In Girl on the Ferris Wheel, Julie Halpern and Len Vlahos expertly tackle this quirky and poignant romance that explores what first love really means–and how it sometimes hurts like hell. Tenth graders Eliana and Dmitri could not be more different. He’s an outgoing, self-confident drummer in a punk band called Unexpected Turbulence. Eliana is introspective and thoughtful, and a movie buff who … and thoughtful, and a movie buff who is living with depression.
Dmitri quite literally falls for Eliana when he sees her in gym class and slams into a classmate. The pair then navigate the ins and outs of first love. Exciting, scary, unexpected, and so much more difficult than they ever imagined. They say opposites attract, but they soon realize that there is so much they just don’t understand about each other. It begs the question: How long can first love possibly last when you’re so different?
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I like reading about rockstar romances, usually the one I read are the New Adult (NA) and Adult ones. So seeing there’s a Young Adult (YA) rockstar romance book is refreshing to me. I was wondering how the rockstar element will be written, handled and portrayed in a YA book. Let’s just say that I was impressed with how the authors are using the rockstar element in this book.
There was a few heavy topics that are being discussed in this book: anxiety, depression, and suicide. I wasn’t surprised at all since many YA books (especially contemporaries) tend to have these subjects in the story. I actually really enjoyed reading about it, it makes the characters easy to understand when they are down, angry, sad etc.
This book also touched on a few subjects regarding the culture and tradition of the Greeks and the Jews. Dmitri the male lead is a Greek, and Eliana the female lead is a Jew. There are a few parts that showed the differences between the Jews and the Greeks when they are celebrating Christmas, and also how both are handling the death of a family member according to their own tradition.
It was really rare to see a book exploring these things in more depth and showing an actual scene for it. Usually, it was either briefly mentioned or shortly explained by the characters in most books. I’m glad this book handled it differently. It gave the readers a lot more insight and additional informations regarding the characters too.
This book is about Dmitri and Eliana, their relationship, and the problems they are facing in their respective lives (Dmitri with his band, Eliana with her depression). It also showed how they fall in love with each other, the ups and downs of their relationship, and the heartbreak that comes from it. They are each others first love, and the heartbreak after their relationship fell apart was unbearable. It made me feel emotional and sad, it hurts to watch these two precious characters went through it.
All things regarding her mental struggle aside, Eliana is actually a very likable character. She was pretty intelligent, had a good sense of humor, quick in understanding stuff, and is a good sister and a good friend. She has a great personality, and an amazing attitude. When she wasn’t struggling with her mental health, she became a very confident young woman and I really loved seeing that side of her. The side that wasn’t afraid to take chances, and the side that wasn’t afraid to express her feelings. Overall, she is an incredibly amazing character and how she was written in the book was realistic especially with her inner struggles.
Dmitri on the other hand is a really great guy with many talents. He wasn’t just a bit shy and awkward but also confident and protective. I’ve never seen many male leads in most books have a shy and awkward sides, most are just confident all the way through. So to see Dmitri have all three was really refreshing which made him a lot more realistic than most male leads.
As for the romance, it was really cute and beautiful. I liked how Dmitri and Eliana are both so awkward at first but then when they started talking, they automatically felt comfortable around each other. I loved their relationship so much, it was the most purest thing to see in this book. They are meant to be together but obviously ups and downs always happened in any relationship to test whether the couple can face it or not. In the end, I’m happy they are back to how they were before. Not together as a couple but as friends, although I was hoping they would become a couple again. I get why the authors didn’t write it that way, after all both are still too young and Eliana have a lot of baggage and she just want to focus on making herself feel better. She didn’t deny that she still have feelings for Dmitri and vice versa. Both have things they needed to take care of on their own.
Overall, the story was enjoyable to read. It was both heartwarming and heartbreaking, but that was to be expected especially when it comes to first love and first heartbreak. This book was written stunningly, and I was really amazed by how everything went down in the story. Some things made me laugh, some made me sad but I really had a great experience reading the story of Dmitri and Eliana, and following their journey from the first moment they met until the moment they reunited. It was a beautiful experience, and pretty much sure I’m going to revisit their story in the near future.
I have to say this book did grab my attention at first as I thought the plot sounded like a good YA novel and I do love carnivals. Inside the pages were a different story as we meet two characters who are complete opposites except for the fact that they both love film. We have Dmitri who is a drummer in a band and is outgoing and then when have Eliana who is quiet and studious and only has one friend Janine whom we learn is like an Amazonian Goddess. Dmitri’s family is Greek which I loved as Greek families always present a closeness in books and Eliana’s dad is a stay-at-home dad after his video/DVD shop went out of business and now he spends most of his time down in the basement watching movies. I did struggle a bit with this book as I hated the character of Eliana as she had so much self-doubt in herself and it got to a point where it became too much as she couldn’t imagine someone like Dmitri liking her and it got to the point where I was like “freaking hell, wake up Eliana – can’t you see he is trying”. Girl on the Ferris Wheel is a coming-of-age story between two high school students who are trying to navigate family, life, high school, and hormones. This book also focuses on the fact that we don’t normally see as in lots that we read are opposites attracting and they live HEA but Girl on the Ferris Wheel shows the dark side of what happens when your opposites only get you so far in the relationship? What happens when you run out of things that both of you might enjoy or talk about? Can opposites live a HEA or are they just kidding themselves ?