More like a 3.5 star read. I thought this was a fun read and I loved the focus on friendship, especially long-distance friendships. I also loved the email/text format, which made the book a really quick read. My primary issue was that I didn't realize this book was a sequel until I started reading. I still enjoyed Ava and Gen very much, but I felt like I was missing some of their backstory, etc. Please Send Help is definitely readable without having read the first book, but I think I would have felt more of a connection with them if I had read it.

Upon first looking at this book; the title and what it was about, I was thinking it would’ve been more of a Mental Health’s contemporary kind of thing… which is not. I also wasn’t prepared for this book to be entirely written on the email & text-messaging format; which I do like however, as it make it easier and quicker to read.

However, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get myself to move on much onto the book.. even if I do kinda relate to the MCs as I did move out 3hours away from my bestfriend before attending High school; we did just that. Though in our time it wasn’t emails; but texts, MSN chatting (boy is that old..) and videochats – we even mailed each other a letter every month of all that we doodled while in class.

The book in itself was not a bad book, I would’ve been able to finish it.. and I do plan to come back to it, it’s not a throw-onto-the-dnf-not-to-be-seen-again case here; it’s just that i’m being a mood reader and what I really feel like reading at the moment isn’t that specifically ..

Ava and Gen, first introduced in Dunn and Raskin's I HATE EVERYONE BUT YOU have graduated from college and are trying to make it in the real world. Ava is an intern with a late night talk show in New York City and Gen is the newest reporter at a tiny local newspaper in Florida.

While the authors grapple with some interesting issues of adulthood, graduating from college, family financial stability and how it impacts the first choices we make out of college, and work relationships, this would not be a popular one with younger teens. It feels much more like New Adult than YA. The banter between the two characters is entertaining and the references are numerous and relevant, but neither Gen nor Ava is terribly likable, particularly if you haven't already read I HATE EVERYONE BUT YOU.

If you enjoyed "I Hate Everyone But You" then you'll enjoy this one too.

Here Ava and Gen are fresh out of college, entering the real world older and (a little bit) wiser than before. As this period of life is a little fresher to me than being a college freshman, I was able to relate to their struggles this go-round a little better. I continue to love the themes of female empowerment, queer issues, money issues, and of course friendship. Hope this series keeps going!

firstly I would like to say thank you to net galley fo approving my request of this book. very grateful

this book is a sequel to Gaby Dunn's and Alison Raskin's book I hate everyone but you, I really enjoyed that book and the format of the story that it is in, which The form of writing is in texts and emails back and forth between two friends who have been best friends since forever and they are called Ava and Genevieve. sadly for me this second book wasn't as good as the first book and I just wasn't really connecting to this story as much as the first book. for me at points throughout this book I just didn't like some of the things both of the characters were saying in some parts and I just wasn't really feeling the story aswell which is a shame because I was very excited to read this book .

in this story I just found the characters not likeable at all yes at points I did enjoy but most of the time they both just seemed to be really petty at points and even though they were both in college they both acted way younger in some aspects definitely in the romantic relationships they go through in this book, I definitely was more fond of Ava than Gen because I could understand Ava's issues but most of the time she just didn't listen to Get when she was given her advice aswell.

one part I did like is that even though this friendship is definitely not the best in many ways with how Ava and Gen treat each other I did like that in the end the friendship overided the romantic interests because there is nothing worse when the character has been friends with someone for so many years and then once a guy comes into there lives they ditch the friend, I'm so happy that that didn't happen and the friendship ruled in the end.

overall this book is a 3 stars it was a okay quick read that was a bit disappointing aswell.

In the second installment of this series, I continue to be impressed by how Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin manage to tackle some pretty serious, important content while still producing hilariously funny, lighthearted books.

I was initially made aware of these books after listening to Gaby give an interview on the Glowing Up podcast, immediately thinking, where can I find more from this fantastic woman? That led me to the Just Between Us podcast, hosted by Dunn with Raskin, who co-authors this series. The podcast is a bit up and down, but it pointed me toward these books, for which I’ll be forever grateful.

Gen and Ava’s story takes on a lot of heavy topics, but the tone mostly remains light. This book (like it’s predecessor) is also incredibly heartwarming without being sappy or precious.

Having learned a bit about the authors through their podcast and other media, it’s clear that Gen and Ava are autobiographical to an extent. Generally speaking, I tend to hate when authors put too much “me” into a book, but Dunn and Raskin have managed it flawlessly.

Here’s my only gripe: We jump from first semester of college in the first book all the way to post-graduation in the second book. Which means we could have had like 7 more of these in between. Allison and Gaby, I won’t be mad if you want to go back and fill in the details on what I’ll refer to in the mean time as “Gen and Ava: The Lost Years.”

I love these books. They are just so honest and refreshing and fun. The format (texts and emails) is appealing to reluctant readers, and although some of the subject matter (this one includes discussions regarding casual sex, STDs, and minor drug use) is much too mature for my middle school students, I know many high school students (and adults) that would enjoy Ava and Gen and the hi-jinks that fill their lives. They both have hilarious voices and senses-of-humor, and yet they are easy to tell apart while reading.

