I've been wanting to read this one for a long time and have seen it featured on almost all sapphic recommendation lists so I had really high hopes for this one.

I liked the characters but I found Rachel to be very annoying. I tend to DNF books that have annoying MC but thankfully it has both the MCs POV so Sana was always there to balance it up. I know this played a lot into their general personalities but yeah.

The plot of the book was predictable but still enjoyable nonetheless. I liked the writing specially pertaining to parts about Sana's family and career talks, found some good quotes there. Also liked the whole Helen of Troy project Rachel had going.

The parts I didn't enjoy were the miscommunication trope towards the end and a couple or so scenes here and there between the MCs. But the ending made up for it, I would say.

My only problem with the book was the sentence "Urdu was Hindi, after all" in the first chapter.

Overall, it is an enjoyable one-time read, recommended to YA contemporary and sapphic lit lovers.

Rating; 3.5

I loved this story! It felt real and the characters were relatable. It felt like a situation I could find myself in.

This book wasn't for me and I am sorry to say I did not completely finish this. I decided to take a chance on an audiobook, but even though I can understand why it could be fun for an author to read her own book aloud, it didn't work out all that well. There was no distinction between characters and I personally didn't like the way she was narrating it.
Rachel is not a nice a person so it didn't feel like it was possible for Sana to make the turn from enemy to lover..I don't know. It just wasn't for me.

Rep: Muslim biracial lesbian MC (Persian & Indian), Jewish Mexican lesbian MC

This is an enemies to lovers wlw story. It has good sapphic and POC rep. The two mcs already have their sexuality figured out, so it was nice to see that instead of a coming out story for a change. It also doesn’t mention any labels. Both of the characters and their families are POC.

I liked that Rachel’s movie was about Helen of Troy, because I love Greek mythology. Kinda random but I also liked that Sana was playing Overwatch. I used to play that game all the time.

The story and characters were alright, but I found myself losing interest at some points. I just wasn’t super into the story. It was ok, not great.

The narrator is good. Only issue is that the audio got muffled for a phrase or two 3 times, around 32% in. It’s cool that the author got to narrate her own book. I also find that it would have maybe been good to have a dual-narration to help distinguish the two characters a bit better because I had a hard time doing that. She also didn’t do any accents or change her voice much when speaking as other characters unfortunately.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an audio ARC of this book.

This book was fine, but just not for me. The narration was also fine, even though the breathiness of it annoyed me at times, but that's a me problem. Again I didn't love this, but it's mainly because I can't fathom how on earth Sana could be in love with someone who continuously treats her like sh*t. Honestly for 60% of this book Rachel is unbearable. She was so rude and just completely unlikable. I don't mind an unlikable character, and I also don't mind the enemies to lovers trope, but it just didn't make sense. She had no real motivation to hate Sana. Sana was always nice to Rachel, and for no reason Rachel decided to hate her and be mean to her. Technically we do get a reasoning, I just think it was some weak bs. Rachel also has a redemption, but I still didn't like it. Sorry Rachel, but I would never

I really loved the LGBTQ/POC representation in this book. Unfortunately, I found myself losing interest in this audiobook throughout the story. It felt like some parts of the plot were used to add length and not really move the story forward. While I am not against recommending this title to my teen patrons, it wont be the first title I suggest.

Rachel is one project away from securing her place at one of the most prestigious film colleges in the country. The only problem? Everyone around her is incompetent and she just fired her lead actress. After a dispute with her advisor forces her to cast her greatest enemy in the lead role, Rachel has to re-evaluate her goals, her project, and her judgements of Sana. Sana has spent her whole life training to be a surgeon. She does not drink alcohol because it could possibly cause hand tremors later in life. She has taken every pre-med class her school offers, and has an early acceptance to Princeton. With everything falling into place, why can't Sana relax into her pre-planned future? Getting roped into her enemy's senior thesis project doesn't help. But as Sana gets to know Rachel better, she begins to see the value of letting other people into her inner world and being honest about her feelings. Will Sana and Rachel be able to finish the film in time? As sparks begin to fly, and familial tensions threaten both girls, no one thinks they can make the deadline.
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I loved this book! A refreshing and diverse YA romance that features a true enemies-to-lovers arc. I have listened to a lot of audiobooks and it seems fairly rare for the author to narrate a fiction audiobook, but hearing the author read these characters felt so right. She placed the emphasis in all the right places, and her love for these characters and their stories shone through. Each character had a distinct and meaningful arc beyond the romance, and this was a YA story with genuinely high stakes. I would recommend this book to anyone looking for their next enemies-to-lovers story!

