Do you ever read a book and it stays in your head for months after? So much in fact that you already want to read it again? That is what happen to me with Samantha Markum’s debut book, This May End Badly. It was exactly the kind of YA contemporary book I love to read. Simply put the book was a joy and I loved every minute of it.

This May End Badly is the story of Doe, a proud student of The Weston School, an all girl school she has been attending. She wears her school like a badge of honor and takes all things tradition very seriously, including the prank war with the all boys school, Winfield Academy. Doe is ready to make senior year the best this rivalry has every seen. That is until it is announced that Weston and Winfield will merge at the end of the school year. Now Doe has to prove that Weston and Winfield are not what dreams are made of and she starts by trying to take down the king at Winston, her nemesis, Three. What Doe never saw coming was Three’s cousin Wells. And when Doe finds herself fake dating Wells, she has to start looking at what is really important to her.

Full disclosure, Doe drove me nuts about 75% of This May End Badly. But not because I didn’t like her or want her to find her happy ending, but because she was her own worst enemy and could not/would not get out of her own way. But if I’m honest she really was pretty great. And her relationship with Wells, fake or real, was really the star of the show for me. There was not one second of their story that I didn’t love. They played off one anther so well that I was swooning from start to finish. And even more than the relationship between these two was the friendship with Doe and her Weston girls. Even when she was single minded she always thought she had the best interest of the girls in her mind, misguided or not. That was a true highlight of the book.

It really is hard for me to accurately describe how much I loved This May End Badly. I know as soon as I finished I told so many people to have this book on their radar. It is one of those books you wish you could read for the first time all over again and I’m sad I can’t do that, but so happy so many of you will be able to. Do yourself a favor and add this to your TBR ASAP!!!

Doe is beginning her senior year at Weston Academy. She absolutely loves her school, her friends, and dong anything and everything to outdo the boys of their rival school in a prank war. When Doe learns that the end of the year the two schools will be combining she is desperate to do anything she can to put a stop to it. Her goal to escalate the rivalry and prove the two schools don’t mix has her doing strange things, even fake dating her nemesis’s cousin to get under his skin.

What Doe doesn’t expect is the fall out from her obsession to win the prank war at all costs. Her actions puts many of her relationships at risk, but even while everything seems to be falling apart around her, she finds herself drawn more and more to the boy she’s supposed to be fake dating.

I many things about this book, particularly Doe’s friends, how her relationship develops with Wells, and how the students from both schools come together for a greater purpose in the end. Doe is a strong and determined character, who was interesting to read about. There were moments when her tunnel vision, as far as the prank war went, felt slightly repetitive to me but other than that I really enjoyed following her journey.

Honestly? This is a YA book and the main character (Doe) is a spoiled girl that wants what she wants regardless of it making sense or not. But she kind of gets it at some point and (surprisingly) it doesn't end so bad for her. But what the title / the book is about is a possible merger between a school for girls (where Doe studies) with a school for boys (their rival school). That is what might end badly. It was a just okay book. I didn't like the narrator / main character, or even the main story, but you might find it interesting.

Thank you @Wednesdaybooks and @netgalley for the #gifted eARC!

Pranks wars, battle of the sexes and private schools?!?!?!

THIS MAY END BADLY is basically catnip for my YA loving self!

While Doe and her single-minded focus on destroying Three and the Winfield boys at times read very childish and selfish to me, once I reminded myself that a) her character is 17 and b) this book is not written with a woman in her mid-30s as its intended audience, I was able to get back to enjoying the book.

My main complaint is the names of the characters. There are so many W’s to keep straight… Winfield, Weston, Wells, Wellborn… I’m sure I’m forgetting a few!

I loved the pranks, Doe’s band of loyal friends, first loves, and watching these characters grow up throughout the book.

THIS MAY END BADLY is out 4/12/22!

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4620548173
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Thanks to the fact that I live halfway across the country from where I go to college, I’ve had to take a lot of flights lately, and I’ve figured out that the best books for me to read on flights are tropey rom-coms with silly drama. And I can think of no better book to accomplish this task than Samantha Markum’s “This May End Badly.”

In lieu of my usual summary of a book’s plot, please accept this non-exhaustive list of tropes found in this book.

