This one is a heavy read. Definitely not a mystery, more of an exploration of some tragic and traumatic events. Read with that in mind.

DNF at 30%.

The description made me think it was going to be more of a mystery, but it's not, they know what happened. This is just about their lives and feelings.

*Thank you to the publisher for this eARC.

Trigger warnings: sexual assault, substance abuse, alcohol, animal abuse

"Tell Me When You Feel Something" Ok, I feel like this book was kind of a mess.

I think this was SUPPOSED to be a mystery book, with the mystery in question being what led to a teenage girl, Viv, taking opioids at a party and ending up in hospital. Instead, it's just us reading about the events beforehand (weirdly interspersed with police interviews and irrelevant POVs), with the writing style not really lending itself to allowing the reader to play detective even if an attempt was made due to the time jumps. I didn't think I should be connecting the dots and figuring out what led to that decision - it was just me reading what was happening and going through it with Viv in a naturally evolving storyline. No hints, no clues, just a plot...and honestly, that was fine. It worked. Maybe it's because Viv is one of the only characters that I liked, but I didn't care that the "mystery" element wasn't delivering what I expected it to.

Everything changed near the end. Detective or not, I did have suspicions, which unfortunately turned out to be right - but the way these revelations were handled didn't sit right with me. It was rushed, and I wasn't satisfied by the ending. I've read quite a few books with serious/sensitive subject matter, but none have left me feeling as uneasy as I feel after finishing this book. I needed a better ending. I wanted the characters to understand that what they did was wrong. I wanted justice to be properly served - and just because of how quickly everything eventuated, I feel like I didn't get what I wanted.

At the end of the day, I read books because I want to have fun - and this book was not fun. I must admit, it was for a while in the middle there, purely because I found the story easy to read, but as a whole? This was not a good experience.

Besides Viv, I literally didn't like any of the other characters. Was I supposed to feel upset for Davida, because I don't??? The "angst" between her and Tim (who I also did not like) was just irritating. I honestly wish that whole plot point was scrapped. Also, this may have been because it's a digital arc, but the formatting was horrible. I had to reread sentences over and over again to figure out who was saying what, and what was even going on. Plus, the random police interviews were set out weirdly. I don't understand why they would start with the last part of the interview, immediately followed by the start...it didn't add suspense or anything. It was just dumb.

The writing was mediocre, but I must say the use of the modern "teen" language was not as bad as it could have been. It was definitely still very cringe at times.

Overall, I would not recommend this book. I can't imagine a point in my life where THIS would be the type of book I would want to read when I have free time. If you do want to give it a try, PLEASE consider the trigger warnings I've listed on my review or others have included on their. The author definitely should have included a list at the start of the book. Honestly though, you should just find something else to read.

I think this had too many characters and I couldn't get invested. I kept feeling like I jumped into the middle of something and then when I started settling in, it would change. I loved the concept and premise of the book, but the execution wasn't there for me.

I think this book had a bit of an identity crisis.

Based on the description, I was expecting a whodunnit-style mystery/thriller, but most of the book is focused on the main character Viv and her struggles with alcoholism. I thought it was done pretty well and that should have been the focus of the story. However, the book kept trying to convince me that the real story was the "mystery" of how a teenage girl with addiction issues and a disastrous personal life managed to overdose on opioids. Opioids that she was caught on video taking, loudly and publicly.

Vivienne's story, told through flashbacks, is interwoven with the (mostly pretty dull) stories of two of her friends, as well as interviews by the police as they try to find out where she could have obtained the single painkiller she took that caused her overdose. I just can't imagine the police putting in that kind of an investigation when Viv was filmed taking the drugs willingly, especially when it was a commonly prescribed painkiller, and the investigation is really the only thing that indicates that there is any mystery to this book at all. It reads as a chronicle of a young woman's personal struggles and how they caused her to turn to alcohol and eventually drugs.

When the mystery does finally announce itself, it all happens very quickly, and the book ends very quick. Everything comes together and ties up nicely, but it does end on a large info-dump and...it's hard to rate this one, because I do think the story was solid, but the pacing was off.

One more small thing: I did read this book as an eARC, and I understand that this can affect formatting and possibly include typos, etc, but the formatting on this was absolutely atrocious. Every single page had new lines/paragraphs in random places, and certain parts of the book were out of order, making it necessary to skip around. It made the book difficult to read, and I hope that none of this is reflected in the final copy.

