This was dubbed as a modern retelling of The Great Gatsby with a fender swap. I found this to be very confusing and had trouble sticking with the story

Amy Reed's Tell Me My Name is a haunting and thought-provoking novel that reimagines the classic The Great Gatsby in a dystopian near-future setting. The story follows Fern, a girl from the impoverished Outer Islands, who becomes entangled with Ivy, a wealthy and enigmatic girl living in the affluent Haven. As their friendship deepens, secrets unravel, and the stark contrasts between their worlds become more apparent. Reed's narrative is both lyrical and gripping, offering a sharp commentary on class disparity, privilege, and the search for identity. With its compelling characters and richly atmospheric world, Tell Me My Name is a powerful and unsettling read that lingers long after the final page.

This book was requested by a previous Lesbrary reviewer who did not finish or review it. In order to keep my Netgalley feedback up to date, I am submitting this review marking it as a DNF, though it was another reviewer who requested this.

I've tried to read this book a few times and it doesn't seem to stick with me. I definitely believe this is a case of the reader and not the book.

DNF - I read 10% of this book, but just couldn't keep reading. How Fern kept describing the characters on the island and how spoiled they are was just too much. And then Tammy appeared and I couldn't stand her another minute! She as a character just irked me. I was curious to learn more about this futuristic world that sounds horrible but intriguing at the same time, but just not enough to overcome my dislike for Tammy and other characters like her in the story. Fern and her family seemed delightful though, so it was confusing.

This was written in such a unique beautiful way that it is almost hard to describe it correctly. There are a lot of mental health issues tackled in this book, that at times, can make it confusing to figure out what exactly is going on.
It's not the best story, but it isnt the worse either. It is simply unique in its own way

I only truly understood what I had read once the authors note was read. The writing was great and a very detailed world was created but I really couldn't understand what the story was about or what was going on. There were small points here and there where I thought I truly understood it but I didn't fully understand it until I finished.

Tell Me My Name by Amy Reed is definitely a unique book. It is supposed to be kind of a Great Gatsby retelling. I am not sure if it really is because I only remember the green light from Gatsby and that's it. The story follows Fern who lives with her dads on an island off of Seattle called Commodore Island. Playing a large role in this book is climate change as well as wealth inequity. This summer, Ivy Avila has come to visit Commodore Island and she happens to be living next door to Fern. Ivy is a celebrity and lives life in the fast lane whereas Fern is very quiet. There's also a boy -- Ash -- whom Fern has always loved and whom Ivy is now interested in.

To be fair, I am still struggling to identify the point of this story. I am so happy for people who are literary and smart and retain books they read in high school. Chances are they get this book. I didn't. I felt like it was doing too much -- there's the whole futuristic thing. Then there's a twist. Also, there's a whole take on girlhood and bodies as commodity. It was just a lot. I didn't like any of the characters. Maybe with a tighter focus, I would have been more into this book. Overall, although it was a fast pace which I love, Tell Me My Name was just not the story for me.

Wow. That’s all. Just wow. I loved this retelling. I was a little skeptical at first but to say I was delightfully surprised is an understatement. My only wish is to be able to read it again for the first time

I can really only describe this book as bland. Nothing really stood out to me in either good or bad ways. It was just there, I read it, and now it’s gone.

This YA novel is full of twists. Mental health issue is also weaved throughout the story line. It’s a retelling of the Great Gatsby and I really enjoyed it. This story will sneak up on you.

This book gives you exactly what it sets out to do, especially the fever dream aspect of the gender bent great gatsby. Although this book wasn’t for me, i also think it was very well done. I was anticipating more thriller-esque feelings threaded through the mystery but overall i felt like most everything was relatively expected as the book goes on. We also have a very unreliable narrator which can be something i enjoy but in this book i found it a bit frustrating because i wanted to know more of what was actually happening over what “might have happened”

3.5 stars

Actual rating: 2.5/5 stars

Fern is a mild-mannered, and a bit of a loser who Ivy Avilla, a celebrity star, that just got out rehab, moved next door to. Ivy takes an interest in Fern right away and eventually asks Fern to introduce her to Ash, who she met a couple of years ago on a vacation. She moved onto the island off of Seattle to restart their romance. At the same time, Fern is also pining over Ash. But he has a girlfriend Tami.

