I received this free eARC novel from NetGalley. This is my honest review.

This has been on my TBR pile for so long, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. I really enjoyed the storyline and seeing the characters change throughout the story was a great character development. The plot was great and kept my attention. I'm glad I got the chance to read this and will be on the lookout for more in the future!

I received this book in exchange for an honest review.
“My Kind of Crazy” by Robin Reul is…well…crazy. But the good kind of crazy! The book starts off with Hank Kirby asking a girl to prom. You think “prom” spelled out in sparklers would be sweet. Well…things don’t go according to plan. Hank ends up lighting the girl, Amanda’s, backyard on fire. Just when he thinks that things can’t get away worse Hank learns that Peyton, the girl that lives nearby, saw the whole thing. As Hank and Peyton grow closer he learns that Peyton has plenty of her own secrets to keep.

“My Kind of Crazy” is a fun book! I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but I really enjoyed it. I was wondering what Peyton would do next. How would Hank’s story end? This book has complex characters with complicated pasts. I would recommend this book to everyone who ever felt a little crazy in their lives.

The book did not really work for me. I DNF'ed it. I wasn’t able to connect with any of the many characters in the book and I found myself putting down the book a lot because it was never really catching my attention.

In book TWs: grief (including guilt), verbal abuse, physical abuse, alcoholism, neglect, mental health trauma, bi/panphobia, brief racism, anti-sex worker commentary (IDK what to call this but I felt like it needed to be mentioned so)

Disclaimer: I read an e-arc of My Kind of Crazy, but checked any quotes included in this against a finished copy!

I received an arc for this via Netgalley a million years ago, and since I'm going through my e-arc backlist I finally got around to reading it. Back when I requested it, and even up until I was actually reading it, I had assumed that this was going to be a comedy, which was pretty far off to be honest. My Kind of Crazy did have humor to it, but the book tackles a LOT of heavier subjects to the point where I definitely can't call it comedic. And that's completely fine, but I thought I'd mention it since the blurb confused me and I love helping out other fellow clowns to realize things.

My Kind of Crazy follows Hank as he accidentally burns down his crush's tree while trying to ask her to prom, only to have her neighbor Peyton, the weird pyro girl from school, tell him she saw everything. Now he's stuck being friendly to Peyton for fear of being snitched on to the police, but the more time he spends with her while they escape their less-than-ideal lives, the more he realizes he actually cares about her.

I loved the premise on how Hank and Peyton meet, and I liked both of them enough that it kept the story interesting, even if I don't think either of them were that memorable outside of the pyro moments. Hank loves superheroes and art and  lives with his alcoholic father, his stripper girlfriend and the survivors guilt of outliving his mom and older brother. Peyton loves lighting things on fire for stress release and lives with her mother, whatever deadbeat/abusive boyfriend she has, and a bunch of mental health issues (I'm struggling to come up with more personality traits than that for her tbh). I really liked the platonic foundation of the relationship Pyton and Hank had, I've been in a friends to lovers mood lately so that was a nice touch.

Unfortunately that's not all I have to say though, because while I can't speak for the mental health rep (which I definitely... questioned), I definitely can for some of the other stuff that I just couldn't ignore, ultimately bringing my rating down to two stars. First up is this charming bit of racism, "A kid at my school, Walter Zhou, brings ramen to school for lunch every single frickin’ day. He always has a smile on his face, so it can’t be all bad, right?" Having your ONLY Asian character mentioned briefly like this is just...no. Don't do it.

Then we've got Clay Kimball, whose sole purpose of existing is to be hated by Hank and his BFF Nick, since he's popular and sexually active. He's also the only LGBTQ+ rep in the entire book, and gets outed to Hank by Peyton who saw him secretly making out with another guy. Pretty sure that the only reason he even comes up and has it happen is so there's queer rep in the book which is terrible. Later on in the story, we get this lovely bi/panphobic gem, "[...]she apparently hooked up with Clay Kimball, who was having a hetero moment, and they took off." So not only did Clay get outed for no reason, but his sexuality is disregarded and he falls into the overused tropes of bi and pan folks being unable to "pick a side" and being sluts and cheaters.

The finally piece of the "what the fuck" puzzle included in the book, is the sex worker rep. Now, I am not a sex worker, and never have been so just keep that in mind, because just because I saw it this way doesn't mean that actual sex workers would. Hank's dad is dating a stripper, Monica, who's in her early/mid-twenties if I'm remembering correctly. I know for sure that she's not that much older than Hank is which is...gross but yeah. Anyway, her role is to literally be really nice and put up with her older boyfriends' constant alcoholism and verbal abuse. Throughout the book it's reiterated that Monica deserves a better job, and is essentially just looking down at sex work over and over again. Her job is constantly shown as a negative in their life too; Hank's dad has his alcoholism, grief and verbal abuse as baggage for her to deal with, while her job is shown as the equivalent to that. Sex work is not a dirty thing, and sex workers shouldn't be looked down upon and I am Tired™ of seeing this trope over and over again.