firstly, really happy to see the representations POC queer/sapphic relationships getting not only book deals but audiobook deals too! getting to listen to the author narrate her own book is always exciting since i think that is the best way to make sure the text is represented as intended when being read aloud. aminah mae safi did a great job voicing the characters and bringing out the emotion in the text.

however, i do think that this book would have benefitted from a dual-narration. since the book sees from the perspective of both main characters, having too different voices would have made it easier to distinguish perspectives. additionally, i feel that having two different voices would have allowed for a more personal experience due to the individuality in the voices.

in general, the story was fun and kept me interested till the very end. this is YA so definitely more suited for younger audiences. i didn't have any problems with the plot - even if it was a little cliche i think that the sapphic book genre deserves a bit of that fun since i find sapphic books are most often riddled with tragedy.

the pacing felt steady throughout the book, however, the ending felt quite rushed. it was a happy ending that was a little cheesy but, understandable for the YA audience.

This book was very okay. I loved the premise of enemies to lovers YA f/f romance, but it just fell flat for me. The plot had some issues, Rachel was unnecessarily mean, and I just felt the story dragged on too much. I still enjoyed listening to it and don't dislike it by any means, but it would not be on my list to recommend others.

⭐⭐⭐

First of all, thank you for the audio copy of the book.

I LOVED it. Like, really. It's such cute and perfect. An enemies-to-lovers romance between a cheerleader and a film nerd? Opposite attract? It's such a good idea.
The characters are so lovable and touching. The love story is the cutest. Maybe it's not transcendent but still. The characters evolve when they're together. They both have dreams, flaws, strength... They're imperfect and yet perfect in their own way.

This book is just a cute lesbian romance, that deserves to be made in a movie because it's what we need. But yes, it has some depth too. Also, I loved how the author narrated the book.

Anyway, just a new comfort read that makes me so happy.

I really thought I was going to like this book, but I just couldn't. The conflict is so contrived and the character development is all over the place. Rachel's story is the stronger of the two and probably could have stood on its own without Sana's POV, but Sana is by far the more likeable character (despite basically being Rory Gilmore). I'm tempted to bump it to 2.5 for the loveable himbo, but he's kind of irrelevant to the plot despite being in multiple scenes. Readers might also enjoy Darius the Great is Not Okay, I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, and The Inexplicable Logic of My Life.

This was a nice little lesbian YA contemporary. It is messy and complicated sometimes and there's a lot of factors that go into each of these MC's and their decisions, but it worked. For the most part.

Sana is seemingly perfect. She comes across as completely put together, wealthy, captain of the cheerleading squad etc. In the eyes of others, she can do no wrong. But that's what sana is trying to prove to people. She is trying to be perfect to meet all the expectations of everyone in her life while disregarding her own desires for her own future.

Then there's Rachel. Rachel is driven and completely hyper focused on going after her own goal of becoming a film director. She was pulled to this fancy school and recruited and now she's on the fast track for an NYU film scholarship. All she has to do is make a movie or senior year of high school. The problem is is that Rachel isn't very likable. She is judgmental and selfish and sees the worst in people. She isn't willing to accept that other people may have positive input or different opinions or experiences then what she believes them to have.

So how the heck do these two characters end up meshing? When Rachel first showed up at the school, Sana asked her out. The issue is that Rachel thought that it was a prank, that this pretty perfect cheerleader was making fun of her by asking out the poor new student. Of course Rachel didn't actually give Sana an opportunity to say that it wasn't a joke and that Sana was genuinely interested and it sparked this level of hatred that Rachel had for Sana.

Rachel is mean to Sana. She is absolutely brutal and it is ridiculous. She is an unlikable character and her POVs were frustrating to listen to. She does eventually have some character growth but heads up.

