Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Smash It!

Author: Francina Simone

Book Series: Smash It! Book 1

Rating: 1/5

Publication Date: September 22, 2020

Genre: YA Contemporary

Recommended Age: can’t recommend, dnf-ed

Publisher: Inkyard Press

Pages: 368

Synopsis: Olivia "Liv" James is done with letting her insecurities get the best of her. So she does what any self-respecting hot mess of a girl who wants to SMASH junior year does...

After Liv shows up to a Halloween party in khaki shorts--why, God, why?--she decides to set aside her wack AF ways. She makes a list--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 kicks it off by trying out for the school musical, saying yes to a date and making new friends. Life is great when you stop punking yourself! However, with change comes a lot of missteps, and being bold means following her heart. So what happens when Liv's heart is interested in three different guys--and two of them are her best friends? What is she supposed to do when she gets dumped by a guy she's not even dating? How does one Smash It! after the humiliation of being friend-zoned?

In Liv's own words, "F*ck it. What's the worst that can happen?"

A lot, apparently.

Review: I had to dnf this book at 50%. The book had some very harmful issues with it including harmful jokes about Israeli/Palestinian characters, insensitive jokes about a Hawaiian character, and flat shaming and body shaming. The book was also very mature it talked about masturbation and sex and used a lot of language. The author is also slightly problematic with her views on fertility and having a child. I really did not want to read this book any longer after I read those insensitive remarks in her book. I got what the author was going for but this is not how you do it. You don't trample on minorities to make jokes. There are better ways to make jokes.

Verdict: Not for me and needs clean-up. You might like it and there’s no shame in that, but I just can’t with the issues it has.

I volunteered to read this book, through netgalley in exchange, for an honest review. This book is well written and the characters are described well. The pacing of this book is great. The characters are enjoyable and it keeps your attention from the first page. I like how Liv makes her list for the year it makes me want to do that to. I definitely recommend this book to anyone and everyone. This book will be in stores on September 22, 2020.

This was....A Lot. I know there's plenty going on in one life at any given time, we all contain multitudes, etc, but if there could have been not quite as many multitudes I would have appreciated it. I think the plotlines were a bit hit or miss - for example, I enjoyed the growth of Olivia's friendship with Lennox and Jackie, her contrary feelings about her relationship with her mother, and the complicated way race played into her life. But many of the main hooks of the book didn't click for me: the life changing resolutions aspect did not get much traction with me, I didn't get invested in the romance/relationship stuff (mostly chemistry-wise, as I found a lot of Olivia's crush on Eli tell not show, not only because "I can't figure out which of these multiple guys, all of whom are obviously attracted to me without my realizing it, I like the most" is an extremely Can't Relate trope for me) and the Shakespeare ties seemed pretty strained. The sex/sexuality storyline was interesting, but felt a little unrealistic in terms of how things started and where they went through the course of the book. There were a lot of points to the story which didn't even have much of a chance to settle or get fleshed out fully, and I will say that this is not necessarily a book for people who dislike messiness. Even if things generally get wrapped up in the end, there's are those which don't get tied up and events which feel resolved until you think back and wonder if the right and wrong of it were really untangled completely. I think it will certainly find its readers, I just don't know that I'm one of them.

Smash It! introduces Black high school junior Olivia Johnson, who is inspired by Shonda Rhimes's Year of Yes to embrace her fears and lead a more fulfilling life. Liv auditions for her school's rap version Othello and begins to date so she can move on from her role as number one fan to a music duo consisting of Dre, her best friend and Eli, her neighbor and secret crush. Also on her To Do list are accepting her "curves," resolving issues with her overly critical single mom and finding female friends. The boys find out she's auditioning, and she and Eli start staging rehearsals where he helps her with singing and she helps him with dancing. As they grow closer, she waits for him to make a move, but when he doesn't, decides she needs to move on. Liv lands the part of Bianca, Eli is cast as Othello and her new love interest Kai is Iago. As she begins checking off items on her, "F*#k It" list, she finds herself unprepared for the fallout from her riskier behavior. But with the help of new friends, she realizes her most important lesson is learning to love herself. Filled with a diverse cast of supporting characters, the story is interspersed with the musical lyrics from the rap version of Othello that the school is performing. Readers will enjoy the well-paced roller coaster of events as Liv journeys toward self acceptance. (Release date September 22)

Francina Simone writes a very good debut novel. You want to root for Olivia the whole time. While there is an issue with writing style the overall message of believing in yourself shines through.

