All Alison wants is to be valedictorian of her high school class. To that end, she lets herself be convinced to be the producer of her school's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. But it turns out the job entails much more than was initially described, andAlison feels like her world has been suddenly turned upside down. Now Alison is juggling her oldest friend (who her best friend has a crush on) wanting to go out with her, while Alison herself is reckoning with a crush on the girl playing Titania, and trying to stop the play and her valedictorian dreams from crashing all around her.

I really enjoyed this book. Every character feels like their own person, and their relationships and struggles feel so real. As a theater kid in high school, reading this made me feel so nostalgic. Jansen really nails the emotions and experiences that came with putting on a play back then. Jansen writes so authentically about a diverse group of teenagers brought together by a common cause, and draws readers right into their world.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life is a fun read, but unfortunately it just wasn't for me.

I knew I was going to fall in love with this book the moment that I read the title and it absolutely blew me away. I loved everything from the characters, to the atmosphere, to the plot. Every aspect of this book came together to form this wonderful book that I wish I had read as a teenager and that I think will be really important to many teenagers today.

The characters are all really well rounded and individual, but they have some great dynamics and friendships. They are not perfect, they make mistakes and have to deal with the consequences of their actions, and they really show that this is okay and that the world won't end because they did something that they regret now, like accidentally agreeing to a date. Alison, the protagonist, in particular shows this with her dating misadventures and the hurdles that she constantly has to overcome with the production of the play.

This book is all about a group of misfits putting on a school play of A Midsummer Night's Dream while dealing with all the drama of school life behind the scenes. The cover and title really holds true to the comedy and the atmosphere that Shakespeare's comedic plays possess and it was so easy to get lost in the world. I found myself constantly rooting for the play to go well, for the relationships to happen, for the characters themselves to learn and grow.

The main and side characters all give a really diverse look at teenagers and people in general. There are several LGBT+ and POC characters who contribute so much to the story. Their sexuality and/or race are important to them, but there are never reduced to this characteristic alone. The characters also show how diverse people can be in their interests, styles, priorities etc., but how people can still come together on common ground for common goals.

I read the whole book in one day, almost in one sitting with just a few breaks in between, and it gave me everything I wanted. Sapphic romance. Great friendships. Shakespearean comedy. Appreciation for the arts. I honestly cannot recommend it enough.

I quite enjoyed The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life. It was a cute, fun quick book that makes you revisit your youth and high school days. Alison was a great character that grew and changed throughout the story. I loved to see her relationship with Charlotte develop though I do feel that at times Charlotte was a bit harsh on Alison. That being said the book had a lot of humour and good LGBTQ+ representation.

Everything about this book seemed perfect for me—which is why I’m so disappointed. I’m not going to be able to finish this book. I tried, but the writing felt so stilted to me and I was really struggling. I liked the concept, but I just really felt that it fell short. It also didn’t read like a teenage voice.

I also am very uncomfortable when stories involve a character forcing or pressuring another character to come out or be more visibly queer....I really don’t like it.

This was really cute! I liked the characters and I enjoyed the plot! It did a great job of showing what high school is like with all the awkwardness and figuring out who you are.

There's a lot going on here. The book has the title and description to wow the reader, to entice us in with very high expectations for the perfect book to break us out of a slump. I wanted so badly to be as swept away by this book that I KNOW this author can do. But that didn't happen. There was just...too much going on. At times, it felt like the author was trying to hit a certain number of SEO topics within the narrative, and that's where she lost me. But I'll still look for this author's other books and future books because she writes characters well. I liked it, didn't love it, but I see a lot in this author. I'll catch the next one.

I was hoping for more from this book and kind of felt disappointed overall. While it was fun at parts, I mostly found myself feeling frustrated at Alison’s behavior and her refusal to communicate with people. While I generally cut characters in YA novels some slack for being immature (they are high schoolers after all) some of this felt like a bit too much even for me.

More so than that, my biggest problems with this book came from what had me excited in the first place - the LGBT relationships. While the characters are diverse and there is a range of sexualities represented, there was a lot of focus on characters feeling like they have to come out at someone else’s pace other than their own. Also, isn’t it time to get rid of the trope where the closeted gay kid overcompensates with hyper masculinity?

I appreciate the opportunity given to me by both NetGalley and the publisher for access to the eARC of this text. I think it will be a fun read for younger high school students, but it just was not the text for me.

This is a novel set in a high school as the primary protagonist, Allison, is suddenly burdened with being the producer for the school play. The novel follows the course of the play through the school year. Allison is a lesbian who is out to a select few people at the start of the play.

I wasn’t quite sure how to review this one - but then I read an article the author wrote about coming out at 39 through the writing of this book ( https://mamanloupsden.com/2020/08/21/the-year-shakespeare-ruined-my-life/ ). This helped me understand parts of the book that were hard for me.

