I received this book from Netgalley in exchange of an honest review.

Allison wants to be a valedictorian and to impress her teachers, she agrees to produce the school's play of A Midsummer Night's dream. Not realizing right away how difficult and complex would it be doing that. But her love life is also complicated. She's out to her family and best friend, she's crushing on Charlotte and unable to act like a normal person around her and she accidentally said yes to her best friend Jack to a date, not realizing it was a date. So Allison has to cope with misunderstandings, friendships, crushes and misadventures in the play, while understanding what means to be "out".

I was attracted by the cute cover and the plot, but, unfortunately, the story didn't work for me. I couldn't relate to the characters, I wish they would have been more developed and I found Allison too obsessive. The story seems to go nowhere, focusing, maybe too much, on relationships and not characterization or messages. I was annoyed by some stereotypes, like the haircut that "suggested" Charlotte was lesbian or bi or the cultural appropriation from the teacher, both called out, but still...annoying.
I think it wasn't for me, but it could attract a younger audience.

In 'The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life', a lesbian teen ends up in charge of the school play while also trying to navigate exploring love for the first time.

Queer stories, especially those for young people, are really important but this just wasn't it for me.

This book read very young and characters often seemed much younger than they were.
We never learnt very much about characters outside of stereotypes and that they were all involved in this play which left them feeling very flat and uninteresting.
I was often frustrated by easily avoided conflicts.

Some readers, especially young ones, may not notice or be bothered by some of these elements and maybe they could enjoy it for a simple queer contemporary, but I struggled to get through it.

I've been trying to read this book, off and on, for over a month and finally ended up skimming the second half just to finish it. It was... ok. I liked the premise involving a high school Shakespeare play, I liked some of the diverse characters, but it just felt formulaic and stereotypical. I hate not giving a book my all, but I think I've just read too many similar books.

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life
By: Dani Jansen
3.8 / 5.0

This novel is a good young adult read. It has the drama of high school, but it is very inclusive. I love seeing more books include the LGBTQ+ community. It will help the next generation not see it as weird or unnatural; it will be normal.
Even though I didn’t love it(I find myself not reaching for the high school drama filled young adult books anymore), I still enjoyed it. I didn’t have to force myself to read it. The writing flowed very well. Jansen is a great writer and can definitely keep a reader entertained. I’d love to see her write new adult romance or even an adult LGBTQ+ romance novel.
Normally, there is a character I don’t like, but there wasn’t in this novel. All the characters made mistakes sure, but they all grew as the story progressed. I’m sure anyone can see themselves in one of the characters, which is rare. Almost every personality and love is represented in this novel. I will definitely recommend this novel to any teen looking for a fun summer read.


Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Year-Shakespeare-Ruined-My-Life/dp/1772601217/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GUOVU80IWXEQ&dchild=1&keywords=the+year+shakespeare+ruined+my+life&qid=1591498369&sprefix=The+year+shakespear%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1


Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-year-shakespeare-ruined-my-life-dani-jansen/1136451264?ean=9781772601213

This review will appear on my blog on September 22, 2020.

Cute and fun coming of age story, including a cast of diverse characters!

This was a sweet rom-com that follows our lesbian MC Alison. She's an over achiever with the goal of being Valedictorian. As if she didn't have enough on her play, she decides that taking on the position of producer in her high school's rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream, would look great on college application. But has she bitten off more than she can chew?

i love when books include diverse representation, which this one did, but from the beginning it felt very underdeveloped. i found this book to be to be a bit basic and formulaic. in the plotting, writing, and characterization. i know it is YA, but i wished more more depth, mainly in the character development. the pacing was also fast and a bit choppy, which moved the story along but sacrificed a deeper narrative.
this being said, i am so grateful for the increase of diverse reading material and i really appreciate what the author was doing here. i just didn't think that it was implemented as well as it could have been.

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life drew me in with the gorgeous cover and the interesting description. I like a lot of what this book has to say, but not necessarily how the book says it. First, it skewed much younger than I anticipated, reading more like a junior novel than YA. That's fine once I was used to it, but it took me by surprise from the description and age of the characters. The take on Shakespeare's work was fun to read, but the author relied so heavily on stereotypes for the writing of the characters that it was hard for me to believe in them long enough to enjoy the story. The concept and the presentation was there, but the storytelling left me behind.

A completely average read. Neither bad nor great. I wish I was more invested in the characters, but it didn't click for me at all.