A not-unenjoyable #ownvoices YA novel about a black teen girl's coming of age in Florida. It's a little more male-centric than I prefer, but many of Liv's struggles and decisions are relatable and realistic. I could have done without the lyric excerpts from the musical Liv is in, and there are a smattering of passages that use language some people may be uncomfortable with (I personally did not find them problematic).

thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC I received of this book.

I will absolutely be using this book as one of the books on the list of supplemental books my students must choose from to read. While that means not every student will be required to read it I plan to make it a pretty permanent fixture. It is so fun and the voice of the protagonist reads as so self-conscious and real. It is painfully teenage and painfully real. I think it is a perfect choice for a reluctant reader because I think it would be really engaging to most high school students.

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I like the feelings of becoming more confident in yourself and breaking into yourself, but there were love triangle tropes as well as some stereotypes that I just didn't really like.

The fact that this was a modern retelling of Othello was interesting, but none of the characters I felt drawn to and I am such a character reader that that is a problem for me. I kept reading because I wanted to see where they ended up, but I had to really force myself to get there in the end.



Note: In reading other reviews I read about some insensitive remarks/jokes in this book that I didn't notice because I wasn't fully paying attention. I was planning on giving this book three stars, but due to these I marked it down to two.

Smash It! By Francina Simone is an entertaining story but some may not find this appropriate. The book includes some questionable use of statements that are just not okay. I wish I liked it more but my overall wonder is how good the story would have been without some of these themes were not included or addressed differently. Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fun and messy story about growing up, finding confidence in yourself, and living life to your fullest - mistakes and all.

Liv James is determined to burst out of her comfortable and unseen bubble. To say yes to whatever life throws at her - or to at least take a minute before saying no. So Liv, with her two best friends, who she might be developing feelings for, all decide to go out for the school play. And with the drama department comes drama, obviously.

I thought that Smash It! was surprisingly honest and real. From my own experience, it's one of the most honest and realistic depictions of teenagers. They're messy, uninformed, dramatic, opinionated, emotional and a million other things at once, and I felt like the characters of Smash IT! reflected that.

This was a great story about friendship, family, support, and expression. I really loved how complex Liv and the other characters were; they simultaneously were sure they knew everything and certain they were clueless, were ready to support their friends but couldn't see their own potential, freely (or sometimes secretly) loved each other and fear that it would never be returned. Smash It! is an honest look at growing up and all the insecurities that come with it.

Unfortunately I just don't think this book was for me. Some of the languaged used is laiden with stereotypes and microaggressions and it didn't sit well with me.

<b>— overall thoughts: DNF @47% / page 171 —</b>

It makes me sad to just be saying this but it was cringey for me. From the writing style to how our mc was acting.

There were a number of insensitive jokes made but I think the biggest problem with that was that these jokes weren't addressed or resolved properly. (A character makes a joke -> mc says it's bad -> we move on). Info dumps were done every few pages in the first part of the story which really took me away from the narration.

I really thought I would enjoy the plot of this more than I did as someone who is into musicals/music. I'm not that familiar with Othello but honestly this to me just reads like every other ya contemporary. Perhaps someone who has more knowledge about Othello might be able to connect to the story on a deeper level than I did.

There were so many overused tropes in this book with the best friends who have windows facing each other and a love triangle (I was really looking forward to a love square between guys and our main girl). <b>Our mc is also going through the "I didn't know I was beautiful until a guy made me realize I was" phase.</b> I understand that this could be relatable to some people but I'm just tired of reading that kind of trope.

On a brighter note, there are still a lot of positive aspects to the story in terms of body positivity but in my eyes I felt like it leaned more towards the first world romance problems rather than Liv’s own character development.

<b>Olivia isn't perfect and she messes up (a lot), as do the other characters.</b> However, I didn't really like Liv's motivations personally, she just seemed so hard wired into the problems of her romance life and expects everything to revolve around that? Again, I didn't finish this so perhaps she does develop more but up to the point that I read... I wasn't present in the story anymore.

