This book had great potential to be inclusive, but absolutely ruined itself with harmful jokes about Palestinians and Hawaiians and I could not get past that. Horrible cultural appropriation. Incredibly disappointed.

Smash It! by Francina Simone is a hit. Readers will enjoy it. I featured it as Book of the Day on my social media platforms and included it in a roundup on my blog.

I loved this one so much it made me as an adult out of high school want to make a list and tackle things I wanna make better about myself. I think the main character was awesome and all of the side characters as well.

Smash It! is an entertaining young-adult read, but it left me unimpressed in a lot of ways. The book started out strong, if a little slow, and I enjoyed getting to know Olivia/Liv/O, her friends Dre and Eli, her mom and cousin, and her new friend Lennox. As the story progressed, however, I was frustrated with how Olivia treated these people, and how they treated her. Maybe it was due to the story being a modern-day Othello, but it felt like there were so many moving pieces, and a lot of unnecessary side-conflicts that had no real effect on the story. I wasn't a huge fan of the love triangle/square nor how it "resolved" itself as I felt there were too many lines that had been crossed in these relationships; real people wouldn't simply bounce back from the choices that had been made. The overarching story was interesting, but the minute-to-minute details didn't work.

This was a fun and a bit messy story about a growing up and finding confidence in who you are. I loved the main character and watching her grow. There was a little love triangle in this one and it did play with my heart! The characters made me laugh and I could relate to some thoughts and feelings I had in high school. There is quite a bit of profanity so avoid if you do not like that. Otherwise I would recommend to any YA contemporary reader.

This was an excerpt? I liked the character and the premise. The writing was a bit plain, but I understood it was more for teens.

Authentic and messy. Bold and real. Positive and questionable. This was a young adult retelling of Othello. Now having never in my life read Othello or know a thing about Othello I couldn’t tell you if it had anything to do with Othello or not. What I can tell you is I really liked the voice of the story. Liv is a 17-year-old girl trying to find her way. Dealing with her insecurities, wanting to be noticed, but afraid to be seen. After attending a Halloween party in a hoodie and khaki shorts Liv decides it’s time to make a change. She creates a F*ck It list and vows to start stepping out of her comfort zone. One of the first things she does is tries out for the high school musical production of... you guessed it... Othello. With her besties Dre and Eli by her side Liv starts... well... living. *Pun intended*

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Liv was such a real character. She had real thoughts, feelings, insecurities, hopes, and dreams. Was she selfish? Yes, but seriously who isn’t when they’re a teenager? She made many a mistake and usually learn from them. The dialogue of the story was so authentically teenager. As a mother of teenagers who has spent some time listening to conversation between my kids friends I found it so real. Teenagers can be so crass, so insensitive, so selfish, and yet so caring. Loved Liv’s friendship with Lennox and Jackie. The sex positivity and the body positivity were fabulous. Eli and Dre we’re great friends and I really liked Liv’s crush on Eli. What I didn’t necessarily love about the book was how entangled and messy everything got towards the end. I think perhaps the story could have done without that, but maybe that has to do with the Othello retailing? A well told story with a genuine feel.

This book in emojis 🎼 🎤 🎺 🎹 🎭 ✏️ 🍭

*** Big thank you to Ink Yard Press for my gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ***

This is the story of a self-conscious, shy teen who is tired of missing out. Taking a note from Shonda Rhimes "Year of Yes", Liv makes a list with all the things she wants to do - a list of things that very much push her out of her comfort zone. The list starts out short, but grows throughout the book.

Liv attends a performing arts academy along with her cousin (with whom her mom and aunt have held a bit of a rivalry). Liv is a flutist, and she seems to have lost her passion for it, and is very self-conscious of her curves so dresses to hide her body. Her two best friends, Eli and Dre, also attend the school as musicians. While she has always supported both of them in their band, she has held an unrequited crush on Eli for years.

She meets Lennox, another student at the school, and through her, befriends Jackie. They encourage her list, have frank discussions on femininity and sex (which are excellent in terms of discussion protection as well as talking about not giving in to pressure but instead how you control when you want to). Because of this and a very liberal dosing of f-bombs, I'd recommend this to high school age readers. That said, the language and characters feel authentic and relatable, from friend dynamics to family relationships. (I would have liked to have seen her relationship with her mom addressed a bit more, as, at times, it made me pretty uncomfortable.)

Liv's character undergoes a pretty major amount of personal growth, with some major mess-ups along the way. This is a story about taking risks, moving out of your comfort zone and owning the mistakes that you make. This is definitely a book geared to older teens.