There are also some really timely topics addressed, as well: LGBTQ rights, gender equality and sexual harassment in the workplace, and class/economic status discrepancies. And though they are serious issues addressed in emotional ways, they don't take away from the light, fun tone of the novel.

I am SO hoping that there will be a third book featuring Ava and Gen--but I'm not sure what that would look like based on the ending of this one.

I didn't read the first one, so maybe that's why I didn't relate to the characters?
I did like the format, I like a switch up from time to time, but overall I struggled to finish.

Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Please Send Help by Gaby Dunn & Allison Raskin
Overview: Ava and Gen have been friends forever, and now they're long distance friendshiping (finally in the same time zone at least). In this story told through emails and texts, Ava and Gen offer each other moral support as they traverse the ups and downs of life at 22. Overall: 4

Characters: 4 Ava and Gen both have a lot going on in their lives, and they handle these situations with varying degrees of success. Ava is living in New York working at a late night show. Office politics take her anxiety to new heights, and she makes her fair share of mistakes. What I really liked about Ava, though, was that no matter how catastrophic the scenario was or how overdramatic she got, she was always able to put a new spin on the bad things in a way that was not peppy and sort of annoying but refreshingly realistic.
Gen, on the other hand, is a lot more out there. While Ava navigated a lot of more practical situations, Gen moves to Florida to work at a conservative newspaper that is nothing like her extroverted, bisexual self. In her attempts to make herself feel more at home, she bounces from outlandish activity to outlandish activity. I never really got to connect with her because her plot lines were so over exaggerated.
I also love that sprinkled in with the villains in their respective lives they both found great friends to help keep them grounded when a hug couldn't be sent via text.

Plot: 4 This book is wacky and out there, and that's something that took me a minute to get used to. Gen's plot feels like it bounces from fighting the newspaper to the bar to the cat she took in off the street without taking to the vet first. While the early twenties period of life seems to be marked by instability and mistakes, Gen's story seemed to be reduced to very little to play it up for laughs.
I really enjoyed Ava though. She's taking on the big city totally lost and full of anxiety. She navigates pitfalls and bumps in the road with some dramatics but also a centered core from office romance gone wrong to a bad boss to feeling isolated and out of place.
I do love how the story revolves around a really strong friendship that exists purely over the internet. I feel like a lot of friendships get invalidated if you can't see each other often, but technology really has allowed friendships to overcome distance and even make people closer.
Also, I've seen conflicting things about whether this is a standalone or a sequel (I've seen both), and I think reading the first book would offer a lot more context about their college time, but if you haven't read the first one yet (like me), you'll be totally fine.

Writing: 3.5 Firstly, I really loved the format. It fit with their comedic style very well and quickened the pace. I also like how comfortable the friendship feels. They have amazing chemistry, and I love how it's centered on them navigating their separate lives together instead of all about their tumultuous friendship. It's also great that they were able to address some serious issue without making the book sad. Ava embraces her life and learns to be more comfortable with herself. There's discussions of finances, alcoholism, STDs, and mental health in a way that's respectful of the gravity but not overwhelming.
My only negative note was that at the beginning, I found myself struggling with some of the sort of off comments that the characters say. There were some demeaning things about mental health and other topics that made me almost put the book down and decide it wasn't my thing. Luckily, as the book progressed, that issue seemed to disappear.
Finally, I do want to say that it excites me so much to see books with older characters stepping into the adult world for the first time. While I don't see 22 as YA (since it's become synonymous as teen), as this is being billed, I'm excited to see that Wednesday is making space in their line up for books with college/just out of college characters. Hopefully, if these stories do well, we'll see enough of them to finally build a category of its own.

I struggled to interpret an actual plot to this one other than the fact that it examines long distance relationships. I just don't think the format really worked for me. I found the characters t0 be stereotypical and the same old same old. Although, it does put some good themes out there to discuss such as homophobia in religion, coping with anxiety, LGBTQ+ homelessness, STIs, etc.

As I hated the first book, I Hate Everyone But You, I can say that I did enjoy this one a bit more. It has a more humoristic sense to it that I found okay. However, these books are really not for me and I would not recommend them to anyone. The emails and texts makes the two main characters really blend together, and it keeps me at a too much of a distance from the story. 2/5 stars.

Well, after trying this one two/three times and both ending somewhere stranded, I am sorry I am not going to read this one any further. It doesn't help that apparently this a book 2 in a series, I never once read the first one and I just cannot connect with the characters. It just feels like I missed all sorts of things (which I guess I really did). The format is nice, however it just didn't work for me in this book. Normally I am loving books that tell the story in a different way, for instance through mails.

I really enjoyed the first installment of this series, I Hate Everyone But You, and was curious to see how their stories would progress. It was nice connecting with Gen and Ava after college, but I was thrown a little seeing that they had graduated already given that the last book ended after their first semester.