- boarding school setting
- rivals to lovers
- high school prank war
- fake dating
- main character with a secret dark past
- she only calls him by his first name when they get really close
- family drama
- friend drama
- there’s a twist and suddenly things get really serious at the end

Like I said: white people and their drama.

Now, in full transparency, this book is fairly diverse — pretty much all the friends are queer and/or non-white, and the book isn’t all lighthearted all the time. There are some discussions of the lack of trans inclusivity in single-sex schools, as well as a plotline about a predatory teacher.

However, I felt that the heart of the story was on the lighter side. Doe and Wells’ schools are in a century-long prank war, and I loved Doe’s determination to prove her school is better. This is a great book for anyone who just really enjoys a good rivals to lovers story.

“This May End Badly” comes out on April 12, 2022. I received an early copy from the publisher, Wednesday Books, in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley, publisher, and author for the ARC of this novel for an honest review.

When I started reading this I almost stopped I thought "Great here is a typical high school prank war book, boys vs girls" BUT... I am so glad I pushed through it was so much more than that. Samantha Markum did a fabulous job with all the characters and the tone of the book. I devoured this book, it read so quickly and I got way into the story.

***SPOILER ALERT The one thing that disturbed me was the girls not speaking up about their sexual predator. I think it would have been more powerful if the author made a statement with them coming forward and reminding teens and everyone else to speak up!!

I started this book unsure of what to think. The heroine's friend group is large and there are lots of characters to remember. Was she going to end up likable with her single minded stubbornness to "win" this rivalry? The answer is Yes. It was so good. It was such a good fake relationship story. I loved the friends. I loved Wells and Doe together. I loved so much when her focus shifted to taking down a predator in her school. This is the book that I want my girls to read when they need a fun story with lots of growth and love (both friends and romantic), with different perspectives to help them think outside their comfort zone. It was the perfect book to read after dinner and late into the night.

The premise is appealing to teen readers. A school is evolving but the girls don’t want to go down without a fight. They intend to rule the school. It’s a cute read for young readers.

This May End Badly. All’s fair in love and prank wars. If you like fake dating and enemies to lovers trope, this one is for you. Pranking mastermind Doe and her friends are determined t win the was against Winfield Academy. But it’s announced the The Weston School will merge with its rival, their feud spirals out of control. This is a fun YA with a fearless protagonist that will have turning pages fairly quickly. It’s a funny and charming story. Really well written by Samantha. I also loooved this cover.

<b>3.75 stars rounded up! Samantha Markum delivers a fun fake dating YA romance in This May End Badly.</b>

<b>Tropes:</b> Fake Dating, Rivalry, Working Together

<b>Plot at a glance:</b> With a merger between the all-girls Weston School and all-boys Winfield Academy on the horizon, Doe rallies her best friends to take their pranking to the next level and win the century-long war against the all-boys school once and for all. She decides there’s no better way to knock her rival Three off his pranking game than by fake dating his cousin Wells. It’s all fun and games until Doe starts developing real feelings for her fake boyfriend. Soon her lies get out of hand and an incident with a long-rumoured predatory teacher comes to light, making Doe question whether there’s a greater cause she could be fighting for than the prank war.

<b>Review:</b> Samantha Markum perfectly captured the intense emotions and complexity of growing up in <i>This May End Badly</i>. Doe navigates rocky relationships with her friends, parents, first love and even faulty members with rash decision making and a quick-changing spectrum of emotions. Kudos to Samantha Markum for instilling her heroine with such authenticity. Doe is a bit prickly and immature, but she has a good heart that ultimately makes you root for her.

I really liked the colourful cast of characters. Doe’s friends are the kind of ride-or-die friends you instantly admire. The Wellborn boys, especially Wells and Three, seem one -dimensional at first but are slowly revealed to be quite multi-faceted. Wells is a hero after my own heart – voracious reader, intelligent, sarcastic, and protective of the ones he loves. Even Three won me over by the end of the novel.

Your milage may vary with the predatory teacher storyline. It was handled fairly well but may be triggering for some readers.

Overall, <i>This May End Badly</I> is a YA romance that will keep you turning the pages.