The author has a very strong teen voice that felt authentic. As someone who admittedly swears a lot, the amount of swearing in the book still surprised me. I also wish the end was tidier in terms of Liv's relationship with Dre. And, at times, there is a lot of telling instead of letting me, the reader, come to the observation on my own.

All in, this was an entertaining, empowering book with a strong teen voice.

DNF at 38%

*sigh* I really wanted to love this. I love the idea of an Othello retelling and I like Francina's content as a YouTuber. Unfortunately this really wasn't for me, and there were a few things I was uncomfortable with. So....some thoughts.

The GOOD

- It's about a girl trying to find confidence to try new things.

- It's sex positive

The "It Depends!"

- It's a very voicy book and Olivia is a strong flavor of character. She's not necessarily likable (self-centered, can be a jerk, doesn't communicate well how she's feeling) but will probably be relatable for some actual teenagers. I'm so far past that part of my life that at this point, I really need something else hooking me to enjoy that kind of story. And this is all about Olivia.

- I think this book is aiming to be body positive and move Olivia toward accepting and loving her body. BUT there is a lot of negative body talk from her mom and others in her life, not to mention self-talk along the way. So, I like that it's centering a heroine with a larger body and characters who are Black and Brown, but do be aware going in.

- There's a scene suggesting the friends of Olivia's parents might be having an affair. And that felt gross and a lot to drop on top of everything else. Others may not be bothered by this, but I kind of hate reading about infidelity, especially when I don't know it's coming. This may have been the last straw for me to decide I should just DNF.

The Bad

- There's a Hawaiian character named Kai who seems lovely, but there are cringeworthy comments and jokes made about him. How do we know he's Hawaiian? Olivia can tell because she's seen Moana so many times. Umm...... *Moana is NOT Hawaiian* And then Dre makes some gross jokes about him involving stereotypical Hawaiian things. Maybe because he was jealous, but it's not corrected or discussed as racist and it left a bad taste in my mouth. I know from reviews that Kai isn't who she ends up with, so it really makes him feel like a set piece for Olivia to use for attention in a way that isn't cool.

- Olivia apparently is usually only friends with boys and thinks a lot of nasty things about other young women. Maybe she learns from this, but being in her head with so much of that wasn't fun.

So....I think this book is not all bad and I think there are people who will enjoy and feel seen by it. I hope they do. Unfortunately it wasn't for me and I think better choices could have been made in the handling of Kai's character. I received an advance copy of this book for review via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Seeing the varying reviews for this book, I went into it not knowing what to expect.

I liked Olivia. She’s a good person who is trying to find her place and I fully expected her to make mistakes. Her BFFs were charming and annoying boys who made me laugh and cringe. I loved the relationship between Liv, Lennox, and Jackie and those scenes were some of my favorites.

Plot wise, it was okay. The story is basically told as a running inner monologue and I could have done with more showing, rather than telling. I didn’t see the crush slash chemistry slash love with any of the boys and found myself skimming sections.

Overall, it had some great character growth. I loved the sex positivity and the idea of trying the things that scare you. And while I did mostly enjoy the story, there were parts that felt stale and a bit boring.

**Huge thanks to Inkyard Press for providing the arc free of charge**

I have a lot of mixed feelings when it comes to this book and rating it was pretty hard. I ended up giving it 2.5 stars, rounded up to 3 on Goodreads. In some ways, though, that was generous. There were plenty of people who DNF’d it, while I made it all the way through.

I really hate when this happens. You really look forward to a book and think it has some great potential. And then you’re met with disappointment. And disappointment on this level is just frustrating. It is 2020 and we’re still allowing books to get published with insensitive jokes in them. More about that in a minute. For now, I do have some things I liked about this book (and would have made it a solid read, were it not for everything else.

Some good things:

A funny, relatable main character
Messy, wildly entertaining story
Great side characters for days
Solid, engaging writing
Diverse cast, including an MC with hips and boobs
Slams down on slut shaming
Less than great things:

So this section is going to be pretty long, and I’m sorry to just nag on this book. But I guess that’s what I’m here for. So many things were just so frustrating. This could have been such a fun book. And instead, it just was not.

Half the book had me going “Wait, what?” Especially when it came to some inappropriate jokes in the dialogue. I won’t put them in here explicitly, but they were at the expense of a Hawaiian character, a Puerto Rican character, and an Israeli/Palestinian character. The Israel/Palestine joke made light of a Holy War, which, not okay. Sometimes authors can get away with bad jokes, if a character argues with them or points out how wrong that is. That didn’t really happen here. A few times Liv seemed uncomfortable, but that was about the extent of it.

