Read the Book First!

 Over the weekend I saw the movie I Am Number Four. It came out back in 2011 but I couldn't be bothered to go see it. Now that I finally got around to it, I have to admit that it was a decent movie. It starred Alex Pettyfer (John Smith), Timothy Olyphant (Henri), and Teresa Palmer (Number 6). The soundtrack was pretty by Trevor Rabin.

Okay, now I could go on talking about the movie, but this is supposed to be a book blog. So I guess I better talk about the book now.

After seeing the movie, I decided to read the book. I know you're supposed to read the book first, but I didn't think it would make much of a difference. Boy was I wrong.

I liked the book. It was a bit long but I didn't mind. I was easily caught up in the story and read it cover to cover in a little over a day. One thing I noticed as I read was the more I liked the book, the less I liked the movie. In the book, John and Henri are really close friends and they both have all of these dreams about Lorien. In the movie, there was little to no background at all on Lorien. You'd think that considering it was the planet that the main character came from that it would be mentioned but nope. I guess the directors didn't get the memo.
Also in the movie, Henri and John weren't as close as they seemed to be in the book. A great example of their friendship is on page 202 where it says, "I periodically check my phone. I send a text message to Henri at noon. He doesn't reply. I eat lunch and feed Bernie, and then I send another. No reply. A nervous, unsettling feeling creeps in. Henri has never failed to text back immediately" (Lore 202). In the movie we don't really see that level of friendship.

One of the best parts of reading the book is getting to picture the characters in your head. I saw the movie first (in case you didn't know that by now) so that was kinda taken away. While reading, I pictured John to be a lot smaller, younger looking, and wayyyy less popular than he was portrayed in the movie. He is supposed to be a sophomore in high school but in the movie he looked more like a sophomore in college. One character that I loved in both the book and the movie was John's dog, Bernie Kosar. The fact that John had a dog made the book easier to relate to. As for the movie, well, who doesn't love an adorable dog loyally following the main character around?

I would highly recommend this book to my friends. I would recommend the movie too. Just make sure that you read the book first.good, composed