Especially when I read the Israeli/Palestinian joke that other people were talking about, I didn't want to force myself through the rest of it. Which to be honest could be triggering to people and just contributes to the stigma that we have been trying to get rid of.

At the end of the day, it's a story about finding confidence in yourself. It was also very vocal about sex positivity which was a nice touch. There were parts that were entertaining and I see why people enjoy it... it just wasn't sold to me and the reasons that I read this book for weren't as prevalent as I thought they would be.

<i>— I was sent this book by the publisher to review and promote. All thoughts and opinions are my own. — </i>

Right away, the tone of the main character just wasn't for me. Her sense of humor just wasn't funny to me. Then it got worse with bad, probably racist jokes about Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Not the book for me. I want more books about Black girls, but not this way at others expense.

I am torn about this book, as parts of it are very fun and engaging, parts of it provide needed commentary on trauma and misogyny/slut-shaming, but parts of it are, as many reviewers before me have noted, very problematic and borderline racist. This problem comes particularly to the foreground with the character of Kai, a Hawaiian senior that main character Liv is immediately drawn to. But he's described in fetishizing, exoticizing, and massively stereotypical terms by Liv herself as well as her friends. Liv sometimes is uncomfortable with how her friends refer to both Kai and her best friend Eli (whose Israeli/Palestinian heritage is the butt of some very not-great jokes), but she never says anything, and she herself perpetuates these narrative microagressions on more than one occasion. Moreover, these friends are mostly featured as great, fun, and funny characters, so the 'jokes' seem to stand. Again, this book had really fun moments, but it was marred by these issues. (I also wasn't a fan of the fairly didactic breakdown of how the book paralleled Othello at the end, but this was a more minor quibble.)

4Thank you to NetGalley and Inkyard Press for sending me a free early copy to review!I'm really torn writing this review because I really enjoyed reading it and it is an own-voices novel and thought that it had a lot of really great aspects but after finishing it I saw some discussion about some of the things written within the book and how inappropriate they were specifically surrounding a Hawaiian character and a relationship between Palestinian and Jewish characters.  Own-voices readers and reviewers, as well as others who are just more educated on these topics than me, have voiced concern over these aspects of the book and how harmful and problematic they are.  I did notice these quotes when reading but didn't realize how problematic they were.  The author has not responded to these concerns and has also recently been involved in some other controversies not related to the book.  I don't know how I feel recommending the book with everything that I know now but I do still want to discuss some of the things I did like about the book I think it did a great job addressing how difficult it can be having a mature body as a teenager and how much of an impact parents and family can have on body image.  It also deals really well with friend romance and trying to figure out your feelings in high school I wish I would have had that at that age.  I really liked the characters and all the romantic and interpersonal relationships.  I liked the Othello references and how it kind of was a self-aware retelling.  Check out some of the other GoodReads reviews as well as @bookish.you.should.know 's posts on the topic titled (Francina Simone)Smash It releases September 22nd, 2020CW/TW body shaming, explicit language, seam, sex, inappropriate/racist comments (see above)

Smash It! (Smash It! #1) by Francina Simone sounds like it has so much potential. I mean, it's marketed as a YA inspired by Othello and that was intriguing enough. I also admired the three main things on Olivia's list. Of course, as things change in her life, she makes mistakes as she's a flawed figure. In the end, I didn't know quite what to make of this novel and for awhile I was on the fence between giving this two or three stars and I decided on the lower of the two. The longer the novel went on, the less interested I found myself in Olivia and everything that's going on in her life, good or bad. Overall, this book isn't for me, and I totally felt like a senior citizen while reading parts of this. I also have a feeling the story may perhaps have held my attention more if I had listened to an audiobook production of it.

The star of this novel is Liv.  She's a delightfully flawed character, and it's really great to watch her grow as a person.  She learns about herself and her feelings, and how to be a better person.  She struggles with being more confident and with her love life.  She can be selfish, and she can also be somewhat impulsive once the story gets underway.  However, she grows and she becomes a mostly better person.  It was a really great journey to watch.