I felt like Allison, a very scholastically driven teenager, had a lot of internalized homophobia that she was trying to address but I actually didn’t feel like it ever was addressed. At one point, when discussing how awesome her parents are, Allison says they told her they’ll love her no matter what. In my opinion, this is not true acceptance because they are saying that there is something that makes them hesitate, there is a big negative “what”, but they love her despite this terrible “what”. This is just one small example. I also think there was oversimplification in the coming out of another character. Additionally, the pressure throughout the book being placed on everyone to come 100% out to everyone feels borderline unsafe. There are situations where someone can’t come out, especially in high school, due to unsafe home situations.

I now understand, through the authors article linked to above, that she has struggled with internalized bi- and homophobia and found her way out of it through writing this book. In my critiques above I want to point out, I am not criticizing the authors journey in anyway, and I’m glad she found this process so freeing. Coming out is hard at any age. And it is great that writing this novel helped Jansen.

Aside from the above, I felt the characters fell a little bit flat. I felt like Allison came off as a very self absorbed person who wasn’t all that kind to her friends. Maybe it was just the overplayed drama of the whole thing.

Thanks so much to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I was really excited to read this, but then just found it kind of disappointing. Everyone just seemed really stereotypical with no depth or characterization. I started to get annoyed by the main character too. So, a quick read with some cute parts, but you could probably find much better YA rom coms to pass the time.

In her quest to become valedictorian, Alison agrees to produce the school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, along with the many disasters that come with it.

Not gonna lie, this was rough. The experience of reading this book was endlessly frustrating, with so many tiny annoyances that I started getting angry about every little thing. The characters didn’t act or talk like real people, let alone real teenagers, and the main character had a serious case of not-like-the-other-girls syndrome.

The most frustrating part of reading this, though, was that there was no life to it. There was no depth, nothing happening underneath the surface, no reason for me to care what was going on. Things just happened, like they were plot points to check off a list, and I could not bring myself to care about any of it.

Not to mention there were a lot of weird messages about coming out, with characters guilt tripping each other, saying that you can’t really be in a relationship if you’re not out, which was uncomfortable. Also, Shakespeare had nothing to do with anything. The play could have been replaced with literally anything else and nothing would have changed.

DNF. Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy! I decided to not keep reading this one, it was not for me. Thanks!

This was such a fun book! I loved the issues brought up and I loved the pacing. It was a fun take on a Shakespeare story!

Thank you, NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel! It was a nice, easy and fun read!

First of all, I'm all about LGBT representation, especially when it comes to books for young readers. I'm not sure I would describe this as a teen/YA book. It read more like a middle grade/upper middle grade to me but there's nothing wrong with that.

There was not a single character (except the main one, sadly), whom I didn't like. They were fun and felt real, I would have loved to learn more about them. I loved to see them interact and come together.

In the book, you are following Alison, a young girl, who is all about achieving big things and in order to get them, she agrees to co-produce a school play. Nothing, literally nothing, goes as easy as she would like, whether it is in regards to the play or her personal life and you are watching her deal with one problem after another. Some problems could have been easily prevented, some she couldn't really do much about. Either way, it seemed like I was just reading to her complaints and whining more often than not, which I honestly found a little bit annoying.

I was a little bit disappointed with how little of the f/f relationship was explored, but there was also a different queer relationship I did not see coming, which was nice.

I went into this thinking that i would love this but this just didn't work for me. The premise was interesting but i didn't Allison that much and just felt that as a character she needed to be rewritten to be less irritating overall. The plot could have been explored better and the book didn't really deliver on the queer element even though it was promised.

As a self-confessed theater nerd, I never want to miss opportunities like this, where I am exposed to stories revolving around another thing that I love. Just by the title alone, I knew that this read will be about organizing a play, and with that alone, I was sold.

In this story, we dive into the life of Alison. In her quest to reach valedictorian, she ended becoming the producer for her school’s presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – without having any prior experience! I loved this concept, as I, too, had to produce and direct Romeo & Juliet in 10th grade.

This book is a truly fun read – and if you’re looking for something light and fluffy this is the read for you. The author does not bombard their readers with heavy drama and just normal teenage problems like friendship and crushes.

It also touches the story of being a teen lesbian. She is out to people close to her but not to the entire school. And now that she is crushing on someone, she is contemplating the concept of being “out” and labeling her sexuality.

Another thing I have to admit, she can be frustrating at times with the decisions that she makes. But at the end of the day, I had to credit it to the fact that she is still young – and we all did stuff that we regret at that age, too.

My concern in this story is that it seems to follow this formula on creating characters, so it felt like they are just flat and cliche. The books is also slower in pacing and I think that it could’ve given a better story if the F/F romance was allowed to flourish a little early on.

Final Thoughts: For Lovers of Fluff

Overall, this is a quick and fun read perfect for the younger YA audience and anyone looking to have a break from heavy reads.

