Julie Taylor
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By: Bantam Books for Young Readers
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Subjects -> Children's Books -> General AAS
Subjects -> Teens -> Literature & Fiction -> Love & Romance
Subjects -> Teens -> Series -> Love Stories
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Fun for all 4 out of 5 stars.
7 of 12 people found this review helpful.
Speaking as a 27-year-old male, I found Julie Taylor's Falling For Ryan to be a fun-filled, well-crafted thrill ride through the girls' restrooms and overnight camping trips of the teen romance genre. The opening of this 30th installment in the Love Stories series puts the reader in the middle of the action, as the blond sixteen-year old heroine, Kylie, laments her just-that-minute loss to Ryan Barron in the Senior Class President election (by only 50 votes!) The excitement builds and the reader finds himself/herself perched on the cusp of a temporal transition: as one major event ends (the election and junior year, both of which signify months of significant trials and challenges) another (summer break and the upcoming 18-day Adventure Trails trip) is just beginning. The transitional-action dramatic structure is an especially apt metaphor to employ for a novel set in the teen years, a period of life (if I remember correctly) when girls and guys face transitions at every turn: from junior year to senior year, from senior year to college, and eventually, off in the distance, there lurks the supposedly final transition, post-matriculation, into young adults.
This ultimate transition, or right of passage, is represented in Falling For Ryan by Wes, the 28 year-old Adventure Trails guide and college graduate in Environmental Studies; a character whose "otherness," (determined by his advanced years) is spotlighted with Kylie's declaration: "he would be cute if he was 10 years younger." This is the character I suppose I should relate to, since I am 10 years senior to every other character in the book, but it is hard to say because none of the other males have been assigned personalities.
Rather, the teen men are presented as types--stock, one-trait characters for the teen women to interact with as a means to explore their thoughts and feelings and "crushes." This technique is similar to the stock gender development found in young men's literature, comic books and so forth, where the women are generally represented as beautiful objects to be rescued or fought over. Stock genderizing is a time-honored technique dating back to the dramatists of Shakespeare's period and before, and it is used to great effect in Falling For Ryan.
We learn, for instance, a lot about Kylie through the way she reacts to Ryan's perpetual smirk and constant tone of blustering sarcasm. In one instance she tells Ryan off, publicly, with the point-blank remark "With friends like you, who needs enemies." The speechless stare she receives from Ryan and the "oohs and aahs" emanating from the class are well deserved. Kylie is a witty and assertive young lady, and we can thank the author for setting up a stock foil like Ryan to demonstrate those qualities. The other men in the story are also stock types, from Dennis the chivalrous Texan and competitor for Kylie's affections, to Taylor, the freckled Brawny-paper-towel-lumberjack-looking guy. By bouncing her various comments and colorful personality against these men and witnessing their predictable answers, Kylie is able to show us just what she is capable of, which is quite a lot!
Yet it is to the author's credit that even with half the story's characters stock typed, she is still able to leave the door open for some rich and complex plot twists. Subtle hints, like Ryan's supposed interest in photography, his skill with making blueberry/banana pancakes, and even the "nice" note he writes in Kylie's yearbook way back in Chapter one, hint that just maybe the stock typed Ryan holds the promise to transform himself, much like in the ending of the classic Pinocchio tale, into the three-dimensional character that our assertive, sensitive, and utterly likeable heroine deserves. I won't give away the ending, but suffice it to say that Falling For Ryan is as aptly titled as it is beautifully constructed.
Editorial Review:
Kylie Brennan is psyched that her boring sophomore year at Jefferson Memorial is finally over. She can't wait to go on her Adventure Trails trip, where she'll canoe, hike, pitch a tent, and be worlds away from obnoxious Ryan Baron, the smart aleck who lives to torture her.
But when Kylie arrives at the Adventure Trails' meeting point, her worst nightmare comes true--Ryan Baron is on her trip! Kylie would rather sit in chemistry class all summer than spend five weeks in very close quarters with Ryan. As the trip gets going, Kylie's surprised to see that Ryan isn't quite as irritating in these new surroundings. He's even sort of...cute. Could Kylie be falling for her worst enemy?