*eARC provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to like this one so much! I thought it was such a cool premise, but there were way too many characters and such short snippets of what truly happened. If there were two points of view with more in-depth details, this would be so much better. It was tough to stick this one out all the way through. There also should be multiple trigger warnings for this one.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for allowing me to read this (wonderful) book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was fantastic! I love YA's that have a first-person POV and "Tell me when you fell something" has both that and 3rd-person POV, which was a fantastic combination. The writing was simple but not in a bad way - it was easy to read and made us want to continue until the book ended. Also, I loved the police reports and I think they made way for a better experience while reading the book. And if at beginning I was a tad confused with the going back and forth in time, I ended up loving it too!

While I loved the structure of the book and also its plot, I think the description regarding the #Metoo movement is a bit misleading, as that doesn't come up in the book until the end and I think the aftermath could have been a bit better explored and centered - I feel the book only skimmed the surface regarding the consequences of it. Despite that, while I'm not an expert on mental health, I do like books that deal with important themes regarding mental health issues. They could have been better represented, but I'm just happy we didn't end up with the whole classic "She's crazy and that's the whole plot" that tends to happen in the genre.

The ending was not what I wanted or expected it, so it was a little bit disappointing but in a way I do think it was the perfect ending.

The only bad thing about this book is I don't know if I would consider it that much of a thriller. It has mystery, it is very fast-paced (in my opinion), but it doesn't leave the reader completely on edge and always questioning who may or not be the "bad guy". There's also some predictability, but I completely enjoyed reading the book so much, anyway!

I would say it's a 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for this free ARC.

This was a YA book that leans to the dark parts of our world. This book proves you can't trust anybody. I felt like the back and forth in time wasn't necessary but it still worked.

Rating: 2/5 stars

TW: Alcoholism, fake blood, sexual assault, rape, dead animals

I received this novel as an e-ARC from NetGalley and Penguin Teen. Any and all thoughts are my own.

Viv is seemingly the perfect girl. Her family is rich, she has good friends, and has a good paying job as a "simulated patient" for med school students to practice on. However, everything changes when she is caught taking a mysterious pill at a party and ends up in a coma. Now, Davida, Viv's friend, is attempting to unravel the past to determine what exactly happened to Viv that night.

I was extremely drawn in by the set-up of the story, that being it taking place at this simulated patient program where the teens are basically fake test subjects. I have never heard of this kind of program and I'm curious how many facilities actually employ this kind of program. It took you through the ins and outs of the program and what these kids actually dealt with, which I think was awesome!

However, the rest of the book fell extremely flat for me. Let's start with how the story is told. We start off in Davida's POV as she is being interrogated, which sets readers up to think that she's our main character, right? Wrong. A majority of the story is told from Viv's POV up until the accident that landed her in the hospital. It kind of reminded me of Sadie by Courtney Summers in its narrative choice, but it really didn't work for me. I was convinced this was Davida's whole story of investigation, but it just seems like a re-hashing of what happened to Viv from Viv's perspective. It was contradictory to me.

Speaking of POVs, the story is consistently shifting between interviews, different major and minor characters, and time skips. It was very confusing to follow in the first 20% of the book because you still have no idea who's story this is supposed to be telling. Is Davida solving the mystery or is this just the story of Viv and the other characters are just minor players? In addition, this layout unfortunately resulted in the re-hashing of information and plot twists that were supposed to be big, but in reality felt boring and repetitive, a big downfall for any mystery novel.

Another caveat to the story was that there were these moments that would have been perfect as an individual chapter or moment as they really leave the reader in suspense. Instead, it's broken up several times by another character's POV and it infuriated me to no end. I want to know what's in that box or in that letter but nope, we absolutely have to go back to Viv's POV for the sake of backstory.

I also absolutely despised Tim's POV and his character. His character was beyond bizarre and he may have had a heart of gold, but he was annoying and his POV could have been excluded and the story would have been a thousand times better. I first thought he was a creeper with how he was written, only to find out he's one of Viv's best friends? It wasn't good.

Mysteries are supposed to have build-up, theories, hints dropped every once in a while about what truly happened and who could be the culprit. This book had none of that. Everything gets dropped on you 80% of the way through the book and left me thinking, "Was this foreshadowed at all?" The answer was no, it wasn't. Did it make sense in the end? Kind of? It didn't feel as cohesive to me as this story should have been.

Now one of the biggest downfalls had to be the hint of bad mental health rep and medical inaccuracies. Davida talks at one point about her mother who abandoned her and how she had bipolar disorder. She had only known her for a few years before she left, but Davida even refers to it as her mother "getting sick." It was only really mentioned once, but it gave me big red flags. I'm just glad it wasn't really drawn out besides Davida's PTSD with some of the events.

