is forever changing like a kaleidoscope.
What I love about her stories has always been that subtle warning that your first love might not last, but it will always have an impact on you. So in this moment, you are living the very beginning of your life. Like in her blog Rainbow once wrote. seventeen-year-olds don't get happy endings they get new beginnings. At the end of the story, we don't know where Mags and Noel's relationship will go from that rooftop. Will they break up like Lincoln and Sam from Attachment, or stick it through like Neal and Georgie and have a life from Landline, or will they make it work like Levi and Cathy from Fangirl, or actually fight like Simon and Baz from Carry on?
The illustration by Simini Blocker are so adorable! It is the first book where I could identify a song, that's Noel and Mag's song from Twilight, A thousands years! The book also has a second story which I reviewed almost two years ago called Kindred Spirits, the illustration to that story too is goofy and cute.

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