I’m so surprised as to how much I liked this book and how happy it made me.

But before we get into all of that, let me tell you what the book was about. The book follows Al or Alison who is in school and her dream is to be the valedictorian. She’s been vying for it all her life and thus, when a teacher asks her to produce this year’s school play, she says yes in the hopes that it would improve her chances to be valedictorian. Also, she finds it hard to say no to people. RELATABLE. The cast of characters come together to then put this play together and while all of this is happening, one of her best friends, Jack thinks he likes her and in the meanwhile she thinks she definitely likes this other girl called Charlotte.

This book was just SO CUTE. And fast paced. I flew through it because I’ve lived their lives. I too was an overly ambitious child in school and I too put up Shakespearan plays in my hay day. The characters and their relationships felt real, well rounded and relatable. I liked the points of discussion as well as the representation (lesbian, gay, pan). I would definitely like to see more of these characters in hopefully upcoming books by the authors.

Overall, I really enjoyed this and would give it a 4-4.5 star. :) Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for sharing this ARC with me in exchange for my honest review.

This book is outstanding! As someone who was a gay theater kid, this book was written by someone who has seen it all. The main character is Alison, who gets voluntold that she is producing the school's production of Midsummer Night's Dream. She accepts because she is in the running for valedictorian and she thinks it will look good on her college applications. She has no theater experience and no clue what kind of wild ride she agreed to. Meanwhile, since most people don't know she is a lesbian, she gets asked out by a guy friend that her best friend has a crush on, she's trying to be less awkward with the girl she has a crush on, and she's got to deal with her little sister. To complicate her life, all of these people are involved in the production. Add in attempting to bring together dramatically different and difficult artists for the set and costumes, an actor quitting last minute, and a closeted actor having a dramatic breakup with the costumer and Alison's introduction to theater is hilarious and real and I couldn't put it down! As a former theater kid, this book could have easily been a memoir instead of a work of fiction.

I adored this book, YA fiction is delightful and this work is fantastic. I read this book in one sitting and as soon as I finished I sent a test to a group chat of old high school theater friends telling them that it was one they should preorder because this author has been in the trenches- excuse me, been in the wings- and knows what she is writing about. The writing style was wonderful, it was a delight to read to the point where I almost forgot I was reading. The characters were well done and very relatable. The plot was spot on, and the book had me laughing so hard.

This is a very funny book for YA readers, and especially those who are (or are not) familiar with Shakespeare. It's quintessential YA and it's very funny witty writing.

“𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒘𝒐𝒏 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒅𝒐𝒏𝒆; 𝒋𝒐𝒚’𝒔 𝒔𝒐𝒖𝒍 𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈.”
- 𝑾𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒂𝒎 𝑺𝒉𝒂𝒌𝒆𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒆

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life by Dani Jansen is the debut YA contemporary novel, which talks about the main protagonist Alison Green, and her entire one year of school life. It is about being a queer at school, accidental date with the best friend, friendship, etc.

Alison is smart, witty, perfectionist and desperately wants to be the valedictorian (student who delivers valedictory at the graduation ceremony), she agrees to produce her school's play which is based on the Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. And the things thathappens because of her mind completely occupied in order to perfect her school's play.

So alot of things happen in this 300 pages book, but what I don't like is being called as "Gay" and not "lesbian". Atleast in fiction I expect the proper use of words so that people who might read this should feel comfortable with their own identity. But at the same time one time mention of the word, "Pansexual" really made me happy to see it.

I personally think the queer of this book should have been handled better. Overall, I personally think this is a one time book but I did not see the development of the main character across the story. I felt the story went round and round with her each day of school and play, and ends at once. There was no direction to this book.

I would have really loved the book if I would have got more of F/F love between Alison and Charlotte, which was really lost in the entire book. Overall, a great coming out book. The teacher whom Alison was helping producing the play was a very funny character.

Now after ranting what I didn't like let's focus on what I really liked about this book, is the funny aspects the characters had to say while they were practicing their play. The story female friendship the story has potrayed between Alison and Becca. The hate - love dynamic between the sister's - Alison and Annie.

