To start, I think this book is a lighthearted novel for anyone who needs a book to simply enjoy, without complicated plots or characters.
"The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life" was a book that used the nerd girl who is obsessed with school trope, but the novel itself was kinda cute. It has decent LGBTQ+ and POC rep. I honestly didn´t enjoy some parts or plotlines from the book, but I kept reading anyways.
The main character *knew* she was the main character on her life and owned it. How? you may be asking. Well, she was a bit annoying, manipulative and plain. I felt like her only personality traits were trying to be valedictorian and being a perfectionist. Also, I felt like her relationship with her love interest was a bit rushed and she (the love interest) was a solid side character, with not much more to her personality than being "mysterious". Besides that, the few romantic moments they shared were still cute. The side characters, for example the mc's friends, were sweet enough and they all had growth during the novel.
I felt like the book was a bit wattpad-y to me, but I still enjoyed some parts. The author knew her main character well enough to describe her troubles during producing a school play, but still the character felt a bit shallow.
To end this, I'll share my favorite quote: "By Saturday afternoon, I was reduced to googling "What do lesbians wear on dates?""

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life by Dani Jansen is a drama-filled story of theatre, friendship, romance, and perfectionism. As valedictorian-wannabe Alison Green takes on the responsibility of producing an increasingly catastrophic high school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she learns about her relationship with success and her relationships with those around her.

A very amateur Shakespeare production provides the perfect backdrop for Alison’s journey of self-discovery, and Jansen has done the research needed to build it beautifully. In the noisy cafetorium—an impractical hybrid of cafeteria and auditorium—financial crises, cast dramas, schedule conflicts, and artistic clashes find their home. Jansen’s setting word gives what Alison’s best friend, Jules, calls “Ye Olde Shakespearian Disaster” all the scope it needs to be a delightfully disastrous as possible.

Throughout The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life, Alison is focused on a single mission: become valedictorian. This conviction, combined with Alison’s inherent perfectionism, shines through in all of her decisions, fast leading her to burnout. Alison is driven and relatable, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t make mistakes. She gets caught up in taking on too much, she interferes in other people’s lives, she neglects her relationships in favour of success, and she finds herself constantly afraid of what others think of her. But as the story progresses, Alison begins to discover more about who she is and who she can be. While she doesn’t let go of her hopes and dreams, she starts to understand that it’s okay not to be perfect, and she learns to more greatly appreciate the people in her life.

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life is a book about trying new things, accepting imperfection, discovering oneself, and building relationships. It also features some great queer representation! I’d recommend The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life to readers of Becky Wallace’s Far from Normal, Becky Albertalli’s The Upside of Unrequited, and Poppy Nwosu’s Taking Down Evelyn Tait.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review. It is set to be published in September 2020.

"The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life" by Dani Jansen is a fresh YA novel with a high school setting, several LGBTQ+ characters and a convoluted tangle of romantic subplots that gives a nod to "A Midsummer Night's Dream".
The novel is funny, entertaining and gives the reader an honest insight on what it means to come to terms with one's identity while juggling schoolwork, family matters, extracurricular activities and one's very first crush.
Although the characters felt a bit stereotypical and the plot twists were not exactly unexpected, it was a pleasant read, and I recognized in these pages many things I remember from my own high school days.
I can definitely recommend this book to any young reader who is struggling with being different, not only because of being LGBTQ+, but for any reason at all

The biggest flaw in this book is that it ends! What a nice, funny, unpretentious, wonderful book!
I laughed a lot with this reading, what a wonderful book, I wanted you to come to my country, I loved it!

The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life by Dani Jansen is a light and cute YA contemporary. It follows the misadventures of Alison, a high school student who is producing her school's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. She's got a lot to cope with if she's going to make it through the school year. The overall story line of novel is fun and goes pretty quickly, but I was never all that invested in any of the characters to become attached or really care all that much one way or another about their fates. It also never managed to surprise me, but in the end it was still fun to pick up.

This was a super fun contemporary! I really loved the parts of the book set at the main character’s house and with her friends, the one thing that wasn’t super interesting to me were the parts with so much backstage theater lingo. This is a great stand alone with fantastic LGBTQ+ rep! I’ll be making an instagram post about this soon!

It's not like this book was bad but I don't think it was the book for me.
It's a cute enough read but I couldn't connect with the story and struggled to keep my focus on it.

Cute quick contemporary read. While I often enjoy YA as a twenty-something, I think this would be better enjoyed by teens 15-16. Lot's of representation of LGBT characters. I really enjoyed the play part of the novel, but the relationship felt flat and could have used more development.

I don't have a lot to say. This felt like a pretty standard YA contemporary. It wasn't bad by any means, but it also wasn't mind-blowing. The characters felt a little underdeveloped. Part of this was Alison's lack of development or well-explained development.