I received an advanced copy thanks to NetGalley !!!
I had very high expectations of this book but in the end I ended up being disappointed, a very flat plot book was made for me and I felt that nothing interesting happened in the story, it stayed the same.
This book is about a girl named Alison Green who, in order to be a Valecdoctorian, participates in the production of a Shakespeare school play and as it develops we can see that problems are arising that will make Alison's life very difficult.
Topics such as homosexuality, pansexuality, etc ... and how difficult it can be for some boys at school.
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Spoilers
I did not like that the plot only remained stagnant, the book is all about the process of making the work and nothing interesting happens.
I liked 50% the main character Alison Green since she had her good points always supporting her friends and being understanding with others and she saw such a real character.
The bad thing is that it seemed that for his problems he did everything slowly as if it could solve itself and that I did not like.
That the author dared to touch on subjects such as homosexuality and pansexuality seemed magnificent to me is a subject that is touched on today but still looks bad.
If you want to give this book a chance I would love to know your opinion :)

I really appreciated the discussion of what being "out" means, and why it is or isn't necessary to become so. I think this novel will surprise people in some ways - and make you especially disappointed in one lazy teacher!

The title and cover for this one really caught my eye, and the book itself was even better. Queer takes on Shakespeare are always fun, and I loved reading about Alison's journey coming out while producing A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Alison is a perfectionist whose goal has always been to be the valedictorian of her graduating class. The easiest way she believes she'll accomplish this (on top of already having amazing grades and extracurriculars) is to assist in directing the school's play, Shakespeare. Alison quickly realizes that the teacher involved, really isn't involved, and everything is up to her. With her best friends and her sister by her side, Alison begins the adventure of the play, all while keeping an eye on her crush Charlotte, throughout.

This book has the absolute cutest cover, ever. Unfortunately, the cover is the best part of the book. I'd rate this a 2. I did finish it, but mostly skimmed, it's an extremely easy read. However, it's very young, all of the "problems" solely revolve around relationships. I appreciate the representation of the gay community, however, it seemed weirdly peppered throughout, rather than a main storyline, even though it seemed as though this book was written for that to be a main storyline. The teachers in this book are absolutely horrible and extremely ignorant, except for one. Alison herself is ok, she's kind of a doormat, she lets everyone walk all over her and be mad at her for these very minor things. She's not flushed out enough, we don't really know enough about her for her to be a deep character in this story, she's also hypocritical and has some odd opinions on some things (re: wearing a skirt with tights underneath in front of her parents). Alison's friends aren't the best either, they're annoying and immature. The entire book is very rushed and superficial. Nothing really good every seems to happen or is described enough, it almost seemed like half a book. I think this book could've had a lot of potential but was just unlikeable in so many ways.

I really wanted to love this so dang much, sadly there was just so many things that took me out of the story to really enjoy it. First off, there were some good things about it, mainly seen in the vast LGBTQ+ rep involved. We get lesbian, pan-sexual, and gay rep, and thus my heart got really excited.

But as I went on there were too many stereotypes that just took me from the story. Between the one gay character being the bully so he can stay 'macho', the small joke of a moment between students and a teacher about appropriation (which doesn't really teach the teacher about what's exactly wrong about using Bollywood themes and kimonos.) There's one moment where the main character even sets up two of her friends, knowing full well the male is interested in her. Other examples include situations of a certain haircut meaning a girl should be a lesbian, a goth girl totally being the complete stereotype of hating things and always glaring (Don't get me started on the comment the MC had about said goth girl maybe ruining the play.

Throughout the whole story it was like watching dominoes fall when it came to the main character's decisions. She gets in arguments easy, is -extremely- judgmental, and the whole time I couldn't exactly find any way to actually like reading her journey.

Overall I just felt like it tried really hard to be the cliche YA high school book. But when too many problems are thrown in it just became a convoluted mess.

Okay so I love Shakespeare and I love stories set in high school drama departments so that alone should have done it for me but I just really didn't vibe with this book! I didn't enjoy any of the characters (especially the main character) and as a character driven reader that's such an impportant thing for me! I can forgive a lacklustre plot if the characters are good and enjoyable! There were parts that I enjoyed and I generally didn't hate it but I did find myself just reading it solely so that I could get it finished rather than enjoying the experience. It had a lot of potential and I'm sure a lot of people will like it but it just didn't do it for me, unfortunately!

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life is about Allison Green, who gets roped into producing the school play during her senior year of high school. The show turns out to be Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, one of its stars turns out to be a girl Allison very much has a crush on, and things just sort of snowball from there. Allison has always been obsessed with being valedictorian, but will Ye Olde Shakespeare Disaster and her fully realized crush derail her plans of academic grandeur? And if they do, would she actually be okay with that?