Now for medical inaccuracies, this is a spoiler for the end of the novel, so feel free to skip this if needed: It's revealed that Viv took oxycodone, a single pill of it. She mixed it with alcohol before, and apparently that was what put her in the coma. However, after consulting my friend who is a medical school student, I discovered that this is NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO ACCOMPLISH unless Viv took a lot more oxycodone pills. So the whole mystery is completely made up and that angered me a lot.

Tell Me When You Feel Something falls into the category of great idea, horrible execution. I wouldn't recommend this to any fans of mystery novels or those trying to get into mystery. It's extremely confusing to get into and will leave you wishing there was more build-up.

***Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced eArc in exchange for my honest review.***

This book was difficult to get through. Beware of trigger warnings of sexual assault. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. It's hard to follow the storyline and characters because there are several points of view with a nonlinear timeline. It wasn't until I was halfway through the book that I began to differentiate the past from the present and the various characters. (I would often confuse Tim and Stu... I don't know why.)

This follows the fallout of Viv, who is an alcoholic with a hard life. Because of a pill she takes, she finds herself in a coma while her "friends" deal with the fallout and tries to piece things together. Sometimes the book was so slow that I wanted to stop reading. Other times, the action was so intense that I couldn't put it down.

TELL ME WHEN YOU FEEL SOMETHING: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A YA thriller that had an interesting premise. A young girl lies in a coma and multiple perspectives of how she got there, including notes from detectives. Seeing as how this book is intended for teens, I would have a warning at the top of the book indicating some of the subject matter within. All in all, I enjoyed it but I wasn’t compelled to stick with the characters.

NOTE: I was provided an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

* Thank you to Penguin Teen and Netgalley for the advanced copy for my honest review*

Told in multiple points of view, we have the story of Viv and Davida, two students who work as simulated patients for the med school. That means they act as characters for the med students to work on as if they were real patients, with real problems. That is until after a night at a party, Viv is in a coma. Enter in the lieutenant and a couple other characters that views come into play. Davida believes someone did this to Viv and is on the hunt to solve what happened to her.

This book was touch and go for me. I love multiple povs and the short chapters, but it was a hard story to connect to. I loved Viv’s chapters and how the story building took place. It was a bit predictable though. I saw the ending coming and it fell flat for me.

The intertwining and unreliable narratives really messed with me and made it really hard for me to connect with this story at all.

I couldn't get into this, it was not what I was expecting. I am sure there is a reader for it but it is not me.

I enjoyed the book. It was a pretty quick read and easy to follow. The formatting of the ARC was a little off for the interviews in the book (some started in the middle and I had to go forward several pages to start the section then go back). I did like the alternating timelines and the interviews. The story was engaging and interesting, although there should be trigger warnings for sexual assault, suicide, drugs, and mental illness for those that need them. Overall a solid 3.5 out of 5 stars for me.

I have mixed feelings about this book, i found it confusing at first and then it dragged a bit in the middle, seems like many of the chapters could have been skipped or edited and then it got better towards the end, so enjoyed it overall .

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Teen for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
trigger warnings: sexual assault, drugs, alcohol
I was very excited to read and review this book after reading the synopsis, but sadly I was very underwhelmed while reading. The book had a very slow beginning, I was about to DNF but continued anyway only until around half the book I kinda enjoyed it. My criticisms are that there was almost no diversity, there should have been trigger warnings reading this book, and that I never felt connected to any of the characters because the POVS kept changing about every page. I felt very lost reading this book, the idea and the plot were great but it was not executed well.

The book was great. Great plot. Excellent character development. And most importantly the writing was fantastic.

Rating: 2.5 stars

I’m always down to read a YA Mystery / Thriller. Even if they are labeled as “YA”, they can still be quite heart pounding! I also don’t read it too often but when I do, I am hoping to get hooked. Unfortunately for this one, it just felt like your average mystery / thriller.

The book does have multiple point-of-views as the girl, Viv, everyone is talking about is in a coma. Some of the point-of-views were more interesting than others. Since it does switch often it is hard to fully connect with the other characters as the plot is based around Viv.

When it came to Viv, she has a lot going on in her life. She is dealing with divorced parents, one remarrying, and everything else that comes with being a teen. She turns to alcohol to help numb the pain which is sad that she felt like she didn’t have anyone there for her besides the substance.

Besides the multiple point-of-views, there are also police interviews and emails that correlate with the case. I always like seeing this format because it helps to engage more with the plot.

The plot felt very average and didn’t leave me feeling like it brought anything new to the genre. After a bit it was easy to figure out where the story was going and who did it. I at least was surprised by one thing.

