Thank you Netgalley for the ARC. I avoided this book honestly because most hyped books just don’t meet the hype. That being said this book did. This book was everything! Friends to enemies to lovers, bad boy vs cheerleader. But I great dose of reality I think honestly every highschool kid needs (Minus the spicy bits) a real message about the way you treat people and bullying and how times have changed and you can’t escape the pressure of being perfect anymore. It’s fantastic. Now the romance was like lighting that struck throughout the book. It was fast and intense and gone. A real slow burn with an aggressive twist. The characters were real and easy to relate to I think everyone will relate to one of them. A great book cover to cover and I’m sad it’s over.

slay mama this is enemies to lovers epistolary new adult steamy perfection!!! penelope douglas is at the top of her game in NA and spicy booktok books!

I have mixed feelings on both Penelope Douglas as an author and this title in particular. Her books overall are somewhat hit and miss. Yes, I’ve really enjoyed some of them. Some of them weren’t it for me at all.

Punk 57 falls somewhere in the middle. I found it incredibly readable and was able to get through it super quickly. I didn’t love either of the main characters though.

In a simplified and brief overview: Our main characters are pen pals as kids, they share their innermost personas and care a great deal for each other. In their lives at school they’re complete opposites, he’s a loner and she’s the bitchy popular girl. When they eventually meet in person they don’t get on. He, being something of a misfit, is not the kind of person she’d associate with and he’s repulsed by her careless treatment of people. Misunderstandings ensue.

Honestly though, the conflict/misunderstanding that creates the initial tension doesn’t feel super believable to me. Off of that the “bully” aspect of their relationship felt unwarranted. Really, it would have been an EASY conversation to clear the air and for me the unnecessary drama kind of outweighed the good moments, and there were some! I also just found the twists and subverted expectations element of the plot line predictable 🤷‍♀️ oh well.

So all around this book was certainly not bad, but not a recommendation from me. I personally thought it was just OK. If you’re super intrigued by the premise give it a go, you probably won’t hate it and maybe unlike me you’ll be blown away!