My Kind of Crazy had potential to be something fun and unique, but ultimately ended up falling short. The way the three diverse secondary and background characters were used made enjoying this story too difficult for me, I wish the author had put more thought and effort into including marginalized identities, or just skipped it all together if Reul didn't want to put the effort into research. It honestly reminded me of that terrible Hot Take™ someone in the book community had a while ago where they recommended just changing out names and sexualities of background characters for diversity points.

I recently bought a new kindle after my old one broke. For some reason I was unable to download this title from the cloud onto my kindle, therefore I will be unable to review this title. I am sorry for any inconvenience caused

Yay! A fantastic read from a new-to-me author! it was so fluffy and romantic. I can't wait to read more books from her!!

Really enjoyable read. Good characters and a Good story. Well worth a read. Think others will. Enjoy

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review. Unfortunately I am unable to give you a proper review. I apologize for the inconvenience. I am just no longer interested to read this book. I appreciate the approval.

Thank You for the opportunity to review this book. Sorry, I attempted to read this book. However, I couldn't get in to it. So, I was unable to finish reading and reviewing it.

So, by now, you probs already know that I love high school settings in books, esp when something like prom is involved. Therefore, when I opened up the book and saw that the first page starts with a promposal, I was all ~heart eyes~ and “whooo!!!”. Of course as I read the book, it grew from just prom – that became a secondary/back-story kind of – to some really real problems. My favorite things about all of this/the book was:

*the main character, Hank – pretty much everything about Hank’s personality was awesome and I could feel that, if I was in his shoes, I would have the same human reactions to the situation(s) he was put it in and I love that.
*the friendship – it wasn’t perfect and it had it’s up and downs and there were times when they probs wanted to leave each other but they also stayed together and had each other’s backs (for most of it) and I liked that quite a bit. I liked it because it feels like it could parallel many of the friendships I have (had) so I liked the real-ness of it.

There was one thing that did surprise me though and that was how much I wanted to jump in and hug at least one of the characters. If you read the book (and you should), then you’ll see that some of the characters have real problems and several times in the book, I just wanted to somehow jump in and make everything better. It only surprised me because in most books, I don’t really have that feeling so it was interesting that I did here….

Will no longer be reading or reviewing this book due to lack of interest in the title, and the fact that the title has been archived.

What I thought would be a light and fluffy read was actually one with too much depth. I looked for fun and all, but not something that will bring out emotions from within. DO not get me wrong, I liked that this book is different from what I had expected. It's not always that I get to read a book where a character admits that he's a mess, a screwed-up person. Both the main characters were all right, they are funny and somehow relatable and most of all, flawed, but I was not invested on neither of the two.

The only problem that I encountered reading this novel is that the finishing touch seemed... forced. AS if the story needs to still be pushed a little further, like there's many more to tell, but someone just had to stop it right there. A future that is undecided.

All in all, this title is a great debut novel.

This book was a bit of surprise for me! I honestly thought it was going to be a whole lot more light-hearted than it actually was. I mean… when it starts out with a guy who decides to ask the girl he’s been crushing on to prom by lighting sparklers in her lawn… and it ends up setting the whole yard on fire, I was expecting a lot of fun.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of fun in this story, but there was also a lot of depth. Hank Kirby, while a bit of a screw-up (self admittedly) has his own family issues. After the death of his mom and brother, his father turns to alcohol to cope and so his home life has become contentious, but he has his comics and his drawing to escape. When he accidentally sets fire to the yard, he meets Peyton. Though Peyton herself is a loner, she takes an interest in Hank, and her home life is even worse than Hanks.

Though maybe things aren’t exactly as Hank is made to believe… Peyton is hiding things and as their friendship progresses to something more, her secrets come out and test just how much he is willing to put into a relationship.

A heart Wrenching YA novel with aspects of mental illness in it. I liked that it was a lighthearted, quick paced read even though I didn’t love it. It was still a good read.

A heartfelt and heart wrenching novel about mental illness and how it can have an impact on daily life, this novel is inspiring, exciting, and perfect for those long summer nights.

Hank’s elaborate scheme to ask his crush to prom has literally backfired and caused a huge fire at her house. Even worse, he was caught in the act by Peyton, a weird girl from school.

The two teens form a friendship, which soon grows into a romance, but Peyton’s troubles surface, throwing everything into the fire.

Cute fun read.