The plot of this was honestly really confusing and I couldn't follow anything. I don't even know what to say about the plot because I don't even know what happened. The characters were also insufferable and this book felt so young adult. Not in a good way either.

This was marketed as a gender-bent The Great Gatsby and I definitely felt the correlation. I'm not the biggest fan of the original source material which is why in a YA setting I probably wasn't the biggest fan. Both did confuse me a lot so this book definitely captured the vibes of The Great Gatsby.

I did appreciate how this book touches on addiction and mental health for a younger audience and I think it did it very well. I felt just meh about this book. I'm not mad at it, just confused.

Thank you to Penguin Young Readers Group, Amy Reed, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I had a really hard time connecting with this book. It was written so beautiful but I think it was a bit too dark for me. There was a lot to unpack here from the characters and I think a lot of people will enjoy that.

Take Jay Gatsby and make him the most frustratingly anxious feminist and you get this book.
I'm torn, because on one hand, I'm fully aware that I'm not SUPPOSED to like any of the characters and that the strange inconsistent writing style is purposeful. On the other, this had all of the frustration of The Great Gatsby with none of the charm or deeper meaning.
Not to say that there's absolutely no deeper meaning, but I honestly couldn't force myself to care long enough to discover them. Readability is a massive thing for me, and this was incomprehensible at times. The amount of time the narrator spends just talking about what might happen or what could've happened makes the experience tedious, and really just takes an egregious toll on the plot as a whole.

While I appreciate the author taking The Great Gatsby (which I've never read) and making it a feminine twist in a futuristic world, I also feel that I will never want to read The Great Gatsby. I don't even know what to compare this book to .

Fern was such a boring character to me . All the "what I should have said"s and doing ANYTHING she was asked of by Ivy, I didn't like her.

Now as the ending of the story I wouldn't want to give away...I guess I understand a bit of why she was the way she was but I still didn't love this story.

What a unique story. From the beginning, you know something is off, but it's hard to tell exactly what. As the story unfolds you may guess as you learn more, but it continues twisting until the very last page.

When I was a pre-teen, I really loved Amy Reed's books. But I think, as I'm now an older teenager (aka legal adult), my interests have shifted outside of her range and audience. Unfortunately for me, this book was not loved like I anticipated it would be. And I probably should've taken it as a sign when this book was compared to We Were Liars  and is a retelling of The Great Gatsby,  two books I deeply dislike.

Writing Style -

I only got a little over 20% of the way into this book, but what I did read, I was completely bored by. Amy Reed has a tendency to make her books sound like they were written in a different time period, but this one was completely over the top. The back-and-forth between verse-like writing and then "normally" formatted text was discombobulating, to say the least.

Plot -


When it came to the plot of this book, there really was no flow. It was confusing, it was disorienting, and I was thrown for a loop on more than one occasion in the short part I read.

Characters -

Honestly, I found nothing likeable about any of the characters. Just like in The Great Gatsby,  every single one of the characters we were introduced to in the beginning were horrendously annoying, selfish, ignorant, or downright stupendous. I don't mean to be overdramatic, but I was honestly hoping for a shift in direction with the "retelling" and not so much a clear rewrite with different genders and a modernized world.

Overall -

This book was so disappointing to me on so many levels, hence the DNF. Like I mentioned, I used to really love Amy Reed novels, but this one just did not suit me well. The only thing I liked about it was that the author attempted to add queer characters (though they were side characters). Other than that, I just did not like this book whatsoever.

All of the characters in the story were super unlikeable. Everyone was so unnecessarily mean and the story suffered from it.

Unreliable narrators. This Great Gatsby retelling was not my cup of tea. Did not DNF but to be honest I don't know what I was reading half of time. I dislike writing negative reviews so I keep the short.