The love story aspect was really interesting.  For the most part, this was a pretty sex positive YA novel, which I didn't fully expect but appreciated.  I will say that I could have done without the sex scene because while I don't mind characters talking about sex, I don't really want to read about high schoolers actually having it.  Just seems a little weird to me.  It wasn't like super graphic, it just wasn't something I wanted to read.  However, I really found each of her love interests interesting as characters.  They were each unique, and brought something different to the table. Also friends to lovers is one of my favourite tropes.

I also really enjoyed the play aspect.  I liked reading about Liv going through the audition and rehearsal process.  I loved that she fell in love with theatre and found something that she can be really passionate about.  There were some interesting relationships between characters that developed in this area.  It was also really interesting to read about the various family dynamics.

However, I will mention that there were some problematic insults/statements about characters' ethnicity that were not my favourite thing to read and may make some readers uncomfortable, so beware of those going into the book.  I understand that yes, sometimes teenagers will say things that are problematic, but I think other characters maybe should have called them out on it.  However, I'm not necessarily the best one to speak to that.

Anyways, overall, I had a good time reading this book and if you're at all interested, it's definitely worth checking out when it comes out on September 22nd!

Smash It! is a mature YA novel that has a bold character voice, and a unfiltered look at the high school experience of protagonist Liv. She’s a Black teenager in a mostly white school just trying to find confidence in her voice and in her look. She’s awkward and uncomfortable at first, but she has so much to give that she’s hiding from the majority of the world. She has two best friends, Dré and Elijah, a sister, and a mother who is insanely hard on her.

This book is also sold as an Othello retelling, and I guess it is but they also recreate the story for their school musical. So it’s interesting to see it play out as a story within the story and as an influence on the actual story. With all that said, overall I enjoyed this story. I like that the author really showed a confidence growth with Liv. Sort of learning to love the parts of you that you dislike, opening up, and saying “yes” when you’d normally say no. I also liked that she didn’t make Liv perfect. She was an imperfect character, so that also highlighted her growth and by the end she still had her flaws and it felt insanely real. Like why do we demand people in fiction be perfect, when that isn’t always the case. I also appreciated that this story was sex positive, and was a take that didn’t pull punches when it came to sex and different types of love.

My only issues with this story is that there are some instances of problematic jokes and dialogue. I think that they are purposeful at times, and that it makes it feel real, but I can’t say that some of the jokes or harmful comments didn’t make me cringe. I wish maybe more of a focus had been put on calling out the harmful dialogue/comments in the story.

All in all a good read. I’d be interested to read more from this author, because I do enjoy her no holds barred writing style.

Thank you to Inkyard Press and NetGalley for the e-ARC to read and review!

"Smash It!" was an excellent story of your average teenage girl trying to be her most authentic self for once in her hot-mess of a life. Armed with her list of things to say f*ck it to and just do, Liv slowly comes alive in all the best and worst possible ways.

There's much to love about Smash It! largely due to how genuine Liv comes across. She is all of us at some point in high school (or life) seeking an identity most true to ourselves.

"Smash It!" is an #OwnVoices story I related so much to Liv that we could (I wish!) be sisters. Liv is a curvy black girl with a butt who loves musicals and can't take a compliment. She is a dancer hiding in her awkward turtle shell. She is someone who wants to fly high but brings herself down with low self-esteem. She's one of few minorities in her predominately white school. At her core, Liv is an absolutely amazing person worthy of being loved.

I think the unrequited love mixed with a love quadrilateral (uh-oh!) was done really well. Liv doesn't think anyone, especially her secret crush, would ever love a girl like her because she's not amazing or talented like her best friends, Eli and Dré. She doesn't fit the mold and doesn't feel seen. She doesn't really see how awesome she is so prefers to stay in the background. Throughout the story she experiences different types of love that I believe taught the kind of love she deserves. It's a year of firsts for Liv, making the story a truly captivating journey.

I loved "Smash It!" so much! I laughed a lot and enjoyed all the characters who were just as authentic as Liv. I was sad and anxious at other times when things got heavy. I wanted so much for Liv to come out on top and be the heroine of her own story that I couldn't put this book down. I wanted to cry towards the end. "Smash It!" is an artfully told story of life's hits and misses, first loves, and coming into one's own.

Thank you for letting me read and review this book. Unfortunately this book was not for me. I think I have a case of pandemic reading. Also this book is problematic.