By a cruel twist of fate, Rachel needs a new lead actress and Sana ends up filling that role. The two of them go back and forth on the direction of the movie and they end up creating a friendship of sorts. I'll be honest and say I didn't really quite grasp the moment when Rachel went from hating Sana to liking her but it happens and it's there.

This is an enemies to lovers contemporary YA with one hinted at sex scene that is written in a closed door style meaning that it is hinted at but nothing explicit is on page.

This book tries to tackle a lot of different themes including family obligation and anxiety and accidents and hospitalization and alcoholism and parental abandonment etc. There's a lot going on. This is not a coming out story. And I think that is kind of wonderful to see because so many queer YA focus on coming out but both Rachel and Sana are out as lesbian and there is virtually no homophobia if I'm remembering correctly. It was a breath of fresh air.

I was given a audio arc of this through NetGalley and because it was an audio I need to take a moment to talk about the narration. This is one of the instances where a good book can be ruined by a bad narrator and I feel guilty saying that because it's narrated by the author, but it was a struggle at times. My biggest issues were that this is told in dual POV but the POV's change sporadically within chapters versus each chapter being a different POV. Because of that and because the author didn't do any sort of tone change for each character, it was really easy to get lost and forget who was talking. There are multiple times when I had to rewind or go back an entire chapter just to figure out who the heck was speaking at the moment.

As a whole though, I really did enjoy this one. I probably will not be listening to it again but I could see myself rereading it in the future.

WOC lesbian MCs

First off, I love to hear the author narrate the audiobook, thanks Aminah for that! Second, I, like Sana, don't love to be assaulted with cursing, so that was a bit much for me, but I also remember that high school was a time I couldn't get away from it, so I do understand and actually understood Sana when she finally broke down and let the curse words fly. Overall, the book was great. The characters feel real and full and I can't help but invest my heart in all of your characters, the main and auxiliary characters alike, no one felt like a fluff character! And of course, I really loved Sana and Rachel, they both have so much that could have turned them into whiny obnoxious teens but they were really great characters to read! This was a Teen/YA book that had more mature and likable characters than many adult books. Your characters have so many labels and communities and experiences that could define them but none of them really did define them and that was remarkable. All those things contributed to who they are but in the end the force of their true selves was the driving factor in all they do and again that is remarkable. I was amazed to watch these young, ambitious, powerful and talented young women find the core of themselves when there are so many adults out there that have failed to do that at twice their age. The opposites attract trope unfolded nicely but also was not the star of the story. Each character had a wonderful personal arc and needed the others to propel them towards finding the truth of their real selves. Brava, Aminah, well done!

For almost a year now, this book has been on my TBR, so I was super excited when the audiobook came up on Netgalley!

Things I liked:
- The book is well-written; the characterizations are clean, the plot flows well, and overall the writing style was in no way a detriment to the books likeablility for me.
- I really loved Sana. She was a fantastic character to read about, and I loved all of her POV chapters.

Dislikes:
- I found Rachel's character to be really insufferable, in a way that she doesn't *fully* change by the end of the book. Of course, she has some good character development, but I just didn't find it to be ENOUGH development for me.
- I was sometimes confused by who's POV was being read since the narrator is the same for both characters. Lots of books do this, so it's no fault of this specific audiobook, but I found it hard to follow at times because of that.

**Special thanks to OrangeSky Audio and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced reader's copy of this audiobook, in exchange for my honest review.

Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi, Audiobook Edition, narrated by Aminah Mae Safi

Note: This book was initially published in 2019, and I have received an ARC of the audiobook, set to publish May 10, 2022. My review will place extra emphasis on the audio/narration.


The premise & comps:
Freshman year of high school, Sana Khan asked Rachel Recht out, which went miserably wrong, as Rachel assumed Sana was asking her out as a joke. What follows is several years of maintained hatred, as Rachel declares Sana her enemy. Described by the author as ‘Gilmore Girls if Rory and Paris had gotten together,’ the book does well to live up to the comp in the familial relationships aspect, and there are a lot of parallels in the plot as well. The central relationship occasionally missed the Rory x Paris mark, particularly because Rachel hates Sana because of that incident freshman year, as opposed to because she respects her intelligence and sees her as a threat, a la Paris.

