This moved a lot slower than I had expected for a thriller. Fern is the classic girl-who-doesn't-fit-in, yet is somehow disarmingly pretty. The setting is that quintessential teen island inhabited by the ultra wealthy that only ever appears in YA. When she is befriended by popular girls, including a teen movie star, she blindly follows along, entering a world of drugs and doom that is more shockingly banal than it is shocking. As the story finally revs up, I lost interest under the weight of Fern's quiet complicity.

Thank you to the publisher and Amy Reed for allowing me access to this title!

When I heard that this was a gender bent Great Gatsby, I was extremely intrigued. This is a psychological thrillers with a lot of dark twists and turns, full of unreliable characters. This young adult book really explores hypothetical situations and I didn't really know how to feel about it. I didn't really find the characters likable but that may have been the point. The plot twists were quite shocking but also quite confusing at times and I wasn't sure if it was necessary for the story to continue. Though there were issues for me personally, I did find the book difficult to put down and binged in in a few days! I think that some people will enjoy this more than others and it's a book where you have to give it a shot if you're interested to find out for yourself!

When I first heard about the concept of this book, I was ecstatic, The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite stories of all time, and I thought the idea of a gender bent retelling was genius. However, I truly did not know what I was getting myself into when I started this book. This book messed with my mind in the best way possible. I cannot believe that I got through about 95% of this book and then found out that I actually knew nothing when it came to this story. Reed told a beautifully haunting tale of how young girls can be taken advantage of, and how that can lead them down the darkest paths. Reed took a classic story and turned it into one of my new favorite books. I am usually skeptical of books when they are described as physiological thrillers because I tend to see the twists coming, but Reed really took see by surprise with this book. I will be telling everyone I know to read this book because not only is it an amazing story, but it is also discusses very important issues that often go ignored in today's society. Reed messed with my mind and I am so thankful for it.

”We are animals. We are ruthless. We are tired of being prey.”

Let me start off by saying that this one is a doozy. I mean, as soon as I thought I knew what was going on things went left, and after I adjusted to things going left, they took a right turn. All that said, I truly enjoyed Tell Me My Name! The writing is unique, and almost feels like some form of poetry at points. Throughout the story we follow Fern who is just a good, level headed, middle-class girl living on Commodore Island. She lives a pretty boring life, with her two Dads and lazy cat, but is finally brought into the fold of the Commodore island elite when her childhood crush’s girlfriend, Tami, and new resident celebrity, Ivy Avila, decide they both need her around this summer. Fern assumes Tami has bad intentions, but hopes hanging out with her will get her closer to Ash. And she’d be a fool to not spend every minute she can with the shining star that is Ivy.

Honestly. There isn’t too much I can say about this book without spoiling it. I think I’ll keep it simple and say if you’re looking for a unique story, that will also pack a powerful impactful punch, then you MUST pick this up. It’s sold as a gender bent Great Gatsby, and I definitely got those vibes many times while reading. I just know that as much as this was a rollercoaster of a story it was a memorable one, and one I would recommend to any friend looking for something entertaining with depth.

“How do you make something real out of a secret?”

I loved the concept of this being a female retelling of The Great Gatsby, but also a dark and twisted one!!! I enjoyed the idea of having all of this fame and luxury and having the inner battle of being true to yourself. It was truly beautiful and I was actually quite surprised at the end, I didnt expect it

I’m having a hard time with rating Tell Me My Name by Amy Reed, while I liked the beginning, as I read on it became more disjointed and just off. I really enjoyed Fern’s relationship with her Dad’s in the beginning. They were present in Fern’s life when it seemed most parents in this world didn’t care too much about what their kids where doing or who they were doing it with.

Mostly, though, I felt confused and lost as the book progressed. There were too many ‘maybe this happened and maybe that happened’; too much surrealness to keep me invested in the story and the characters. There was also a lot of themes going on and I didn’t feel like the author fully settled on one and explored it. There’s this future world that has all the climate change issues and servants being shipped on Visa’s to work for the wealthy but I never really felt like this was explored wholly even though it’s a big part of the story. Then there’s the characters. After reading the author’s note, I understood that Fern and Ivy are supposed to be two parts of the same person but I never got this feeling during the book? My idea going in is that this was loosely based on The Great Gatsby and that Fern was being drawn in to the decadence and riches of Ivy’s world but it all just sort of spun out of control with a sort of nightmare-esque quality.

I’m really sorry I didn’t enjoy this but I’m sure there’s many who will! Thank you to Penguin Teen for gifting me this DRC in exchange for my honest review.