My Book Rating Breakdown

Blurb: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Main Character:🌟🌟🌟☆☆
Significant Other: 🌟🌟🌟☆☆
Support Characters:🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟☆
Writing Style:🌟🌟🌟☆☆
Character Development:🌟🌟🌟🌟☆
Romance: 🌟🌟🌟☆☆
Pacing: 🌟🌟🌟☆☆
Ending: 🌟🌟🌟☆☆
Unputdownability: 🌟🌟🌟☆☆
Book Cover:🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Final Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 (3.5/5)

I really liked this book! The jokes were fun, the writing as well and I adored the characters!
The plot was also very entertaining and the awkward moments were perfection.

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I had a lot of mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I absolutely flew through it. On the other hand, it wasn't actually . . . good? Which isn't even to say I don't recommend it—it's an over-the-top, fluffy, vaguely trashy sapphic read, and if that's what you go into it expecting I doubt you'll be disappointed. The fact is, whatever else you say about it, it's fun.

I don't have a lot of coherent thoughts about this book, so let's just dive into a list of things now:

- the writing is . . . truly horrible? Maybe I'm being a bit harsh (and it does get better as the book goes on), but I almost DNFd this within like three chapters because I was so deeply not here for it. It was just . . . sort of really juvenile and rough, like something you'd find in a high school creative writing assignment from someone who didn't really want to be doing this. I do understand that's an ARC, and it's possible that the final copy is written better, but . . . it didn't feel like the base was there—this wasn't just rough from lack of polishing, I don't think.

- the characters are pretty well written, and I liked the main cast. I wouldn't say they were super spectacular characters, or that I'll think about them constantly, but . . . I liked them. I will say though, that I thought these decent-but-not-amazing characters carried the book and . . . I think that tells you all you need to know.

- I appreciated aspects of the rep, however I had an issue with the way this book discussed outness. I didn't like the way it was handled. Every queer character in this book who wasn't fully out was constantly pressured to come out, to be more out—and worse than that, it was never called out. I would love to read a book that examines the pressure to be more out than you're ready to be, however this book was definitely not that book.

- theatre! I may have found a few details a little . . . over-exaggerated . . . but overall I really loved the depiction of theatre in this book. I am weak for a theatre book, and this book delivered. Reading about theatre feels like a warm hug, and I really loved seeing that in here

- also though there was one scene, and it was just like a page or two but . . . I don't think it's okay for the white character to wish her friend, aka the token poc, would be more tactful when calling out cultural appropriation. this book clearly tried to make some points, but then it did things like this and made them fall flat

Overall? This was okay. I didn't love it, I don't exactly recommend it, but I'm going to say oh don't read it either. It was decent, fun, but ultimately deeply forgettable.

I loved the main character. She's a classic nerd, but without all those nerdy girl stereotype of many ya. Alison is determined and self-centered, but her differential is that she is super influential. I'm so tired of nerdy girls always being easily manipulated.

The points that for me were negative was the wrong way that Charlotte describes pansexuality. She said "For me, it means I’m attracted to the person, not to their gender or sex.” As a pansexual girl, I'm really sick of this stereotype. I think a little more research would have avoided this disservice.

Another point that bothered me is was Ben's come out. In the few scenes in which this was shown, I had the feeling that Ben only come out because Zach broke up with him. Come out should be something natural, something you should be ready for. It's a really complicated situation, because it's not fair with Zach being with someone closed, but it's also not nice that Ben has to come out without being ready. And I don't think he was ready, all that toxic masculinity doesn't go away with a advice on the bathroom floor. Although Ben is a side character I think this question should have been better developed.

In general I liked the story, it's fun, light and so sweet. If you liked Booksmart you will love it.

As you may know, I had a class on Shakespeare last semester, and this semester I am taking Advanced Shakespeare, which basically means, I will have spent all year reading a TON of Shakespeare. So when I heard this was about a school production of Shakespeare (albeit it is the play I dislike the most), and that it had a sapphic relationship, I knew I had to read it.
If I had to describe this book in three words, they would be: lighthearted, soft, and cute. This is the perfect book to read in summer sitting in the lawn enjoying the sun (or that might be me dying for the weather to get warmer, southern hemisphere here!) I literally read it in a single afternoon, so it is also good if you want to read something quick.
This book is, is above all, a coming of age story, where Alison learns to face disappointment and things not working out and learns that well, that's life. Her main issue is that she is a perfectionist, and as a fellow perfectionist, I could really see teenage me in Alison.
The book is also about friendship and romance, and how to balance those two, an issue I believe lots of teenagers (and some adults even) struggle with. It's easy to forget about the world when one is in love, and this book shows how one must learn to balance your love life and your friendships.
And speaking about love, the romance in this book is the sweetest, cutest, most heart-melting thing in the world. I loved the relationship between Alison and Charlotte, it felt very real. Also, Charlotte is pansexual! It's always nice seeing representation of other types of sexual orientations
However, I have to mention that there is something a bit problematic with this book, and that is that it is somewhat implied that being a closeted queer means that you feel ashamed about your sexual orientation. In reality, there are many queers who cannot be openly queer in public, because this might threaten their safety, their housing, and even their life. Being in the closet or not open about who you like doesn't make queers any less queer!
Overall, this is a fun book to read in an afternoon where you may want to pick up something light.