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swu1234588's review against another edition
5.0
I actually can’t fault this book!! I read it in 1 sitting! Great storyline and relatable, loveable characters!
littlemissstar55's review against another edition
5.0
I received a copy of this from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This has not impacted my views.
I am also a part of the AusYABloggers tour, so my full thoughts and review will go up on the 1st of April.
5/5 stars
I am also a part of the AusYABloggers tour, so my full thoughts and review will go up on the 1st of April.
5/5 stars
astarlia's review
funny
reflective
fast-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Love the premise and the characters
Content Warnings
Minor: Death and Grief
samwlabb's review
5.0
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Lottie is tired of Evelyn Tait ruining her life and is determined to beat her at her own game. The takedown will require patience, planning, and a makeover of sorts. But when Lottie assumes her new good girl persona, she arrives at some epiphanies about Evelyn, her family, and herself.
I know this is only the second book by Nwosu, but I am in love with her writing, characters, and storytelling. Though this story dealt with friendship, family, and even romance, at its core, it was a story about growing and changing and being true to yourself.
Lottie hadn't even finished secondary school, and her life had already been turned upside down twice. Once, when her mother left the family, and again, when her father remarried. I felt like Lottie never properly dealt with the emotional fallout, and it all just came out in the wrong ways. I mean, she got herself into trouble so often, that she was on a first name basis with the principal. [NOTE: I loved these scenes. They never failed to delight me] That was why I appreciated that her nefarious plot turned out to be such a wonderful path to self discovery. As she was pretending to be a "good girl", she actually began to enjoy the perks. It was fun to see her fully embrace this side of herself, but more importantly it gave her insight into herself and others.
Lottie and Evelyn had been set on destroying each other for quite a while now, but Lottie never fully understood Evelyn's situation. She began to see that being Evelyn Tait was not as easy as it looked, while also learning the root cause of Evelyn's animosity towards her. It was such an "A-HA" moment for Lottie, and one of the points in the story, where I really began to see her worldview shift from being so egocentric.
Nwosu blessed Lottie with not one, but TWO, amazing friends, both of whom I adored. At one point in the story, both of these relationships were a bit strained. There was bound to be tension, when Lottie's best girl friend, Grace, became romantically involved with her nemesis, but she also pushed her best guy friend, Jude, to his limits. Again, another "A-HA" moment for Lottie, where she came to some realizations about her friends' needs and feelings.
But let's talk about Jude, dear sweet Jude. He was the boy next door with the heart of gold. When Lottie looked back, she realized how Jude was the one person in her life, who was always there for her. I grew so frustrated with Lottie, because I thought she sometimes took advantage of him or took him for granted. Recognizing the way she treated him, as well as his importance in her life was another part of Lottie's evolution.
Over the course of this book, Lottie grew tremendously. She learned to see the world outside herself, began to appreciate the important people in her life, and started to make better choices. I was really proud of her, and I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could resist falling in love with her.
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Lottie is tired of Evelyn Tait ruining her life and is determined to beat her at her own game. The takedown will require patience, planning, and a makeover of sorts. But when Lottie assumes her new good girl persona, she arrives at some epiphanies about Evelyn, her family, and herself.
I know this is only the second book by Nwosu, but I am in love with her writing, characters, and storytelling. Though this story dealt with friendship, family, and even romance, at its core, it was a story about growing and changing and being true to yourself.
Lottie hadn't even finished secondary school, and her life had already been turned upside down twice. Once, when her mother left the family, and again, when her father remarried. I felt like Lottie never properly dealt with the emotional fallout, and it all just came out in the wrong ways. I mean, she got herself into trouble so often, that she was on a first name basis with the principal. [NOTE: I loved these scenes. They never failed to delight me] That was why I appreciated that her nefarious plot turned out to be such a wonderful path to self discovery. As she was pretending to be a "good girl", she actually began to enjoy the perks. It was fun to see her fully embrace this side of herself, but more importantly it gave her insight into herself and others.
Lottie and Evelyn had been set on destroying each other for quite a while now, but Lottie never fully understood Evelyn's situation. She began to see that being Evelyn Tait was not as easy as it looked, while also learning the root cause of Evelyn's animosity towards her. It was such an "A-HA" moment for Lottie, and one of the points in the story, where I really began to see her worldview shift from being so egocentric.
Nwosu blessed Lottie with not one, but TWO, amazing friends, both of whom I adored. At one point in the story, both of these relationships were a bit strained. There was bound to be tension, when Lottie's best girl friend, Grace, became romantically involved with her nemesis, but she also pushed her best guy friend, Jude, to his limits. Again, another "A-HA" moment for Lottie, where she came to some realizations about her friends' needs and feelings.
But let's talk about Jude, dear sweet Jude. He was the boy next door with the heart of gold. When Lottie looked back, she realized how Jude was the one person in her life, who was always there for her. I grew so frustrated with Lottie, because I thought she sometimes took advantage of him or took him for granted. Recognizing the way she treated him, as well as his importance in her life was another part of Lottie's evolution.
Over the course of this book, Lottie grew tremendously. She learned to see the world outside herself, began to appreciate the important people in her life, and started to make better choices. I was really proud of her, and I would be hard-pressed to find anyone who could resist falling in love with her.