The romance was probably the weakest part. I liked Alison having to deal with her past choices-especially avoiding conflict. But the romance didn't completely fulfill the character development role it was trying to. Also I'm not sure I like Charlotte. Now, that I'm writing my thoughts out maybe it's a good thing the romance is a smaller part of the story. Falling in Love shouldn't be the be all end all of life-especially in high school. And this does feel like a relationship "for now" and not a forever thing. Again, this is a natural thing for high school.

Alison isn't the most likable person-she's a perfectionist who has trouble saying "no". Personally, I get that. I was a lot like her in school. I particularly liked her relationship with her sister and best friend. They weren't perfect, but fairly healthy and loving even when they struggled. There were still some development issues her though.

Overall, this was very average and nothing special. But I would check out future books by Dani Jansen-especially if the plot was intriguing. And this cover is great. That's saying a lot because I'm not a big fan of illustrated covers. Maybe I'm being converted.

This is a short, sweet, cute read but not really my cup of tea.
It isn't bad, but I can't call it good either.
Just couldn't connect with characters.
2 stars

I adore this book!
The ascept of being prefect of the main character was portrayed so well. The story arc was well written.
The characters are written in a very realistic way.
Thank you to netgalley for providing with e-arc in an exchange of an honest opinion.

I had to DNF this ARC. Got around 50 pages into it and just didn't connect with any of the characters. I might be a little bit older than the targeted audience but I'm constantly reading YA books and relate to most of the experiences and the characters. Especially LGBT contemporary novels. I guess this book just wasn't for me. It had the potential, but just didn't meet my expectations for it.

* I received this book as a free e-ARC from Second Story Press through NetGalley *

This book simply wasn’t for me, it felt more Middle Grade than YA, and beyond that I found the structure of the plot to be unrealistic. As a working theatre educator, it felt completely unbelievable that Alison would be left alone throughout the process of producing with so little guidance or experience. Further, Alison didn’t strike me as a compelling narrator and I struggled with her obsessive focus on earning the Valedictorian title getting in the way of her asking anyone for help. DNF at 60%

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eArc of this book in exchange of an honest review! I was excited for this one - I love theatre and diverse friend groups, but the book didn't quite hit the mark for me.
The writing was snappy and propulsive and I was constantly saying "one more chapter." I loved the inside look at the school play. I was a theatre kid, so I really related to the descriptive writing. Alison, Becca, and Annie's relationship was real, relatable, and one of the best parts of the book.
However, the f/f romance was a great selling point for me, but it felt underdeveloped.. The ending also felt rushed with the school play being all buy glossed over. Everything wrapped itself up so quickly and was a little anti-climatic.
Over all, the book was super cute and I love the positive portrayal of female friendships. It's definitely full of charm and I think teens will really

This book started of so good. I have been in a reading slump for a while and this book actually made me excited to read for a little bit. It was just so easy to read and I absolutely flew through it. However, my enjoyed for this book kind of went away around the half way mark. All the side characters were just super one dimensional and fit into each stereotype you can think of. Even the main character wasn't that well developed. I don't really think she went through any real developement. We got an epilogue in the form of a college essay that tells us she's grown but we don't really see that through the narrative. She's super judgemental and everything is so black and white in her head, it was super frustrating. Now, all these elements were present in the first half but I was expecting developement and growth, you know how books do, but that never happened. It just made me want to roll my eyes at almost every other line. It was kind of a shame because of the overall story is kind of cute. I also liked the fact that nothing was perfect and was just a bit of a mess and we still got a happy end. I feel like often stories like this feel the need to have everything end perfectly in order for it to be a happy end. So yeah, this book had a lot of potential but the lack of character work ruined it for me.

Alison was a perfectionist and she had dreamed of being valedictorian for as long as she can remember so when she is asked to coproduce the school play she agrees without hesitation. However it was not as easy as she thought and Alison finds that she is struggling to juggle the play, her school work and her new relationship.
This was a great coming of age story that spoke about the struggles of a high schooler trying to be successful with all aspects of her life. Although the LGBTQI+ representation was there there were parts that felt like they were added as afterthoughts.
The growth of Alison was also something that I enjoyed and was true to what a lot of teens go though during these years.
Overall a great quick light read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this eARC in exchange for an honest review
3.5*

I have tried, and tried and tried to get into this one! I DNF’d it a few chapters in, despite wanting to like it, and finally I admit defeat. The synopsis sounded so cute and fun, but it was just tedious and I found myself struggling to read it.

Thank you to Second Story Press and Netgalley for this ARC!

Going into “The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life,” I didn’t have many expectations or know what the book was about, other than that it had an adorable cover and would relate to theater. Unfortunately though, there wasn’t much to be discovered about this book and it just managed to fall flat on a lot of the areas it relied on to drive it as a YA novel.

