February 23, 2017

Piper Perish - Kayla Cagan

Title: Piper Perish
Author: Kayla Cagan
Pages: 416
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Source: Netgalley
Goodreads rating: DNF
About: Now is the time for fearlessness.

Piper Perish inhales air and exhales art. The sooner she and her best friends can get out of Houston and get to New York City, the better. Art school has been Piper’s dream her whole life, and now that senior year is halfway over, she’s never felt more ready. But in the final months before graduation, things are weird with her friends and stressful with three different guys, and Piper’s sister’s tyrannical mental state seems to thwart every attempt at happiness for the close-knit Perish family. Piper’s art just might be enough to get her out. But is she brave enough to seize that power, even if it means giving up what she’s always known?


Brutal honesty time: I DNF-ed this book.  I've never done that for a book on this blog before.  I just...I don't know, I cut down my Goodreads goal to 80 books this year (which I said I would NEVER do).  I'm just so tired of scrambling to hit 100 at the end of every year.  It's not doing anything to help my reading.  So I'm also trying to get better at letting go of books that don't do anything for me.


You tell 'em Emily.  

But I do want to share my feelings about the book because I read the first 100 pages, so here we go.

First of all, I liked that there was art included in the book.  It makes sense, Piper is an artist (and a great one, according to her teachers) and it was nice that it was included on the page so we get a feel for her as an artist.  I'd be curious to see it in the finished copy because on my 1st edition Nook (I'm a dinosaur, I know) it was in black & white.

- - - Spoilers ahead - - -

The biggest stumbling block I had with Piper Perish is that Piper is written as if she is very young.  She is supposed to be a senior in high school.  You know, ready to leave her Texas roots for New York City, to go to art school and start living her pretentious fantasy life she's been dreaming of all these years.  But she reads like a 13 year old.  She's brattily freaking out all the time.  First about her boyfriend, who's just broken up with her for another boy.  Which very quickly becomes her wondering if she turned him gay, if she had dressed differently, etc. etc.  Is it just me or does it feel like we should be past that (like it's a storyline from a 90s sitcom, not a 2017 book)?  Then about her older sister, who is about to take some time off of college and move home because she's pregnant.  And literally all Piper cares about is that now she can't turn her sister's room into her art studio.  Insensitive much?

The other big problem I had was Piper's obsession with Andy Warhol.  I get being obsessed with things, trust me, I do.  But this was so over the top annoying.  Like constantly being like what would Andy think?  Quoting him all the time, dressing like him, dreaming about him, only going to the dance because they could pretend it was like being at the Silver Factory.  It was really pretentious and annoying and I couldn't get past it.  

I'm sure some people will love this one, but it just wasn't for me.  The characters, especially Piper, were too annoying for me to power through 400+ pages.  If you like quirkycharacters or are really into art, maybe give Piper Perish a shot.

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