Rating: 3 🌟

Audio/Narration rating: 2.75-3 🌟

Topics/Themes: The story explores first love, familial conflicts, and the weight of planning your future at just 18 years old. The familial conflicts and relationships are well fleshed out and incredibly compelling, as is Sana’s struggle to decide her future course of action, but still I found that the story may have been improved by added length. The topics are sufficiently framed to draw the reader in, but beg for additional substance, and I would have loved to see more of the families and learn more about them.

Plot:
Each strand of the story is compelling, but it struggles to form a whole. The relationship between Rachel and Sana should tie the story together, and it often does, weaving together their individual narratives, but I sometimes found that the central story surrounding Rachel’s film struggled to hold my interest, until the last portion of the book.


Characters:
The book features such a wonderfully diverse cast, and I wish more time had been given to developing the secondary characters. Sana is well developed, and her motivations are clear and add value to the story and to her actions. Rachel, on the other hand, frequently felt underdeveloped. The book gives her a backstory, but I struggled to find life in the character, and I never felt attached to her or felt that the full weight of her actions were portrayed in the novel. Rachel and Sana’s interactions were a joy to read, and they maintained entertaining banter. One other thing that I noticed was that despite the fact that both characters are described as having come out, neither uses a label of any kind, which felt slightly odd. A label is not a necessity, but since both characters feel comfortable and confident in their sexualities, the absence of the words “gay,” “lesbian,” etc felt intentional. Lesbian is not a dirty word!

Conclusions:
I loved the premise of the book, and as a longtime Gilmore Girls fan, I appreciated many of the parallels, which were effective and clear, without being overbearing or leading the book to feel like a derivative work. The romance of the novel was sweet and endearing, and the more romantic scenes were well paced and slow-burn enough to build tension. Ultimately I loved the ideas and a lot of the writing style, but felt that the relationship didn’t pull me in as much as I would have liked it to, with it all coming down to Rachel labeling Sana her enemy after Sana tried to ask her out. The story is sweet and the romance (basis for hatred aside) is well executed. One of my favorite aspects of the novel was easily the family dynamics, which helped the story live up to its comps and maintain my interest.

Audio/Narration Conclusions:
It is clear through her narration the care Safi has for her work. There is a certain degree of emotion that only an author can bring to their own work, and I appreciated what Safi brought to the experience. However, I believe the project would have benefitted from a professional narrator. Safi doesn’t attempt character voices/tone shifts, which make dialogue difficult to follow at times, and there are a couple instances where the audio cuts out and seems to be replaced by post-production recording, with wildly different sound quality, for a sentence or two. This particular issue is not a testament to Safi’s narration so much as it represents the production, but I did find it jarring, even if it only happened a handful of times. I love the passion that Safi brought to the project, and her love for the story is evident in every word, but professional narrators often bring a lot of benefit to an audiobook project, and I think that would have been the case here.

Oh my. I don't read romance. This book may have changed that. Sweet, clean, beautiful. I couldn't put it down.

I honestly did not finish this book. It has been one I’ve been interested in reading for a while now, and it did not relate to it or find it enjoyable. That makes me sad as the author is such a great person but this book wasn’t right for me.

Audiobook arc from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.75 stars

This is the classic ya romcom enemies to lovers, so you really can’t go wrong. Sana Khan is the top student and head cheerleader at the private high school. Rachel Recht is the scholarship film student. They two have nothing in common, no reason to have any history but they do. On Rachel’s first day, freshman year, Sana asked her out. Because that is obviosuly absurd, Rachel thought it was a joke and vowed to hate Sana forever.

Jump to their senior year, Rachel’s final film project is in shambles, she’s fired her lead, and had a crash on the quad (semi caused by Sana) that led to a cracked camera. The film teacher requires Rachel to cast Sana as her lead to make up for the damage. The rest, as they say, is history.

These characters are extremely flawed, they’re high schoolers after all. But the way they grow and overcome them is fantastic. I spent most of the book wanting to slap them both for not just saying how they really felt but they got there!

I seriously enjoyed how much we got to see into their respective cultures and families.

