Love, Creekwood: A Simonverse Novella – Simon and Friends Navigate Friendship and First Love Through Emails

If "Simon vs. The Homosapiens Agenda" moved you in any way, "Love Creekwood" is a great follow on. Practically epic. Be warned, there are some very significant spoilers for "Leah On The Downbeat" if you have a yen to read that novel as well. Becky Albertalli definitely has a way of peering into the mind of a young adult that is almost psychic - or at least I want to think that way because I'm anything but a young adult. But who can forget their teenage/early twenties angst? My only crit of the book is that there's a bit much in the way of repetition of some of the dialogue and lovey-dovey goo. But then again, these are all emails and emails between lovers and exceptionally close friends. We have to have some tangible indication of the feelings because the emails are the only lens into their thoughts. I won't give it away, but I stuck with the book until the end. There are a few key hints and very neat concepts shared along the way - deep insights and cool analogies and near tragic mistakes. But if you ended up loving the Spier-Greenfeld bandwagon by the end of SVTHA, you don't come away from "Love Creekwood" feeling any differently. And there's a lot to think about here from Ms. Albertalli - what's said, and what's not said. Becky, as she prefers to be called, rawks! (She can write a great FAQ too - on her website). These characters are engaging and you end up wanting to know that they lived happily ever after. It's a pity that real life ain't that way, but when we get to enjoy fun stories like Becky Albertalli's, it becomes a welcome diversion from reality. And if you're paying attention, you can make your reality a better place to be too.

You simply must read the first book, Simon and the Homo Sapiens Agenda and it will help greatly to read the second book, Leah on the Offbeat, before you read this. It landed on my Kindle a few minutes past midnight and I began immediately and finished it in less than a day. Becky knows her way around a story and once you have gotten to know these characters, you are immersed into their universe (or as it is named the Simonverse). Through a series of emails, we follow Simon and Bram and Abby and Leah through their first year of college. We get to "watch" them fall even more deeply in love even though Simon and Bram are 117-1/2 miles apart. The writing is emotional but everything is so genuine with these characters. I love the film Love, Simon but I truly love the two novels and now the novella even better. Even though I am much older than the characters, it was incredibly validating to me. Prepare to laugh, most certainly cry, but even more, to fall more deeply in love with these extraordinary characters. I reread Simon and the Homo Sapiens Agenda often. It is hard to find anything else where the exposition of the romance is better written. That said, and only on the basis of one read, this novella takes that already exquisite romantic writing and takes it to a much higher level.

I would love to give this book five stars, but I think my big problem with the book is that I don’t think it became interesting until about half way through. It took me a while to get used to the e-mail formats but when I did finally get used to it I felt like the storyline kind of just ended. I would have loved to see some more e-mails or to have seen a little more of the storyline. I imagine the author ended the book the way she did to leave open the possibility for a follow up. If you are a fan of the Simonverse I think you will enjoy this. It is a quick read and just be aware that the whole book is a collection of e-mails between the characters so at first it is a little confusing to keep track of whose e-mail you are reading but Becky does a good job of changing the tone for each character. You quickly become aware of each person’s different writing style and the general tone of their e-mails. Again, my biggest criticism is that it was just so short and I wanted more at the end or perhaps to have even seen more e-mails between the characters.

I loved having this book to finish up the Simonverse. It was beautiful, and parts really tore at my heart. I was in a long distance relationship with my boyfriend for 3 years (we met in highschool, and we started dating after I moved away). Some of the emails Simon and Bram sent to each other made me tear up because I remember how it felt to be apart from someone that your heart belonged to. This was so amazing ❤️

A few short months after Leah on the Offbeat and a year after Simon vs. the Homosapiens our favorite characters are off to college. Some, like Simon and Blue, are in different states, and some, like Leah and Abby, are at the same school, and even the same dorm room. Navigating a relationship is hard enough, but navigating a long-distance one brings a whole new set of difficulties. It was really strange seeing a book set all in email when we don't really use email for regular communication anymore. We have phones, smartphones even, and texting is still the more common go-to for communication. Regardless jumping back into the Simonverse was a lot of fun with this set of characters and it was nice to have a follow-up on them. It's a great book if you want to immerse yourself back into the world, but otherwise, there's not a lot to the story.

I couldn’t have asked for more! This was everything and then some than I even knew I was looking for. I have read, reread and reread/listened to, more times than I could count, then watched, watched and watched in to infinity the film and subsequent spinoff series. Now, all this time later, this was on sale for $1.99, I grabbed it and read it from start to finish the rest of the day… 💞💞💞‼️

Have read this book previously, got it out of my local library and enjoyed it. So I had to buy it.

Ik vond het een minder leuk boek dan andere van deze auteur. Het hele boek was geschreven als emails.

Hauptsächlich hat man Spaß daran, die Charaktere wiederzutreffen und ihre Interaktionen zu beobachten - und wie immer sind alle absolut in character und unglaublich liebenswürdig! Ich persönlich habe fast die ganze Zeit gegrinst während des Lesens! Generell würde ich sagen: Wenn man weiß, dass man keine vollwertige Geschichte, sondern eher eine schöne, kurzweilige Lesezeit und ein Wiedersehen mit Lieblingscharakteren zu erwarten hat, macht es Spaß.

Llegó antes del día marcado y en muy buen estado. En cuanto al libro si ya has leído las novelas anteriores de Simon y Leah es probable que esta te guste igual. A diferencia de las otras, esta está narrada a través de puros correos durante el primer años de universidad de los personajes. En lo personal no fui muy fan de que fueran solo correos electrónicos, pero aún así lo disfruté, disfruté leer nuevamente a Simon y todo lo relacionado con él. El libro está en Inglés muy sencillo de leer.

Amazing and quick read! Thank you Becky Albertalli for creating this book and continuing the lives of my favourite characters ever!