#apalapuciansummer

Author: apalapuciansummer / Apalapucian

Pairings: James x Lily

Status: complete

Novella (three chapter)

Jayne, the lovely author of this fic, asked me for a review! I actually quite like novella-length fics, so I'm excited to see what this one has in store.

When we start out, Lily has a boyfriend. She's mentally comparing him to James Potter, and I really like the way she does it. It reminds me a lot of Taylor Swift's "The Way I Loved You." I'm a Taylor Swift fan, no judging. 

I really like this line in particular: 

She couldn't help but compare the way Terrence said "Lily"—reverent and barely audible—to the way he said "Evans"—frustrated and loud and confident and familiar...

Then, James is also with someone, and the author nicely sets up a parallel between the two couples. James is also with someone who seems perfect for him, but something just isn't right--she isn't Lily. I really love when authors write parallels like this and they're done right, as this one is!

In the next chapter, Lily is thinking about her relationship with Snape (or, lack thereof now). The author compares her relationship with Snape to her relationship with this Terrance guy, which does actually get a little confusing. It doesn't quite work the way I think the author intends it to. I know that the author needs to bring her relationship in with Snape somehow because it's important to the story, but the intro just doesn't work for me. However, I really like the way the author describes Snape and Lily's relationship and how it changed. That's definitely done well. It just seems a bit off topic with the James and Lily aspect of the story. 

I want to highlight this particular description because it's really quite beautiful:

Sev was no longer that kid from Spinner's End. He was no longer Severus Snape, her best mate, the dreamer from the neighborhood who would lie beside her in the summer-kissed grass, staring at the night skies and talking about magic and wonder and Hogwarts.

The whole rest of the paragraph is just a really nice description overall. 

We are also getting more of the idea in this chapter that Lily had actually been with James (as an official couple) but now they aren't together. She's lost him. The author has a really quite interesting take on why they broke up--an incident with Snape and the Death Eaters. Really quite creative and interesting. 

I quite like this approach. Many fics have them hating each other/fighting/blah blah and then BAM they're in love. Forever. Wonderful. Yay. In this fic, the timeline is a bit more complex. That's a nice change. 

I also really like the author alluding to the fact that Lily Evans has a need to always fix things and save people, and it often makes things worse. I got this pang when I read it like "AHH SO DID HARRY!" and it reminds you that James and Lily were Harry's parents and that he inherited a lot of their qualities. FEELS. 

It gets a bit angsty in chapter 2, but in a good way. It's a really heart-wrenching scene and I can see that this author is a really good writer. Then the scene from the past that it jumps to just BREAKS YOUR HEART and wow so many feels. 

I also really like that James is kind of a jerk a little bit. Like, it's not just him chasing Lily and she's being stubborn and he's this perfect romantic guy who says all the right things to her. It's her doing something stupid and him saying something stupid and then him saying some upsetting things to her. It doesn't romanticize him too much, which I realize happens a LOT in Jily fics. So that's well done. 

The only real main issue I have with this fic is some muddled tense issues. The chapter jumps around from past to present, and it can be quite hard to distinguish one from the other at certain points. I would have appreciated the flow of the fic much better if the tenses had been consistent. That's quite easily fixable with the help of a good beta, though! The grammar and wording overall is quite good and engaging.