Safi made a great narrator as well. Off the bat I wasn’t sure I was going to enjoy her style but after the first chapter she hit her stride and gave life to her story.

The side characters fell a little flat for me. The parents and family members were super inconsistent personality wise and the one friend was only brought in for plot development.

I think this story would have worked significantly better in a college setting with both of them as commuter students looking at masters programs/med school rather than high schoolers looking at college. Because really what hs student has such intense film projects or interviews for overseas fellowships??

Overall though, this is a great contender for your next audiobook listen! It comes out on May 10th!

So I love audiobooks and have for a long time. I've consumed audiobooks literally my whole life, starting from when my mom had books on cassette tapes when I was a toddler. So as I've become a reader in my own right I consume them regularly. In fact, I've often started buying an audiobook version of a book that I read a physical ARC for, so the author can get some money out of that and I can re-enjoy a book that I already enjoyed once. But this will be the first time I will review an audiobook ARC, and it happens to be a book I've read before, so it's funny the way that works. But after doing this I'm looking forward to some future audiobook ARCs as it was enjoyable for me.

As I alluded to, I have read Tell Me How You Really Feel when it first came out, but while I recognized the blurb and cover, I didn't really remember many details (though as the book went things came back to me) and I remembered it being a kinda fun YA enemies to lovers story

This book follows Sana Khan and Rachel Recht. Sana and Rachel do not get along based upon a misunderstanding earlier in high school. But after a mishap with a camera they are forced to work together on Rachel's new shoot about a reimagined version of "the Odyssey". And even though there is little love lost between Sana and Rachel, when they are forced to work together they realize they might have more in common than they thought.

As I remembered, I enjoyed this book a fair amount. You're going to have the drama and tension as seen in any enemies to lovers story and watching those walls come down and trust build between the characters is nice.

This book has an interesting setting too, seeing movies and the glamor of LA's surroundings and referred too often in this book while following characters who are just outside of it was interesting and engaging to me. I could feel Rachel just yearning to be a part of that world.

The characters of Sana and Rachel are complex. While I did like them as a couple and like where they ended up, I didn't always love the character of Rachel. She could be very mean to Sana and that never seemed to be against Rachel at all. I just don't know why Sana kept on wanting Rachel after all that time. While I didn't love Rachel, I felt Sana was a very moving character who carried a lot of weight on her shoulders. I really liked seeing her come into her own over the course of the novel.

One thing I have to note about the Narration of the audiobook, I believe the author did the narration herself which has been done well before. I can think particularly of the Starting from Scratch audiobook by Georgia Beers. And Aminah Mae Safi does have a pleasant voice to listen too for several hours I felt like often there wasn't enough difference in Rachel and Sana's characters so it was a little difficult to always tell who was speaking. Also there were very quick turnarounds in chapter changes, and perspective changes and they can be missed.

This is a very petty complaint and it doesn't affect the overall story, but it did stick with me- that Rachel and Sana are filming a retold version of "the Odyssey" but focusing on Kassandra and Helen's perspective on characters. But Kassandra and Helen are primarily from the Illiad, the Odyssey is afterwards. And like, I get why they would mainly refer to the Odyssey, it is more culturally popular but I like mythology and ancient Greek stories (I even took two years of ancient Greek in college) so it just bugged me a little.

Overall I enjoyed getting into this book for the second time. It's a fun angsty story and hearing the audiobook was a good experience. 3.5/5

This was a beautiful story. Sana Khan, a cheerleader on her way to the medical field with family secrets, and Rachael Rechtit, a perfectionist movie enthusiast trying to get a scholarship to NYU while directing her first movie. I really enjoyed parts of this book, the romance was sweet and slow, and Sana was a very interesting character to follow. I loved the discussion of movie history and how much of a male dominated field it is.

This book really deserves four stars but it gets held back from the inconsistent pacing that held back a lot of potential for storytelling. And Rachael's internalized misogyny was really hard to listen to and felt like she had a "not like other girls" mindset throughout most of the book. She villainized femininity and held herself at a higher standard as if to say "I'm not one of those girls." The ending also made me cringe with the public love confessions, which is something I'm rarely a fan of in stories.

But the book tackled a lot of issues and the narrator made the story sound so beautiful that I still enjoyed it.