Reviews with content warning for Cursing - The Do-Over

4.25/5! Quite cute and fun! The internal dialogue and banter is so good, made me laugh out loud. I love that although this book is set on and around Valentine's Day, it still feels summery-ish because of all the adventure. I think because of the time loop aspect, I didn't connect as much to Nick, which was kind of a bummer. However, the explanation for the time loop at the end is *chef's kiss* and made me bump up my anticipated rating by .25 of a star!

Also, ALL THE TAYLOR SWIFT REFERENCES. SO MANY. I want to re-read the book just to highlight them all. Obsessed with that.

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tessa_ann_reads's review

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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taylorswiftobsessed's review against another edition

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emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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ephalent's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

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inkdrinkers's review

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

I didn't like this. At all.

Emilie Hornby is ready for the perfect Valentine's Day ever, she's going to tell her boyfriend that she loves him, she's going to give him the best present in the entire world, and it's all going to go according to plan, exactly how she's had it written in her schedule for months. Except she discovers her boyfriend kissing his ex, gets told she's not actually been accepted in the competitive internship she thought she was, oh, and her dad is moving to Texas, leaving her adrift a year before she goes off to college. When the day loops, Emilie sees it as the perfect opportunity to fix everything that went wrong, but then it loops again, and again, and she realizes that the universe might be showing her an option she never considered - or planned - for herself.

So I bought a copy of this, and I'm seriously going to take it back to the store and return it. Was this book morally reprehensible? No, but also, I had the worst time reading this. I truly expected a lighthearted YA read and instead I felt like I got 300 pages of the most insufferable inner teen dialogue and the blandest writing. This was my first Lynn Painter book and I just feel nothing towards her writing or characters. I didn't enjoy Emilie and I certainly didn't like Nick. Maybe I had too much of an adult view on this book, but I couldn't wrap my head around it and that disappointed me so much.

I LOVE time travel and time loop media. One of my favorite movies is Happy Death Day for this reason. I love when characters are forced to confront their problems by the universe stepping in and telling them to get their shit together. Instead... Emilie got a tattoo? And forced some guy she barely knew to reveal his trauma to her? It all felt so incredibly heavy-handed that I put this book down multiple times, but knew I had to power through in order to fully wrap my head around a review. She didn't grow at all, instead, arguably, I'd say Emilie got worse throughout this entire book. She went from being so neurotic that she was intolerable to the other end of the spectrum where she didn't seem to care about anyone's feelings but her own. I feel like the time loop ended on her "worst" decisions for no reason other than to make the plot different than other time loop plotlines. (Because, you know, most of them have the character learning something about themselves)

I didn't find myself rooting for Emilie or Nick. I actually really hated the way the plotline with her parents ended. And overall I just feel like this was incredibly poorly written YA attempting to be relevant with ample music references and "relatable" memes. I'm not sure I would have even liked this had I read it as a teenager.

Anyways, I'm returning this to the store. And probably my other unread Lynn Painter book on my shelf.

Content warnings: grief, past trauma, abandonment, ample use of the word "fuck" by a bunch of kids, car crash/reckless driving, bullying, high school cheating plotline (that wasn't cheating but was also cheating? Wtf in the multiverse was that??)

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