On a similar note, several of the characters seemed kind of fetishized? Particularly the Hawaiian character. Or if not fetishized, then many characters were kind of generalizations. Playing on stereotypes a little too much. I noticed this with the Puerto Rican character and the gay characters, specifically.

So, even if you’re able to look past all that (which I don’t recommend, these are legit concerns), the characters were all just straight up dicks at some point or another. But, it was like that was their personalities? I don’t know it’s hard to describe.

I spent 97% of the time screaming at the characters (Liv most of all) for all the horrible decisions they were making. And fine, that’s whatever, that’s what makes a story. But it was more than that. They were all suuuper amazing at everything, except communicating and making good decisions. Characters need to have balance between strengths and weaknesses. These characters were all insanely talented, but they were also dicks. Being a dick isn’t an innate character flaw. It’s just annoying.

If I have to hear about how fantastic Dré and Eli are at everything one more time, I will scream. Eli snags the lead role in their Othello musical, despite having never been involved in theater. Dré was this awesome, funny, perfect friend. Except that he was literally the biggest dick of them all for the first half of the book. He made several just not okay jokes. And it was hardly addressed.

And Liv? Ohhhhh myy gooood. As funny and entertaining as her internal monologue was, I just couldn’t get past the fact that she is just awful most of the time. She is also insanely talented and beautiful, but doesn’t realize it until a boy tells her? Pretty much. The flute just comes so easily for her? Please. That’s not how musical talent works.

Okay. I’m going call it quits after all that. I really could keep going, though. (I mean—three guys? Really?) Oh, but I will point out that the Othello “retelling” wasn’t quite there either. They are performing a high school musical version, which is where I thought the “retelling” part came in. This was fine with me. But nope. Real quick, right at the end Liv compares her own life to Othello. It a) wasn’t super accurate and b) was clear enough just from them doing the musical.

Overall, a huge disappointment. And I can’t really say I’d recommend this to anyone. Sorry, not sorry.

I liked getting inside Liv's head but what I did not like were the harmful comments about people from Palestine and Hawaii.

I liked the bright colours of this cover as well as the synopsis which made me feel like I was getting to know Liv. The writing style really was that of someone her age but I was very surprised and quite appalled by the comments about the groups of people I mentioned.

It's fine that she had her opinions about life, but I just felt that that was going too far.

Thanks to Francina Simone and Harlequin for my ARC in exchange for an honest and voluntary review.

3 stars

I enjoyed this book. I pick up everything with characters with some curves! There were a few problematic things but overall they story was cute!

Thank you Netgalley for an e-arc of this book in exchange for on honest review.

Liv is tired of being afraid to take chances and after showing up to a Halloween party in khaki shorts and a hoodie she decides to go for it, have experiences, and change her life! First up is trying out for the school play, a hip-hop version of Othello. Scared to death, her two best friends Dré and Eli, also try out and the drama begins. Having two boys for best friends has led Liv to make the safe choices but when a cute boy in the play asks her out, she risks it all. How will this affect her feelings for her two friends? You’re going to have to read this charming un-putdown-able novel.

I’m not even lying. I stayed up until 1am on a work night reading this book. How Liv feels about herself is so relatable to 90% of the female population. She thinks she’s overweight, has bad hair, and isn’t cute when she’s the complete opposite! She’s fun, funny, a kick butt singer, can dance, is curvy, and should be a self confident young woman. When she tries out for this play and says yes to her first date a whole new world opens before her and her two friends take notice!

What can I say about Eli and Dré? They were totally different from each other, had real problems that added a nice bit of conflict to the story, and both loved Liv to death. Their friendship was one of my favorite things about this book, and despite their lives changing as they got older, they could all rely on each other. To a point. But what would a story be without a little drama, right?

This was a totally fun book, that felt real. I didn’t feel like a middle aged woman reading a teen novel. I felt like these kids anxiety’s are what people of any age feel on a daily basis. Their stories were relatable, their triangle was interesting, and each of their story arc’s read true. Despite your own age, Smash It! is a book that needs to be read. It may make you look differently at your own life, but if not, it will at least entertain you with their’s. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

I received a copy of this book through NetGalley for an honest review and it was honest!

The description of this book sounded appealing. I started hearing buzz about this and was thrilled to be able to read an ARC. This book lived up to it. I've been loving the diverse stories and authors I've been reading this year and this one is no different. Thoroughly enjoyable, likeable characters, and a great plot. This book had moments that really made you think, but was also light enough to devour.

Thank you to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for allowing me to read this book for an honest review.