2.5 rounding up to 3

An intriguing and captivating read with characters to like and dislike. The twist was unexpected and pleasing; there’s just something in the story that fell a bit short for me though I can't really figure what. It is still very interesting, though, and there are lessons to learn, like knowing who you are and not turn your back to the real you.

Thank you to Penguin Teen for sending me a copy! I didn't enjoy this one, mostly because of the style. The premise was interesting enough, but I didn't like the way Fern spoke, especially when she would say things like "___ says, but ____ says otherwise" and it just became an unbearable thing to read through.

If I have learned one thing from this book, it's that I should know better than to request retellings/re-imaginings. Sadly, even though I liked some characters, I couldn't get on board with the drug use, drinking, and disregard for eating disorders and problematic behavior. Despite a MC with parents who are involved in their daughter's life, still there's an ignorance to all that's going on with her. And Ivy's mother...don't get me started. I really didn't connect with the story or the characters and Fern's inner monologue and jumps in time/imagining really took me out of the story. I got about 54% of the way through this book and couldn't bring myself to finish it. Perhaps I had my hopes too high because I love We Were Liars so much? I have a feeling there is a twist at the end that may have made the rest of the story make sense, but reading it made me slump too much to get there. However, I can see this book being right up other people's alley, just not my own.

“Our bodies are not made for sky.”

I often wonder if it is not just possible, but easy to enjoy a book with unlikable characters. Tell Me My Name is the perfect example of falling absolutely in love with a novel in which you despise the characters. I did not dislike all of the characters, of course… But this was such a fantastic read filled with unlikable people and unreliable narration. This is pitched as a feminist gender swapped retelling of The Great Gatsby, but I have never read The Great Gatsby, so for me this read, in part, like a fever dream. It was all hazy thoughts and haphazard conversations, and IT WAS INCREDIBLE.

Fern is a teenager living on an island off of Seattle, Commodore Island. She watches the rich and glamorous summer on the island every year while she lives there year-round. And she does not really care to know any of them or be welcomed in their crowds or at their parties… Not until Ivy shows up on the island. She is a shiny bright light appearing in Fern’s life and for some reason, she wants to be friends with Fern.

This is told in a near future-like timeline. Wildfires are ripping through the land and smoke is everywhere. It creates a hazy backdrop to the intense summer Fern and Ivy share on the island. There are parties and debauchery the likes that Fern has never seen. She becomes embroiled in this life of doing whatever she wants, with whomever she wants, whenever she wants. But soon, she fears that she is losing herself. And when everything comes to a boiling point and everything is overflowing, Fern doesn’t know what it is that she wants anymore.

This was so intense and surreal. And I loved every single minute of it. Fern and Ivy’s relationship is vivid. The other characters involved in this story are selfish and uncaring and create such a contrast. You really feel the ferocity of everything that is happening. You feel the build up and know that this explosion is coming, leaving you on the very edge of your seat until it all comes crashing down.

This was a fun gender-swap Gatsby retelling. I didn't love it but found it intriguing enough to finish, and I liked the twist. Interesting read. Will recommend to young readers looking for a little edge. I also appreciate the representation for DID.

this book pleasantly surprised me. The Great Gatsby is one of my favorite books ever, so i was practically itching to get my hands on this book. and boy was it worth it.

i anticipated the twist at the end though i didn’t mind because it was a damn good twist and foreshadowed perfectly. though it is a bit confusing the way it is handled, though that could be just me.

this book will fuck with your mind but you won’t realize it at first. it snuck up on me in such a beautiful way.

also, the characters are DEAD ON. every single one. just amazingly done.

My third and final book is Tell Me My Name by Amy Reed, a queer, YA retelling of The Great Gatsby with more than a few twists on the original.

Tell Me My Name transplants the action from New York to the fictional Commodore Island in Puget Sound, just off the coast of Seattle. Set in a dystopian future, much of the East and South of the United States is now uninhabitable due to climate change which has raised the temperatures to unbearable levels, and even Seattle itself bakes during sweltering summers with out-of-control wildfires edging ever closer. But the obscenely rich families of A-Corp who live surrounded by private security on Commodore Island have enough money not to see any of this.

This is where 18-year-old Fern lives with her Daddy and Papa, enjoying her final summer before college and waiting for her childhood friend Ash to stop dating awful rich girl Tami and remember she exists. As the only relatively normal family left in the neighborhood, Fern doesn’t feel as if she truly belongs on Commodore until Ivy Avila arrives. Ivy is a young, burnt-out child star recovering from exhaustion and she immediately befriends Fern, claiming to want a friend who is more down-to-Earth. Soon, however, Fern has been swept up into Ivy’s inescapable orbit, diving headfirst into afternoons filled with nothing but alcohol, casual sex, and designer drugs. As the wildfires press in on their idyllic enclave and increasingly desperate protests flare up in Seattle along the concrete walls that separates rich from poor, Fern knows that the path she is on is one destined to end in destruction. But with Ivy’s pull so strong, will she be able to escape and save herself and her new friend from disaster?