There is definitely need for content warnings so here they are: sexual assault, talk of child pornography, substance abuse

Overall, this was just okay. I felt like the plot could have been developed a bit better and the minor characters could have been less flat.

I’m going to leave the TWs to other reviews. But I will say, the blurb I read states it’s a look at a #MeToo scenario, which should at least give you a hint of possible topics for the book.

I’d like to throw in a warning about the excessive use of language. There is a lot - there’s a full (censored) list at the end of my review if you want to see if this is something you can handle.

I really don’t know how to rate this book. If I look at the story alone and ignore the premise/blurb I’d probably give it a 3 because I did enjoy the overall story. But the blurb presented me with a thriller, which this book absolutely was not. It was a mystery at best.

What I liked. The format of the story. It’s told in three POVs. One counting down to a party, the other two counting days after the party. I liked the premise in general - the med school Simulated Patient Program. I didn’t even really hate reading the story - the writing was clear and flowed well.

I had a problem with a lot of other things.

I kept forgetting what SP stood for (Simulated Patient) and that threw me from the story every time because I had to wrack my brain to remember the phrase. This is probably more of a me problem.

I didn’t really connect with any of the characters. I felt they all were just walking tragedies. Especially Viv. Her character could have been pared down a lot and I think I would have related to her better. Throwing in so much trauma just made everything worse.

I also didn’t understand Davida’s backstory with her mom (I understood it, but never figured out why it mattered). The plot didn’t hinge on anything in her backstory like it did with Viv. I see how Viv got into the situation she did - all the trauma, which is why I can more or less accept it. But it felt like Davida got thrown in some random backstory with her mom for the sake of her being sad about something (which never mattered).

This is a very minor spoiler out of context but I didn’t understand the purpose of Tom’s character or his involvement with Davida. Yes, it was for an important incident, but it all felt so forced. The only time we got to see any of their interactions was from Viv’s POV and I just can’t believe their relationship.

This entire book falls onto the trope of ‘I have a secret I promised not to tell which could resolve the entire book in five minutes’ Okay. That’s not a trope, but it should be. I’m not opposed to stories that keep information away from the characters, but it needs to be for a reason. The reason here was to let Davida assume things and then blow everything out of proportion.

I didn’t enjoy the excerpts from the police interviews. I felt like they were thrown in there for the reader just in case they didn’t understand what was happening. They were info dumps and nothing more.

And it bothered me that the story started with some weird police interview where I had no idea what was going on or why. It’s one thing to throw a reader into the action but this wasn’t action. This was a weird info dump about a character I’d never met and had no idea how to feel about.

Also, I know this is just the result of the eARC maybe not being fully formatted but all of the formatting errors made it a disaster to try to read on my kindle app (yes, I know there is a special NetGalley app to use, but I don’t like staring at a computer/phone screen and like to use my kindle to let my eyes have a break at times). I didn’t test out the formatting on my actual kindle, but I doubt it would have improved. If anyone wants to try to explain the weird ‘scenes’ with the detective, please do. I’m still confused about how that was supposed to work.

I also have an issue with the ending. I didn’t like that Davida more or less just stumbled upon the information. I would have been more impactful has <spoiler> she been the one to notice the pizza drawing since she had been there in the dressing room </spoiler>. This would have let Davida put the pieces together instead of having them on display for her to magically find.

OKay, writing all this out I think I have to give the book 2 stars. There are just too many things that don’t work. Too many weird story lines that were dropped. For example:

<spoiler> Whatever happened to Jack, the wedding, Viv’s mom, Stu, Viv - in the long term, the SP program, Davida’s mom, Dr. Hotness (can’t remember his name), and the actual jail time/sentencing for the two involved. </spoiler>

Honestly. Stu was the hero of this story. He was underrated.

The language is probably what you should expect. I didn’t go through and specifically track it as I read. But I searched for each word after finishing.

F word (23 uses - a lot more than I thought while reading)
sh*t (55 uses)
d*mn (13 uses)
H*ll (17 uses)
b*tch (2 uses)
wh*re (1 use in conjunction with one of the uses of c*nt)
A$$ (22 uses mostly in the form of a$$hole)
pr*ck (1 use)
The book also self-censors the word c*nt more than once (i’m not sure how to search for that and not get a bunch of results for non relevant words. The uses all refer to one specific incident and it being discussed. It is censored every time)
There may be other words I forgot or didn’t think to search, but this is a pretty good breakdown of the language content.

While I had issues with the story, I think this book will do well. It has enough going on to make you invested and if you don’t care much about loose ends it’s enjoyable.