<i>Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books for the chance to read this digital ARC.</i>

This book gave me everything I wanted and more. Rival boarding schools? Check. Prank wars? Check? Fake dating? CHECK! Not only was this book full of fun tropes, but Markum expanded upon those tropes to provide nuance and depth to multiple characters in a way few YA authors can. The various friendships Doe has with her group of girls were each unique and well-developed with love, disappointment, and other REAL emotions that exist between friends. The chemistry between Doe and Wells was so fun to watch develop and, similarly, grew so naturally.

The handling and nuance of sexuality, gender, and sexual assault were done so well that I have hope and excitement for the young readers exposed to this book. I wish I had books like these 10 years ago, but I’m so thankful I’m exposed to them now.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday Books for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This May End Badly managed to succeed and subvert all of my expectations going into the story, delivering a refreshing and emotional read that brings its reader into a world worthy of a TV show. With several plot lines crossing one another over a school year, the book’s simple premise is not unlike a prank: it draws you in under one trope then delightfully surprises you with anything but.

The book, on its upmost surface, is about Dorothy “Doe” Saltpeter’s senior year at all-girl’s The Weston School as she engages in a prank war with the neighboring all-boy’s Winfield Academy, their historical rival. Doe lobs pranks against the school with her close group of friends, all of whom have helped her battle since freshman year: Sumi, Jade, Gemma, and her best friend, Shawn. However, Winfield Academy gives as good as they get in the prank war, led by Nathaniel “Three” Wellborn III, and his unit composed of several cousins. Running interference as a (mostly) neutral messenger between the two groups is Three’s cousin Gabriel “Wells” Wellborn. When both groups become aware of plans for a merger between Weston and Winfield the following schools year, they decide to amp up their pranks to stop it from happening.

However, whereas the two schools have always been at war, Doe and Three take the rivalry to a personal level. Every conversation between the two is a battle of the wits, with insults hurled fast and frequently. Angered by one such conversation, Doe arranges to kick Three in the knees metaphorically by fake dating Wells, who has his own personal reasons to want his cousin humbled. Their ruse continues alongside bigger and ballsier pranks. Things diverge from the plan as Doe and Wells begin to know one another beyond their expected roles, mixing their fake relationship with real feelings.

Weston and Winfield, alongside their Midwest host town of Delafosse, are the perfect backdrop to the antics of Doe, Wells, and Three. Boarding schools in novels seem to generally have an air of romanticism and idealism, which This May End Badly is not exempt from partly falling prey to. In the small details that flesh out this world, the reader is able to understand how their environment has fostered the war. Certain restaurants are declared Weston territory or Winfield’s; the bookstore is neutral; both schools are reliant on Delafosse’s public students for off-campus parties. Administration at both schools turn a blind eye to the pranks unless they’re forced to address them, all while ushering students to quickly accept the changes being forced upon them. Something I could not help but notice, however, is that despite its necessary links to Delafosse, neither school really acknowledges the impact they have on the community they live in during the school year.

This silence speaks to a pattern in This May End Badly of ignoring the inherent privilege each player has that enables their game. Jade briefly brings up Doe’s racial privilege during the consequences of a prank and Doe mentions several times how the Wellborn’s wealth underwrite their battles. Beyond that, however, this novel allows its soft framing of how wonderful it is to be a Weston Girl or Winfield Boy obscure more realistic implications extending beyond its interior. I could put this framing out of my mind if not for how it directly impacts Doe’s character. In total honesty, Doe is a hard character to root for. She is tenacious, has a victim complex, and praises an experience formed by white feminism. Unfortunately for me, the novel is a first person point of view from Doe. During the events that are light-hearted and silly, this is not a problem. Once the plot starts thickening and Doe is put in tougher situations, reading her view becomes annoying.

Her unlikeable character is tempered by her relationship with Wells. Foil to her in many ways, Wells is the perfect vehicle to begin the change in Doe’s perception of himself, Three, and the merger as a whole. He is charismatic and tries to remain as neutral as possible. He sees why Doe is hurt by Three and Weston becoming co-ed, but more than that, he sees what Doe tries to ignore by focusing on the prank war with such narrow-mindedness. Wells is far from an angel himself, and indeed, I wanted to shake him for his communicative skills for a majority of the novel. But he manages to bring out the best in Doe, and vice versa, which makes him a compelling romantic hero that keeps from being too perfect. While the prank war serves as the basic arch moving the plot forward, it is Doe and Wells’s relationship that carries This May End Badly’s evolution.