First things first, I had to put my analytical self to the side while reading this book because I did see many problematic jokes and commentary within this book. Did some of the things written make me feel uncomfortable and make me cringe? Yes! But, I also thought back to when I was a teenager and thought about the way my kiddos at work communicate. I think Francine Simone hit the nail on the head by capturing realistic friendships and thoughts of teenagers.

Liv and her friends are your typical teenagers trying to find their akward way in the world. There was family drama, friend drama, Liv trying to fit in with the crowd and working through issues with inner conflicts. Problematic things were said between friends and Liv wasn't comfortable saying anything because she wanted to fit in with her new crowd. Was that right? No. And Liv learned from her mistakes.

I enjoyed the process of seeing a play come together and as a reader, it was easy to see that the author had background knowledge on how plays and the drama department works together and works through their own problems.

Liv wasn't my most favorite character to read from, but she did show growth and find herself by making mistakes and finally coming around to realize that she was wrong in many ways. That is something that I appreciate when reading YA books. I think very mature teenagers would relate and enjoy this book.

Smash It! by Francina Simone took me by surprise. The novel follows Olivia "Liv" James, who decides to emulate Shonda Rhimes's "Year of Yes" by doing a year of "F*** It" after showing up to a Halloween costume party in khaki shorts. She auditions for the school musical, decides she's ready (and unashamed to have sex), and goes after what she wants. As Liv says, "F*** it. What's the worst that can happen?"

Well, as it turns out, a lot can go wrong.

Liv is a flawed, strong-minded, smart, sensitive, fully-formed character. She makes mistakes, she makes messes, she learns, she grows. I really loved how real Liv (and the other characters) felt to me.

While I am no stranger to cursing, it did feel like there was a curse word every other sentence out of a character's mouth and it got a little distracting for me. No spoilers, but I also felt like Liv's relationship with one of her best friends tied up really neatly in the end, and perhaps it should have ended messier?

Overall, Simone has written a wonderful novel about finding yourself, setting her free, and growing up. I've never felt more inspired to #SmashIt!

Thank you to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for the free ARC in exchange for the honest review!

CW: cursing, sex, a plethora of Harry Potter references

3.5 stars

I struggled with how I felt about this OwnVoices novel. I really did enjoy so much about it, especially the racial and sexual diversity. Despite being very entertaining, something rubbed me the wrong way. 

Olivia questions everything she does, holding herself back from what she really wants to do and who she loves. She decides to make the leap and auditions for the school musical, with her two best friends—Eli and Dre by her side. As rehearsals begin Liv finally has girlfriends, but finds herself in a messy love square. She's always been in love with Eli and she thinks he feels the same way, but then why all of a sudden is she having weird feels for Dre? And who is this senior in the musical that makes her feel beautiful?

I really did enjoy the messiness of the love square but it almost went too dramatic. There were a lot of times when I just wanted to shake Liv for her to stand up for herself more. I wanted to read more about the play rehearsals and performances. I'm really having trouble putting in to words what bothered me about this book because I really did like it.

It was great to see a curvy POC grace the cover of the book. There were some great discussions on sex and women owning their sexuality. The racial diversity was something that was rarely commented on—meaning it wasn't a plot point that needed to be acknowledged constantly. It was how their part of Orlando looked. 

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Inkyard Press for the free e-galley and letting me participate in the Smash it! blog tour! All opinions in this review are my own.

Smash it! is about Olivia "Liv" James. After a Halloween party where she dressed up in a hoodie and khaki shorts, Liv decides to change things up. She makes a F*ck It list.

1. Be bold--do the thing that scares me.
2. Learn to take a compliment.
3. Stand out instead of back.

She also decides to audition for her high school's musical of Othello. Moreover, she wants to stop pining after her best friend and neighbour Eli since she does not think he would like her like that.

I really enjoyed Smash it! I liked the musical theatre aspect, Liv's relationships with Dré, Eli, Lennox and Jackie and how she is simply saying "yes" for things that are out of her comfort zone. I liked that Liv, as a black girl, got three love interests when she started putting herself out there and just being herself even when it is scary. Liv as a narrator is snarky and enjoyable to read.

[SPOILER

I just did not like that Liv ended up with Eli. Eli was simply not mature enough yet. He was such a dick to Liv, especially when he found out Liv and Dré had sex and I just did not feel it. I really liked Liv's dynamic with Dré and I was more on their ship than Eli's.

And after reading some of the reviews of other readers, they rightfully point out some insensitive jokes made towards Israeli-Palestanian and Polynesian characters.]

I thoroughly enjoyed myself while reading this book! It was fun, fast, and overall a great time. I could definitely feel that I was not the target audience for it, but I still had a blast reading it. It's one I can definitely see myself recommending to others.