“The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life” is about a senior named Alison who spreads herself super thin trying to do all of these things to become the valedictorian and ends up getting roped into helping produce the school play. She has to find people to help with costumes, sets, design, pick the actors, etc. and still run her hectic life. On top of that, she has a crush on the school’s cool emo chick, Charlotte, and doesn’t know how to control all of it.

The plot right off the bat sounds pretty basic, and unfortunately it doesn’t even do that all that well. This book is a very shallow and bland take on this story and doesn’t manage to deliver when it should. The first significant thing is that the characters don’t have a lot of depth or chemistry with each other at all. Charlotte and Alison’s relationship seems to come out of nowhere and they jump from nothing to a lot very quickly. In addition, it feels like characters would drop off for a very long time and then randomly pop back up.

Something I want to put an emphasis on is that the characters are very much cookie cutter high school kids. Alison is the stressed valedictorian, Charlotte is the edgy LGBT+ kid, Kevin is the gay fashion designer, Jenny is the stubborn emo designer, Ben is the closteted kid who has it all together for his friends, etc. I didn’t feel much of anything for any of the characters besides one scene with Ben and Alison but besides that, there was no connection.

This book felt like half of it was missing. There were multiple points and topics made in this book that could have been later visited and meant something more, but they didn’t. The best example of this is the school’s basketball team, the Otters, who are talked about at multiple times throughout the book and then their whole suspense is thrown away to pull off an awful and humiliating “High School Musical” twist where the teen actors are picked apart awfully through stereotypes.

I genuinely feel like this book had a lot of potential but it threw it away. When I was reading it, there were multiple times when I thought about other books that covered the same things but did a much better job. For a really good book about people putting on together a Shakespeare play, read “Loveless” by Alice Oseman. If you want a good book about the stresses of high school and specifically about the race of being Valedictorian, read “You Asked For Perfect” by Laura Silverman.
The Verdict
“The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life” had the potential to be an amazing book to join the line of YA high school books, but it just fell flat in too many areas to make the list. From its dull characters to the predictable plot, it just felt like it was missing a lot and doesn’t stand well. I really wanted to love this book, but it just wasn’t enough for me to recommend.

My rating: ⅗ Stars

The plot just FLEW BY! We follow Alison as she prepares for the BIG school play, and her efforts at getting donations, directing the actors and all the while balancing her normal life. This was my first YA novel involving a theatre performance, and all the aspects were VERY relatable. (as a high school student, I approve!)

Overall, The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life is perfect for readers in high school or those searching for a quick and fast-paced contemporary read. I would recommend this to the ages of 14-17.

The premise of this book is both cute and interesting, it sounds like a perfect queer rom-com full of wacky adventures and high school shenanigans. Unfortunately, I had more problems with this one than I did positive notes. Some good things about this book are the friend and family dynamics felt very real. The hurt, the love, the fighting, it all felt like it was plucked out of real life. I also really enjoyed that there were multiple queer characters instead of just one or two. Now onto the sadder part, things I didn't like. The main character never refers to herself as a lesbian. Why? That's what she is and she uses the word in the book, but never to describe herself. It feels weird that she would not describe herself as a lesbian and it comes across as avoiding the label altogether. The second thing I didn't enjoy and actually have a big problem with is the forced outings. We learn early on that Alison was forced to come out to her parents by her best friend Becca, something that a real best friend would never say to do. Then there was the "if you're dating someone in the closet then it's not real" trope which is just insulting. This lead to another person feeling like they had to come out on a public scale in order to be with someone they care about. That's a horrible message to be sending to young readers queer or not. It tells them that it's ok to force people to come out and it perpetuates harmful relationships. This same boy fell victim to the closeted-overly sexual-hypermasculine-jerk trope and while I understand that it is a thing that happens, I think we can all agree that all it does is reaffirm toxic beliefs and encourages the use of "gay" as an insult and the idea that every homophone/sexist jerk must secretly be gay. It paints gay men as inherently mean.

I had a hard time accepting the behavior of some characters, but I kept reminding myself that they are teenagers and aren't as mature and seasoned as adults so while I felt frustrated by their actions, I conceded that they were realistic. Except in the case of Alison, someone who kept repeating the same mistakes and seemingly never learning from them. It is hard to accept that someone so intelligent could not learn from something that just happened in order to not repeat the same outcome. Whether it was her friends, her sister, the people involved with the play, or her girlfriend, she kept making mistakes that she made not even a quarter of the way into the book.

As far as Mr. Evans goes, I found him to be both a caricature and upsetting. A grown man being in a role where he is in a romantic situation with a student (even if nothing happens) is so inappropriate. He could have just recast someone in the play. He also put so much on the student that is producing the play alone, for the first time, instead of realizing that he needed to step in and support her.

There were elements to this book that felt like it could have been so great and I saw the potential for a fun yet dramatic story, but it was just filled with harmful tropes and characterizations that ruined it. I'm sad. I think this book could have benefitted from a sensitivity reading from queer readers so that they could impart some advice that would have helped make this live up to its potential.