Tell Me My Name absolutely took my breath away. Its vision of a dystopian United States in the not-so-distant future is terrifying in how entirely believable it is with the rich simply paying their way out of every disaster and not caring about what and who they leave behind in their wake. This is, of course, true today, but here we see the same behavior magnified through the lens of even greater global suffering than we have ever imagined.

Because this is a retelling, the Great Gatsby parallels are obvious and expected with Fern taking on the role of Nick, Ivy as Gatsby, and so on. However, this does not make the book predictable. It’s fun watching how the story evolves, using the basic skeleton of the original and building on it to become something entirely different that fits perfectly into the era in which it is set. While I knew roughly what to expect and certain events came and went as I thought they would, others took unusual turns. By the end, I was left reeling from a totally unexpected conclusion that took this from an ordinary retelling of a classic into something much more and made me immediately want to pick it up and start again from the beginning.

The writing style did come across as a little disjointed, and this took me a while to get used to; however, the style choices make more and more sense as you progress through the story. This is a fast read too. I read the whole book in just a few hours, unable to put it down as the pace built up faster and faster as if I too were being pulled along with Ivy’s wild and increasingly out of control ride. This is the type of book that despite knowing that nothing good is coming, you still want to get there faster, like seeing flashing lights ahead on the road and not being able to look away from the scene of an accident.

In case it’s not obvious, I absolutely loved this book and hope to read much more by Amy Reed in the future. Tell Me My Name is due to be released on March 9th 2021 and can be pre-ordered now.

This was beautifully written, and I wish I could give it a higher rating, but unfortunately this just didn't land for me. I thought the individual pieces were very interesting (the near-future dystopia, the Freedom drug, the twist at the end) but it felt like this book was mostly pretty dressing without much substance, to be perfectly honest. I was really hoping this would be the glittering, dizzying sapphic take on Gatsby that my gay little heart craves, but while this book had some interesting set pieces, the whole production together just felt dull and flat. I did enjoy the writing, so I'll be interested to see what the author writes next.

I wanted to like this so much, but just could not get into it. Everything in the blurb screams for me to read it and like it. But she calls her parents "Daddy" and "Papa" and it rubs me entirely the wrong way...

DNF.

In many books, summer seems to be the time for falling in love and having the time of your life--for adventures and new friendships. Something exciting is always bound to happen in the summer. That is definitely the case in this book, where we meet Fern, a girl just waiting for her longtime friend to see that she is girlfriend material, and move forward in all areas of her life. Then, a new girl shows up on the beautiful island that Fern calls home, and suddenly the summer begins to take a bit of a different turn.

Everything seems to be going well with Fern and Ivy's new friendship, but sometimes just when things seem at their best, they can take a turn for the worst. For one, Ivy seems a little more dangerous than Fern thought she was, and she is beginning to suspect that Ivy is interested in her for more than just friendship. In some ways, Fern seemed to be a bit of an unreliable narrator throughout the book, as she didn't seem in touch with reality a lot of the time. On the one hand, this gave the book a certain kind of intrigue, and yet it also made parts of the story hard to interpret.

Before I began reading this book, I had seen it compared We Were Liars (a YA book that I really enjoyed) and touted as a story similar to The Great Gatsby. So, I had some high hopes for this book before I had even read the first page. Unfortunately, I wasn't very impressed with Tell Me My Name, although I have read and enjoyed many of the author's previous books. All in all, this was a fun read; however, if you're looking for a book with a little more substance, you'll have to pick up another book to find it!

Review of a Digital Advance Reading Copy

The Great Gatsby is one of my all-time favorite books. So, hearing that this book gender-flips that story had me hooked immediately. However, the Gatsby angle distracted me from this story— I spent too much time connecting the dots and anticipating where things were going. In addition, I found the writing style difficult to follow, though that kind of makes sense when this story (not the Gatsby template) resolves in the end. So, for me as a Gatsby fan, this book didn’t work. As a YA dystopian future, rich kid love triangle, queer exploration story, though, this book has some potential for its intended audience.

I'm a little torn here. There is good stuff and, dare I say it, potential, but I've reached a point in my life where I feel like I should enjoy the act of reading the book and, in this case, I really didn't.