Thank You to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing me a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life
Author: Dani Jenson
Genre: YA LGBTQ+
Rating: ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ / 5
Reviewed: Maya

Alison Green is desperate to be the valedictorian. Agreeing to (co)produce the school play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is her first big mistake as she must learn to navigate academics, the play, friendships and her love life. Nothing really ‘wowed’ me with this book. Alison was likeable, but not your favourite character. There was a lot of character development written, but I didn’t feel that her character massively grew. The romance felt really flat and it felt like it had been written numerous times before (i.e. unoriginal). A lot of the book felt predictable and I didn’t have a strong drive to keep reading so that I could find out what happened next. The LGBTQ+ aspect of this book wasn’t as emphasised as many of my other Pride reads, and I found this to be disappointing. The read was very quick and light, although at times it did feel more like it was written for middle-grades, not YA. I didn’t love this book and I would have liked to have seen more relatable characters and storylines. I recommend reading this if you want a light and easy read.

I feel like this story could have been better. The premise sounded interesting, but the characters were very flat. It felt like they were written very stereotypically, and the events were cliches. The plot was very predictable, which probably would have been ok if I cared more about the characters. I felt like telling Allison multiple times to stand up for herself, and who cares about the valedictorian thing! The adults in the story were a joke, none of them seemed to actually care about her. Overall, I could see some of my middle grade students reading this book, but most of my avid readers wouldn't get through it.

Cute, quick read.

Alison is smart and motivated, but she lacks some social skills, including how to talk to the girl she has a crush on. Seeing her get into sticky situations because she has a hard time telling people how she feels was a bit funny, but also relatable. Luckily she has a great best friend and sister to rely on.

My favorite part were the friendships, especially Alison and her bff Becca. They had fights, but were there for each other and supported the other with their crushes and hobbies. I'm also jealous of Alison and her sister, they get along so well and it was nice to see a strong sibling bond.

This could have been a bit deeper and explored the romance and LGBTQ parts more, but it was a fun read.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review

I would like to thank you for the eARC of this book which was kindly provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This story is about a girl named Alison Green who is a perfectionist and desperately seek to end the school year as a Valedictorian. In order to make a good impression, Alison agrees to co-produce the school play. However, what she did not know was that instead of co-producing it, she will need to organise everything herself. She asks the help of her sister and best friend and story goes from there. There is a cute romance and a lot of drama involved.
In this story, you can find a representation of pansexuality, lesbian and gay characters. It also explores the internal homophobia. I really liked the cover of the book it is really playful and colourful. I love the theatre and 'Midsummer night's dream is my favourite' play of Shakespeare, so, I had high expectations. This story was short, cute and easy to read. I liked the humour used throughout the story. I have enjoyed seeing how normal it was for two girls walk holding hands or come out to their friends. The normalization of being gay and the acceptance of being who you are was breath of fresh air.
On the not so good note, the story lacked the development of characters and some situations felt flat. Also, some of the situations were introduced (like theatre mafia?) and were left out without any explanation of what happened. The author should have explained in more depth, so readers would not be left hanging and wondering what has happened. Overall a cute romance story.

As much as I appreciate all the coming out stories where the characters are learning to love themselves as their queer selves, this story tries to answer question of what’s next? What does it mean to be out and proud? What does it mean to be out but keeping your business to yourself?

I enjoyed most of the relationships and the support the main character had throughout. The storytelling was funny and genuine. Big hit if you’re big on Shakespeare, but it’s still super enjoyable if you never read it in high school.

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life was pretty interesting. In it, you will meet Alison Green. She has hopes and dreams of becoming her class valedictorian. So she honestly will say to any teacher willing to give her recommendation. It just so happens that she said yes to becoming the producer of the school's play.

Now without going into too much detail, this book was cute. I adored some of the friendships and the relationship being formed throughout it. However, I kind of feel like some were forced upon me or they just kind of fizzled out at one point. It honestly didn't matter if certain people were still together at the end or not.. things just weren't adding up for me.

I did, however, really enjoy all the LGBT representation throughout the book. There was even a point in the book where a teacher was completely ignorant and no one really did anything about it. I mean, yes, someone gave some sass.. but no one really put them in their place (in a way?). Not sure how I feel about that even now.

In the end, I am happy that I got a chance to dive into it. This book was cute and the ending was even cuter. I just feel like it was missing something for me in order to fall in love with it.

As a gay woman I felt this book missed the mark - I was unable to empathise with the characters at all and these are supposed to be my people!

But my main issue which pulled my rating down was the use of stereotypes. There were too many stereotypical characters: the alternative girl with an undercut who 'must be at least bi', the gay stylist and the closeted bully. Obviously using these stereotypes is fine, but all together? And with no real attempt to challenge them? It just didn't work for me.

I was really sucked into the book and struggled with the final rating as I couldn't put it down 'till I finished. The ending fizzled for me. I was so engaged and then it suddenly ended, with plot points entirely abandoned without any closure at all.

