Jeanne Ryan Review

Charisma and Nerve double review.

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Ok if any of you have seen the film Nerve, its on Netflix, so you should’ve and if you haven’t still? Why not? It was on my ‘Must watch list’.


Anyways, the film version of Nerve is dramatic and nail biting with Dave Franco and Emma Roberts taking control of the lead roles, Ian and Vee.


The book version of Nerve. Well, to be nice, its completely different. Although they play the same game and same sort of rules, the book is so much more casual in its dares.


Because Nerve is like a game of truth or dare without the truth part.


For every dare you complete you receive a price, whether its money or a pair of shoes, it depends on what they picked up on you.


The book version of Nerve is a wreck, with Vee being a shy person who never really breaks from that, but doesn’t seem to want to try despite playing the game.

Unlike the filmm, she starts playing for stupid reasons and carries on.


The book believes it has a dramatic end, but its way too drawn out and just boring since the main character, Vee, is such a bore. 


In the film Ian has a mysterious backstory that we hear about slightly but never really hear the full version. 


In the book Ian is as much as a bore as Vee, with zero backstory and no mystery at all.


Another main difference between the book and the film is that in the book the game nerve had only started up a month before hand and is based around America which is unrealistic since America is so vast that it would be difficult to track all the people taking part in nerve including the watchers to see what they want and need to be pushed to do something thats out of their comfort zone, whereas in the film Nerve has been going for quite some time and people’s identities are stolen by Nerve if they do something Nerve finds is against them.

It shocks me how the people who made the film brought something so awful into such a new light that it instantly becomes one of your favourite films.


Charisma is a different story.


If I thought Nerve was badly written it has nothing on charisma.


With the main Character, Aislyn, being an unsociable person. This isn’t the part that irritates me, i know what its like to be in those shoes. 


But Aislyn cries constantly, or is constantly upset or moody, and wonders why no-one wants to talk to her.


The books starts slow and is hard to get into if you aren’t in a similar position as the main character herself. 


She is a fatherless child, as her mam was widowed when her brother was young, and her brother has a illness that affects his lungs. Making Aislyn care for him sometimes when their mam is at work.


Aislyn gets given a pill by a doctor at her brothers ‘hospital’ and ultimately becomes more sociable and outgoing. 


This is where it become annoying and a chore to read.


Aislyn was becoming another person, but she didn’t care? She didn’t mind losing her friend to have a boy like her back or to become a sensation. She didn’t mind that she was pushing her mother and brother away to become this ‘new’ person. 


I stopped reading Charisma when Aislyn fainted- presumably because of the drug she had taken.


But the most extra thing about it is her mother took her, Aislyn, to the hospital after she fainted, and she only fainted for like a second?


Ryan wants me to believe that a mother struggling to pay for her terminally sick young boys health where she has to work two jobs and has to get her daughter a job too so they can make ends meet willingly takes her daughter to a hospital, in America! To get her daughter tested.


Not to mention they tested for a lot of things, including her bloods and urine. Like, I’m no expert, since I don’t live in America but I’m sure that would cost a lot. 


People faint all the time and they don’t have that many tests put on them, they don’t even go to hospital. 

THRILL-