I really enjoyed this little book about high school and first relationships and changing your mind about someone. While Allison is the first-person narrator and the only one who seems really fleshed-out, this kind of works in the story because it keeps the reader fully entrenched in her point of view.

Side note: one of the previous reviews mentioned being unhappy that the book didn't seem to make a point of using the word "lesbian," instead opting to have Allison refer to herself as gay a lot. Gay has become a sort of shorthand for both mlm and wlw, and I don't really have a problem with the lack of use. In fact, I think it allows readers to see the connections between Allison and one of her production team members, Zach, even though they are different "types" of gay. I did very much appreciate seeing the word bisexual written out, because that's not something that happens very often, even in queer lit.

I was honestly really looking forward to reading this because of the fun cover but it was a little of a let down. I thought it was going to be a quirky little book full of humor and it honestly was not bad I just feel like it wasn’t for me. Nothing against the author or the story. I just couldn’t get into it.

I was expecting it to be a bit better than it was, specially because the cover looks so pretty and fun. I felt like the story was very rushed, specially towards the end which was the play and the actual focal point of the story. The characters were very unlikable and were always causing unnecessary drama every two seconds. I felt like the author had a lot of different ideas and wanted to put them all in this book, but it just didn't work. I did really like the romance aspect of the story and the fact that it was a f/f relationship, but there wasn't enough of it and it didn't save the overall messiness of the story.

This book caught my attention with its strikingly fun illustrated cover. I was searching for a book in the Pride section, I was delighted to find this fun teen novel that reminded me of a good old 90's movie plot. In short, this is a story of a hard working teen who is working towards becoming the valedictorian of her school. Her life gets a bit crazy after agreeing to help produce the school play. It is funny, cute and fresh.

I really enjoyed that this book has contributed to 'normalizing' diverse reads and making these stories more accessible to people , this book especially for a younger audience. It makes me happy to know that a teen that might be finding it difficult to find any kind of story that they can relate to, besides the heavier books created for adult readers, that this book will be there as a fun, cute romantic teen comedy. This to me, is the ideally how any teen's life should be, their biggest worries in high school should be getting goods grades and balancing their social lives, it should not be hiding and shrinking themselves in fear of bullies and prejudice from peers and family members.

There were some things that I did not particularly enjoy. The author clearly does not want to present stereotypes in the story, As the main character does mention that she hates stupid stereotypes. But I found that many of the characters were stereotyped. In saying this, as it is a teen novel, this might represent how these teens feel that they need to be to show who they are. I remind myself that I cannot compare how adults would think and act to how teens think and act.

I would strongly recommend this novel to a teen audience, I think they would absolutely love this story.

Review posted on Goodreads
Review Linked

3/5 Stars

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Second Story Press for sending me an E-ARC of this book for an honest review!

I was super excited about this book because from the synopsis, it sounded like a book that I would love. In the end, the story really fell flat to me and I didn't end up loving this book. I think my issue is that I never really ended up connecting with the main character on a deep level and, due to that, never really connected to the romance. I found myself more interested in some of the side characters and their stories. I think the disconnection came from the writing and the pacing of the story. The writing was not my favorite, and the story's pacing was really slow. I found myself having to put this book down and pick it back up a few times while reading it. In the end, I thought the book was okay, but it didn't meet the high expectations that I had for it.

Thanks for reading!
Caden

This was really cute!!! Ahh!!
Honestly tho, there were quite a few points that I didn't like. For instance, I didn't like the MC and thought she was really very pretentious. But at the same time, I did like her humor and human nature. She felt real at some points so it was good. She did make a hell lot of mistakes tho, not gonna lie, and some of the misunderstandings / mistakes just seemed too childish and petty.

Nevertheless, I liked it. So Alison gets to produce the school play, which is ofc, Shakespeare's midsummer night's dream. And at the same time, she's also trying to be more open of her sexuality. The story basically revolves her trying to manage the play, fall in love, mess up her friendships and just well - mess up and then mend lol.

I but wished there were more scenes of the rehearsals. I really enjoyed whatever few were of them.

There were, to begin with, a lot of stereotypes in the story, which the author tried to tackle too. Like, the Goth girl who's an artist, the fact that a girl is a lesbian because she has a certain type of hair etc etc. Things like these crept up a lot in the book, and the author did try to counter them.

Honestly, the humor was good. I loved it, I loved how awkward and clumsy Alison was and her monologue was humorous haha. She was too much of a perfectionist at times and got into messes, but still her character added fun to the story.

It is a very fast paced book and the story literally starts from the first chapter, with Alison getting to produce the play. It is neat with excellent writing style and is cute and adorable.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for providing me with an e-arc.