I was hoping for some of the friendship testing elements I saw in book one, but this story mainly focused on their new adult lives. I was hoping to see more struggle between navigating adulthood and having time for friendship. Seeing Gen and Ava interacting through text and email was welcome, and fun, but this was a little more lighthearted than I was expecting after really enjoying the first book.

A great follow up to their first book, "I Hate Everyone But You." Following the same format as the previous novel, readers follow the ups and downs of Ava and Gen's relationship through emails and texts. This time, the girls are recent college graduates struggling to find their way as successful pre-adults, and readers follow them through self-sabotaging mistakes that the friends find difficult to sympathize with when things eventually blow up in their own faces. This thoughtful portrait of female friendship is a model on how to support your friends, how to apologize when you need to, and how to forgive each other, recognizing the incomparable value of a best friend.

The sequel Please Send Help is set a few years after the first book. They have both finished college and are finally in the same time zone again. Although still really far apart with Ava in New York and Gen in Florida. Gen has landed a position at a tiny paper in Florida and Ava is interning at a late night show.
This one was even funnier then the first book. Ava dates more inappropriate men and gets an STD. Gen decides she needs a pet so she takes in a feral cat, who she finds out is pregnant. Especially loved Gen trying to turn a straight girl and when she catfishes a coworker. If you're looking for a funny and quick read I'd recommend you pick up these books. Also hoping there will be a third book cause I love these characters so much.
I received this book free from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Sophie’s favorite book by far this month was Please Send Help by Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin. This book is the sequel to 2017’s I Hate Everyone But You (which Sophie hasn’t actually read) but the premise lured Sophie in without her realizing it was a follow-up. Luckily, you don’t need to have read the first book to fully enjoy this one.

Please Send Help follows best friends Ava and Gen who have recently finished college and are taking their first steps into the world of jobs, rent, awkward office romances and all the other fun things that come with adulthood. Ava has lucked into an unpaid internship at a popular late-night TV show in New York, while Gen has taken on a print journalism role in small-town Florida. Both are struggling. Ava worries she will fail to make the most of her opportunity of a lifetime, Gen that she will be stuck going nowhere in Hicksville – and both are making a series of questionable choices involving feral cats, homeless guys, and sex with the wrong people.

The book is told purely through emails and text message exchanges between Ava and Gen. Sophie read it in short bursts on her phone which felt like the perfect medium for a book told in this format. She quickly fell in love with both characters and constantly found herself screenshotting funny passages to send to her own long-distance BFF. In fact, the worst thing about Please Send Help for Sophie was that she often found herself thinking, “I should text this to Gen,” before quickly remembering that both girls are fictional! She loved that the relationship between the two friends hit ups and downs throughout the book, the inclusion of an unapologetic bisexual central character, and she often recognized relateable moments from her own friendships.

Sophie will absolutely be picking up I Hate Everyone But You and hopes this won’t be the last we hear from Ava and Gen.

I didn't read I Hate Everyone But You but hoped I'd be able to follow along anyway. The series follows Ava and Gen via correspondences over text and email. In the first book, they help each other survive the first semester of college, and in this second book, they help each other survive life post-grad. As someone who has no idea what's been going on in her life since graduation, I was especially interested in the second novel and dived straight into it instead of starting with the first book.

At first, I was entertained by the office drama and other updates Ava and Gen shared with each other, since I'm currently lacking that in my life, but after awhile, I couldn't help but feel that there was something disingenuous about the banter between these supposed best friends. Maybe this is where reading the first book would have come into play--to help me get a better sense of these characters.

I didn't feel that Ava or Gen had distinctive personalities, which is why I think that there were so many explanatory asides throughout their correspondences, which cheapened their relationship to me. Gen's only personality was being gay; it was as if she just discovered her sexuality and couldn't stop talking about how she was gay. All the 2019 references you could think of were thrown in, and they cracked jokes that I would have missed if not for the fact that they acknowledged and explained every joke.

I suppose this is the challenge that comes with writing in epistolary format (or this kind of modern epistolary format). There's not much context to draw from, so these explanations must be made.

The friendship between Ava and Gen is funny and amazing but I don't feel any character development for both of them.I haven't read the first book in this series. Maybe that's why it didn't click for me.
Though the story is in epistolary format which I adore, this one didn't do the magic.
Go for this one if you want to read any light and funny read with adult struggles.

Please Send Help was a quick, fun read. We get to see the lives of Ava and Gen, which are complete opposites, as they start to navigate the “grownup world”.

I thought the characters were fun but I don’t feel like the character development even scratched the surface. I did really like that this story was told through emails and text messages. These two girls got themselves in quite a few predicaments bur that was the total of the story...Here are two girls, this is what is going on in their lives. The End.

I just wasn’t overly impressed, it was just okay for me.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advanced copy!

I enjoyed the second book about Ava and Gen. I like the format of the story told through texts and emails. It feels like reading the correspondence of two real friends. I like how they deal with real issues in a way that feels genuine. Nobody is perfect and no one responds exactly the way we want them to all the time. Seeing how they have grown from the first book was great! I really hope there is a third book about them!