What marks This May End Badly as different from many of its YA peers is that Doe and Wells’s relationship does not overtake the prank war as the most important plot line. At its heart, this book is about Doe, Weston, and her legacy at the school. What affects her legacy changes throughout the acts— stopping the merger, beating Three, and later, dealing with a predatory teacher. It is solely Doe in control when she works to overcome these challenges, drawing upon Wells for strength and friendship, never pushing him to use his privilege for her gain. This change to similar novels made me smile, as I may not like Doe but I do respect her immensely for this.

I will be buying a copy of This May End Badly upon its release, as the story makes me smile as much as it makes me roll my eyes— a reaction which transports me back to the joys of being a teen navigating high school. Samantha Markum is an author to watch and I eagerly await her follow up.

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

I picked up Samantha Markum’s This May End Badly when I was in somewhat of a reading slump . . . which Markum promptly ended. I could not put down this book!

The novel begins with Doe and her best friends (Gemma, Jade, Sumi, and Shawn) in the midst of pranking their neighboring boarding school as part of a tradition that goes back generations. The girls of The Weston School and the boys of Winfield Academy have had a rivalry that permeates every event throughout the year, and Doe and her friends (but particularly Doe!) take that rivalry to new heights, driven by the extra-special loathing that Doe and Winfield boy Three have for each other. As seniors, they all realize this is their last chance to win the prank war, so the creativity is rampant.

That rivalry is the center of the book, and it creeps out into every corner of Doe’s life. It causes her to set up a fake dating scenario with Three’s cousin Wells, to keep secrets from her friends and family, to lose focus on her academics despite her continued need to earn her spot at Weston (she entered the school under less-than-ideal circumstances).

Doe is brilliant and fun and funny and also deeply, deeply flawed. I loved the varied relationships here: Doe’s close-knit friendships and her great relationships with her parents and even the growing friendship she has with Wells. I also appreciated watching as Doe lost her grip on the real purpose of the pranks and as she became so laser focused that she lost sight of where it all had started.

There are serious threads running through the fun of the Weston-Winfield battles, threads that pull tighter when a merger between the schools is announced and Doe has to start considering what she really loves about Weston and herself . . . and what needs to change.

Markum navigates the unfurling plot and Doe’s character development beautifully, offering complexity and nuance as Doe reflects on who she is and who she wants to be.

Trigger warning: sexual assault

This book was an adorable view of someone struggling to come to terms with change in such a connectable way. The way Doe fought change in her school, in her friendships, and in romance was so incredibly relatable, especially as I thought back on my senior year of high school. And while I didn’t go to a boarding school, this book sure made me wish I did!

This was such a fun and enjoyable story about growth, friendship and love! Despite there being so much going on (okay, maybe it was a tad bit *too* much), I was thoroughly entertained from start to finish, even in the middle part, where things got dragged a little. This book would’ve probably benefitted from keeping things more simple, maybe even cutting out a couple of subplots, but the banter more than made up for it and had me cheesing through it all! One thing I will say: I wish to have gotten a little more insight into Wells’s character to understand him better; it wasn’t easy at times. As for Doe… she’s flawed, but she’s trying her best and learning from her mistakes, and that’s what matters, 3.5/5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/Wednesday Books for the ARC.

I liked this! It’s not my usual type of read but it was an enjoyable , quick read. Recommend to people who enjoy a boarding school book (not quite dark academia but kinda?)

This was such a fun read! I found it to be the perfect balance between plot and character development. I also really loved the relationships between the main characters.

DNF. I really liked the premise but the writing did not work for me at all. It wouldn't be fair to the book if I finished reading and gave it a low rating.

Overall I felt this to be a cute and enjoyable read. Occasionally the obstacles the characters are presented with, as well as their actions/reactions, felt forced and more to drive the plot than anything else. In the end, though, the bigger themes of friendship, community, inclusion, standing up for what you believe in, and more - are powerful and heartfelt; and I love the imperfectness of the main characters as they struggle with real life lessons and doing the right thing.

OK this was so fun!! Loved the whole rivalry and all the pranks! The characters were all great. The friendship with her girls was wonderful. As for the love interest, I was rooting for them the entire time. It did get a little slow in parts but for a debut, this was very well done. I'd recommend it. .