A Little Something Different - Sandy Hall

A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall
Published by Swoon Reads on August 26, 2014 
Pages: 272
Genres: Romance, Contemporary, New Adult
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased

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The creative writing teacher, the delivery guy, the local Starbucks baristas, his best friend, her roommate, and the squirrel in the park all have one thing in common—they believe that Gabe and Lea should get together. Lea and Gabe are in the same creative writing class. They get the same pop culture references, order the same Chinese food, and hang out in the same places. Unfortunately, Lea is reserved, Gabe has issues, and despite their initial mutual crush, it looks like they are never going to work things out. But somehow even when nothing is going on, something is happening between them, and everyone can see it. Their creative writing teacher pushes them together. The baristas at Starbucks watch their relationship like a TV show. Their bus driver tells his wife about them. The waitress at the diner automatically seats them together. Even the squirrel who lives on the college green believes in their relationship.

Surely Gabe and Lea will figure out that they are meant to be together....

This book came to me at the exactly right time, I was in the need for a very light after finishing a very... Not wrecking, but very emotional book (The Start of Me and You, which the review will be coming in the end of march), so I needed fluffy, I needed to have a brain candy kind of read you know. And this book delivered exactly it.

The plot of this book is literally find out if Gabe and Lea will get together. And that's it. Since it's never told from the perspective of the two main characters we don't really have the layers (family, difficulties with college, friends, insecurities) so on spot as it usually is with contemporary books, this did took a little of my affection towards the book because we did get to know Lea and Gabe, but it was like... You know when you hear a lot of stories about someone, like a friend of a friend of yours but that you never actually meet but you do have a mental picture of their personality but still you never meet them. That's how I felt about these two, it was a fun and different way to write a novel and I'm glad Sandy took the risk and I liked it, but it lacked a more deep emotional connection.

Also about the way this story was told, we have 14 different POV's and, as usual when a book there is a lot of POV's, some I liked, some I loved, some I just didn't know why they were there. I liked almost all of the POV's, they are very unique I never had to come back and see who was on that chapter (section? it was divided by month not by chapter, but maybe the months are the chapters? that had a lot of different POV stitching during it? Ugh) but there was some that I just didn't really felt like they were relevante to the plot and character/couple development at all. One thing that was strange to me was that, despite I always knowing which POV, I still confused the "I" and thought it was Gabe thinking (or Lea on feminine POV's, but it happened more with Gabe) and I had to remember that Gabe was the "he" not the "I" on the story, it was just because of the unusualness of the way this story was told but yeah, it took a while to get used to.

Another thing that was really strange was the way people described Gabe and Lea, but specially Gabe, like when they are describing him they would use the word "cute" a lot, and when I mean a lot, I mean A LOT REALLY. Every single person thinks he's is the cutest puppy on the world, and he isn't even a puppy! It was kind of weird after sometime (I mean does people really describe other people as cute?).

But thumbs up for the diversity on this book and for making it low key (the diversity, and not announce as a diverse book). And also the squirrel, so much love for the squirrel, it was so saaaaaaaaad on the winter when he was hungry, and skinny and really let's just all feed the squirrels on winter. This really wasn't a bad book, I'm feeling like this a much more negative review but really, I was smiling the whole way while reading it, it was sweet and fun and cute and adorable and perfect for romance fans or someone on the need for a brain candy.