The premise was fantastic, but the delivery fell a little short for me. Jansen did her best to provide a diverse selection of characters, both through sexual orientation and race/ethnicity, and I think for YA teens this will be a fantastic starting point.

DNF @ 13%

The writing style just doesn't work for me; in particular the dialogue doesn't read as natural (it's grammatically fine but not how people talk). I'm also tired of how the narrator feels the need to show how special the love interest are by talking negatively about everyone else —"she wasn't like the other girls," "watching him act compared to the other auditions was like watching Patrick Stewart after seeing the latest teen heartthrob in a forgettable teen drama."

And the final straw for me was the comment that the LI's undercut indicates she must be "at least bi." Despite a previous cursory protest against gay stereotypes, this isn't challenged; also, it implies that being bi is somehow lesser than being gay.

Thank you so much to net galley for sending me a copy of this book . I was really excited to read this book and I was not disappointed.

I loved this story! It was super fun and as a past theater kid, it added an extra layer of fluff and joy to this read for me. I also loved there being a f/f romance at the forefront and how the book stayed overall rather lighthearted and enjoyable to read.

This was so cute! I sometimes struggled a bit with the writing style but it was a fun read and overall quite enjoyable!

The story was quite interesting in some ways. I loved how Alison gets major character development at the end of the book, and learns that being a perfectionist should not get in the way of your relationships with your loved ones. However, I feel the book missed a major climax. The story would just show Alison screwing up, then fixing issues. Then screwing up, and fixing again. It just went back and forth. But I loved the story of Ben and there being a strong reason for his terrible personality. A good read overall.

I got an arc for this on NetGalley after seeing some people talking about it and I have to say, it was really cute! I wasn't a theatre kid in high school, but I was theatre kid adjacent. (AKA: all my friends were theatre kids.) From the memories I have of play season, this is exactly how I pictured all the 'behind the scenes' of my friends' rehearsals. Only this one was far cuter and gayer than anything in my high school ever was.

Alison was a painfully accurate teenage protagonist, from the perfectionism to wanting to avoid conflict at all costs. I was cringing a lot, but I can't deny I saw my younger self in her the entire time. The entire cast of characters was also very sweet and believable, even overly dramatic Mr. Evans and at times obnoxious Ben. I was rooting for all of the kids by the end and hoping they all got their happy ending. (Which they did!)

I did wish we'd seen more of Alison and Charlotte together, as we get a few of their conversations and are mostly just told about how smitten they are and how much they like each other without much to actually show for it. On one hand, I guess this is a lot like every shallow high school relationship ever, but on the other, I could read through their corgi inspired drama for days!

Starting off, I received an ARC galley for this book, so thanks to Netgalley and Second Story Press for this opportunity!
The premise of this book is that our protagonist, Alison, takes on (and is somewhat tricked into) producing her school's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in the hopes of boosting her chance at valedictorian. And she's also struggling with a massive crush on one of the actresses, Charlotte. Standard high school rom com dramatics.
I should mention that I was very much like the main character in high school. No, I wasn't up for valedictorian or any of that, but I was asked by my fairly incompetent choir/theater teacher to run things a lot more than I probably should have been. I "co"produced an entire musical theater production with a full cast and fun numbers when I was a sophomore in high school. I felt a little personally attached to the predicament the main character was in on a lot of levels. It's likely my opinions about the book are a little (possibly a lot, you decide that, lovely reader) biased.
With that in mind, I had a lot of hopes for this book. It was one of the first galley's I received from netgalley, so I was really excited to start reviewing this book that I thought would be the literal coolest.
I would recommend this book to a high schooler. Shocker, since you know, it's young adult. But the writing style wasn't my absolute favorite, and the characters felt pretty one dimensional, and being in Alison's head was a lot harder than I anticipated. Her point of view was almost exhausting. This might be because she thought very similarly to the way I did in high school, which I really don't want to relive, so honestly, good on Jansen for writing a teenager's brain chaotic enough that it made me have painful flashbacks to suppressed moments.
There were some aspects in lieu of representation that I really appreciated. Charlotte (possibly a spoiler?) comes out as pansexual, having to explain what that means to our lovely chaotic lesbian protagonist. I did appreciate that, and I generally enjoyed the protagonist coming to terms with herself, because even though she was out to everyone, it sometimes felt like in the beginning she wasn't really out to herself, and the events of the book really help her reach that point.
I didn't love the use of the "lowkey-perverted-bully-is-actually-closeted-gay-with-internalized-homophobia" trope, just because it was used here, as it usually is used, to convince the audience to root for this character, to disregard any bad thing he's said or done in the past. That's a personal pet peeve, and this trope can be done well, but I didn't feel that it was in this instance. There was also an instance where the main character sort of outed the bully character? But also she was asked to? It was a weird instance, but the character felt very pressured to come out and I wasn't entirely comfortable with that plotline.
I think my main issue with the characters was that they felt like caricatures. When character's are shown being perverted or racist or gross, it's not subtle. It's characters, like the theater director, saying he wants to incorporate Bollywood themes and then saying he wants kimonos in the show. He's called out for cultural appropriation (and rightfully so), but I worry that by creating examples of people that are saying absurdly racist/sexist/awful things, you're not hitting at the significance of it. It felt more like a throwaway joke than commentary on high school theater productions.
My main goal is to be a positive reviewer, so hey. This was a book with a fun sense of humor. Given that this is Dani Jansen's debut, I see a lot of really awesome potential here, and I'll be keeping her on my radar. I'm sure that there are people out there who will enjoy this book, even if I didn't, because I feel like it could be a good read for high school theater kids. If you liked that book Ship It by Britta Lundin, you might like this.

