Review: Mad Love by Suzanne Selfors

Writing her own love story could drive a girl insane! 


When you’re the daughter of the bestselling Queen of Romance, life should be pretty good. But 16-year-old Alice Amorous has been living a lie ever since her mother was secretly hospitalized for mental illness. After putting on a brave front for months, time is running out. The next book is overdue, and the Queen can’t write it. Alice needs a story for her mother—and she needs one fast. That’s when she meets Errol, a strange boy who claims to be Cupid, who insists that Alice write about the greatest love story in history: his tragic relationship with Psyche. As Alice begins to hear Errol’s voice in her head and see things she can’t explain, she must face the truth—that she’s either inherited her mother’s madness, or Errol is for real.

If i had to sum up this book in one word, it would be FUN. The book is sort of magical realism, real characters, magical element. It's completely different to every other magical book out there because it's magic in the real world, not magic in a new world or a parallel world like in urban fantasy, as well as this, the main characters doesn't have any powers or anything, which is good.

This book is really cute, I knew it would be from the front cover because it's pink and love hearty and that just screams CUTE! at me. I mean, a daughter of a romance writer meets Cupid? that's just adorable! I just loved the cute aspect, it's the type of book you can just sit down with any time because it doesn't really take a lot of preparing for like a lot of 'dark' young adult and teen books out there anymore, I mean, it's the type of book I could give to a thirteen year old and not have to worry about being shouted at by her mum. That's not to say that this book is happy! happy! happy! because there are some sad aspects which I won't get too deep into now, but compared to the majority of books for this age group out it's very, very tame.

So yeah, I'm doing squeeing over how cute this book is, I should do some real reviewing right? Okay, the characters were great, Selfor's doesn't go too deep with the characterisation and the book is very much a show and don't tell book, as in Selfor's gives us information through actions rather than paragraph after paragraph of explanation and this means that we get all the information we need without having to hear loads and loads about Alice's looks or her Mom's illness but you still don't feel like there is any information missing. 

There is a wide range of characters from our 'main' characters Alice and Errol, to the background but still important characters, tony, Mrs Bobot, The Reverand and Archibald are all amazing characters. The character of Alice is lovely, we see her thoughts, which are quite often humorous and because she is just a normal teenage girl it's easy to relate to her which I suppose is always a good thing. Errol is like the typical angsty YA boy toned down, he has issues, and he has a past but can still be funny and lovely and likeable and I really liked Errol. Tony was adorable, I keep using that word! But yeah, Tony...EEEEEE!! He is just the cutest boy ever, extremely likeable, totally sweet and the perfect match for Alice! Then, there is Alice's tenants, Mrs Bobot, the mother hen with a  big crush on the Reverand, Archibald, the reverand's gay roomate, Realm, Mrs Bobot's emo granddaughter all supply laughs and gasps to the book and these keep the book as cute as it is!

There is a really sweet love story there as well, despite the main plot being Errol and his story there is also Alice's budding romance with Tony, the new guy in town which is developed perrrrrfectly! We see the crush stage, the nervous stage, the awkward stage and all of it is just sweet! It develops just like a real life crush that any teenage girl can relate to!

If I had any issues with this story it was the pacing, I never wanted to put it down, but it did have some slow points, the beginning half of the book is sort of still establishing whats going on and most of the events don't actually happen until the second half which may make it difficult for some readers to get into, I also think that the love story should have been developed more. Some readers may have liked Tony popping up at some points but I think that for a book about the true meaning of love,w e should have seen Tony more! (Plus I love Tony!).

I think this book is suitable for readers of any age and because of this the content may not be interesting  for older readers, however I personally very much enjoyed this book. Despite this book being cute, it touches on some powerful issues and has a very strong meaning which is executed almost flawlessly!

Overall rating: A-

Stand alone/series: Stand alone

Released: June 13th 2011 (Paperback)

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 336

Book obtained via: Bloomsbury, for review purposes