BLOG | INSTAGRAM |TWITTER | BLOGLOVIN | FRIEND ME ON GOODREADS
gillyreads's review
4.0
zitongren's review
4.0
Ok, so, overall, I liked this book and for the most part had a good time. It was fun, with unique characters and written by an Australian author, who I always try to support as they honestly do not receive enough recognition for some fantastic books. This was my first book by Poppy Nwosu as I have not read her debut yet. From this book alone, it is clear that she is very able to write a delightful and funny YA contemporary novel. It is a fairly short book sitting at about 250 pages though there is still a fair amount of plot and character development with an ending that is satisfactory, with enough for the characters to still have plenty of room to continue to grow.
A slight problem that I had with this book was that the main character, Lottie, is not the best person. She is quite blind to other people’s feelings and problems and is quite self-centred in wanting revenge against Evelyn Tait. Naturally, as is expected, she does grow out of this eventually, but not really until she has caused a bit of harm in other’s people’s lives. Even by the end, she is still not the most likeable character, though I can certainly appreciate her character growth in the book.
The same could be said of several other characters, including Evelyn Tait, who, from the lens of Lottie, makes her seem like this nasty horrible person, who she is in a way, yet I found myself being able to like her better, especially after the ending. Evelyn is one of those characters that I feel like the reader isn’t meant to like, just like Celeste, who from Lottie’s unreliable narration, or at least fixed view of the world, also sees her as an annoying stepmother that does nothing to help.
On the other hand, I did really like both Grace and Jude. Despite that we are told Grace and Lottie are best friends, we don’t see the most of that, though I did like how they did manage to work out their differences together. Then there’s Jude, who is the sweetest and kindest person ever and it’s hard to not occasional feel bad for him and at how blind Lottie really can be to his advances. He always tries so hard to please and take care of Lottie, that he is almost taken advantage of at times due to his big heart. By far, I definitely did like Jude the most compared to the other characters in this book.
The writing style was simplistic enough to make it easy to read and make it suitable for young teens and there are many parts that can be quite funny, whether it is the way that Nwosu may phrase something or the banter between characters. Then I also have to mention the titles of all the chapters which are honestly just all so great and while many of them sound absurd, it does actually state the things that are going to happen in the chapter, though perhaps not how you exactly would expect it as you can’t take the chapter titles literally.
I also appreciate that as a bit of a classical music nerd that plays piano, that we got some representation, but also that Lottie really loves metal music, which while is not a genre I’m very experienced with at all, is sort of also looked down at as loud noise, just like how classical music is looked down as really boring sound that only old people listen to. This isn’t a criticism as it is fiction, but a point I would like to make is that getting a scholarship at a conservatory for a few weeks means you have to work super hard, so the slight lack of constant home practice(amongst other things that constitutes as spoilers) is perhaps not the most realistic thing, but then it would be the most boring book ever if all the characters ever did was sit down and practice for hours on end every single day.
So I mean, overall I enjoyed this and most of the things I did mention were largely positive, or at least I hope it came along that way. 7/10
A slight problem that I had with this book was that the main character, Lottie, is not the best person. She is quite blind to other people’s feelings and problems and is quite self-centred in wanting revenge against Evelyn Tait. Naturally, as is expected, she does grow out of this eventually, but not really until she has caused a bit of harm in other’s people’s lives. Even by the end, she is still not the most likeable character, though I can certainly appreciate her character growth in the book.
The same could be said of several other characters, including Evelyn Tait, who, from the lens of Lottie, makes her seem like this nasty horrible person, who she is in a way, yet I found myself being able to like her better, especially after the ending. Evelyn is one of those characters that I feel like the reader isn’t meant to like, just like Celeste, who from Lottie’s unreliable narration, or at least fixed view of the world, also sees her as an annoying stepmother that does nothing to help.
On the other hand, I did really like both Grace and Jude. Despite that we are told Grace and Lottie are best friends, we don’t see the most of that, though I did like how they did manage to work out their differences together. Then there’s Jude, who is the sweetest and kindest person ever and it’s hard to not occasional feel bad for him and at how blind Lottie really can be to his advances. He always tries so hard to please and take care of Lottie, that he is almost taken advantage of at times due to his big heart. By far, I definitely did like Jude the most compared to the other characters in this book.
The writing style was simplistic enough to make it easy to read and make it suitable for young teens and there are many parts that can be quite funny, whether it is the way that Nwosu may phrase something or the banter between characters. Then I also have to mention the titles of all the chapters which are honestly just all so great and while many of them sound absurd, it does actually state the things that are going to happen in the chapter, though perhaps not how you exactly would expect it as you can’t take the chapter titles literally.
I also appreciate that as a bit of a classical music nerd that plays piano, that we got some representation, but also that Lottie really loves metal music, which while is not a genre I’m very experienced with at all, is sort of also looked down at as loud noise, just like how classical music is looked down as really boring sound that only old people listen to. This isn’t a criticism as it is fiction, but a point I would like to make is that getting a scholarship at a conservatory for a few weeks means you have to work super hard, so the slight lack of constant home practice(amongst other things that constitutes as spoilers) is perhaps not the most realistic thing, but then it would be the most boring book ever if all the characters ever did was sit down and practice for hours on end every single day.
So I mean, overall I enjoyed this and most of the things I did mention were largely positive, or at least I hope it came along that way. 7/10
greerd's review
emotional
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
3.0
Cute, fast-paced teen angst involving blended families and budding relationships. I felt like it was missing a bit of backstory and motivation for the hatred between Lottie and Evelyn, and Sebastian seemed a little underdone as a character, but Jude was super cute and friends-to-lovers gives me life.
beautifulpaxielreads's review
emotional
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
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