The title of this book could also be “Tatiane’s 2019 in a nutshell”

First of all, thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I read Shakespeare for the first time last year, when I had to present a seminar about A midsummer night’s dream and Romeo and Juliet for my English Literature classes and had to play some of their roles. So, when I read about The year Shakespeare ruined my life, I instantly thought “It’s me! It’s exactly what happened to me!” (Not the romance thing, but the “Shakespeare ruined my life” thing, just to make it clear). And it was very nice to feel this kind of sympathetic identification to the main plot and to the main characters of Jansen’s book. In fact, it was a great insight to put the trope “school play about Shakespeare” as main plot since many people will feel sympathetic about it.
The main character, Alison, is producing the school play A midsummer night’s dream to get extra credits and maybe be at the valediction in her graduation. As producer, Alison has to deal with the play and her personal life at the same time, which includes, in one hand, actors, designers, proms and stuffs like that and, on the other hand, potential romance, new and old friendships, family relationships, school and universities issues, and more. For a teenager, it’s a lot to think about in so little time (and lots of responsibilities too), which made me feel very empathetic to her, especially when things get chaotic. She is smart, brilliant, hard worker and gives too much to people and things she is committed to ¬— it’s almost impossible to not like her.
Other characters, like her friends and sister, are good as well. They are funny and supportive, which make me like them instantly. Still, I feel like I don’t know them very well, even now. Alison is the narrator — and, to be honest, I can’t imagine better narrator — but her thoughts about the others are flat. The minor characters are flat — they don’t surprise us, don’t make us love them, don’t make us feel empathy or anything, which made me wonder “what were they thinking? What were they feeling? Who were they indeed?”. The only and truly significant character is Alison and, maybe, her loved one. That is one of the reasons this book, in my opinion, is a 3-stars.
The other reason is that it was very difficult to keep reading this book. Things take too long to go to the point. Nothing happened — at least, nothing interesting enough to make me think “I can’t sleep because I need to finish it!”. It took me weeks to finish this story and when I finished it I felt not disappointed, but not surprised either. The plot about the womanizer guy who is actually gay (that was the plot twist? Really?), by the way, was very stereotyped. Maybe it had worked out five years ago but now it was very unnecessary and could have been better developed.
Thus, it was a god book and I will definitely recommend to my friends. It has failures and it could be better in some aspects but it is a good book and very important to LGBTQ+ YA literature community. I will definitely read the next author’s books.

I really wanted to like this book. It had all of the elements that I love: theatre, diverse representation, and a hard-working protagonist. Sadly, it fell off the mark. The characters were really flat, feeling more like stereotyped high school molds than real people. I also felt like the main character was especially underdeveloped. She's a perfectionist who wants to be valedictorian, and that's the most we ever really learn about her. She has no personality outside of her ambitious goals, leaving all interactions with other characters feeling awkward and forced. I especially hated whenever the POV would suddenly go into 2nd person. I also didn't understand the premise of this book. This book made it sound like the protagonist needed a teacher recommendation for Valedictorian, which was confusing to me, because, at least in my high school, the valedictorian is based solely on GPA and nothing else. I did like how the book discussed different issues for LGBT teens including being "out enough" and the feeling of support from family members.