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A review by solaceinprose
This May End Badly by Samantha Markum
3.0
First, thank you to St. Martin Press and Wednesday Books for the ARC for an honest review.
Dorothy "Doe" Saltpeter of one Weston Academy, an all-girl school that just so happens to be located across Winfield Academy, an all-boys school and the bane of Doe's existence. In particular, Nathan Wellborn the 3rd aka "Three". The students of these two schools have been playing pranks on the other since the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of their conceptions). This year, however, the pranks amp up when it is revealed that Winfield and Weston will be merging. Doe is beyond herself over this and will do anything to ensure this merger doesn't happen. This includes fake dating the cousin of Three, Gabriel Wellborn aka Wells. Throughout the book, Doe finds that she's probably the only one that has a hard on against these two schools merging, and how she continuously makes one bad decision after another until about 65% into the book, it all comes blowing back in her face. And Lord, there isn't enough Bounty to wipe the gunk when it does.
I don't get exasperated over main characters often, but I really wanted to just shake Doe by the shoulders and scream at her to grow the eff up. She was clearly emotionally stunted because I've seen prepubescent children act more mature than she did. I don't know if it was privilege or just straight up "only child" syndrome, but by the time I reached 65% into the book...eh, closer to 70%, I just didn't care what happened to Doe. I'm glad she got her comeuppance, and we start to see her growth, but I hate that it literally comes at the end. She doesn't mature or grow for majority of this book, and it took getting nearly expelled for her to realize that she sorta, maybe, absolutely screwed the pooch in so many ways in this book. I would have liked to see her actually mature throughout the book, but not every teen who has the privilege of going to a ranked all girls academy and have everything she wants sees growth until the last convenient minute.
That being said, I did enjoy the friendships between Doe and her band of young ladies. I also liked that she took ownership for her actions and didn't just apologize, but followed up with those apologies with actions. When she does start to get her head out of her own ass, she's a pretty kick ass 17 year old who could absolutely run the world if she set her mind to it. I also liked the budding romance between her and Wells, and they played well off each other. I wanted to say that the love was a bit instant, but it really wasn't. I was still a bit surprised over the "Falling in love with you" bits, but they're 17 and dumb so I forgave that.
All in all, this was cute and an easy read. This was the unedited version so I'd be interested to see how it shaped up once it's been edited and officially published. But I think regular contemporary young adult has lost its appeal to me because I can't bring myself to care about the hijinks of teenagers anymore.
Dorothy "Doe" Saltpeter of one Weston Academy, an all-girl school that just so happens to be located across Winfield Academy, an all-boys school and the bane of Doe's existence. In particular, Nathan Wellborn the 3rd aka "Three". The students of these two schools have been playing pranks on the other since the dawn of time (or at least the dawn of their conceptions). This year, however, the pranks amp up when it is revealed that Winfield and Weston will be merging. Doe is beyond herself over this and will do anything to ensure this merger doesn't happen. This includes fake dating the cousin of Three, Gabriel Wellborn aka Wells. Throughout the book, Doe finds that she's probably the only one that has a hard on against these two schools merging, and how she continuously makes one bad decision after another until about 65% into the book, it all comes blowing back in her face. And Lord, there isn't enough Bounty to wipe the gunk when it does.
I don't get exasperated over main characters often, but I really wanted to just shake Doe by the shoulders and scream at her to grow the eff up. She was clearly emotionally stunted because I've seen prepubescent children act more mature than she did. I don't know if it was privilege or just straight up "only child" syndrome, but by the time I reached 65% into the book...eh, closer to 70%, I just didn't care what happened to Doe. I'm glad she got her comeuppance, and we start to see her growth, but I hate that it literally comes at the end. She doesn't mature or grow for majority of this book, and it took getting nearly expelled for her to realize that she sorta, maybe, absolutely screwed the pooch in so many ways in this book. I would have liked to see her actually mature throughout the book, but not every teen who has the privilege of going to a ranked all girls academy and have everything she wants sees growth until the last convenient minute.
That being said, I did enjoy the friendships between Doe and her band of young ladies. I also liked that she took ownership for her actions and didn't just apologize, but followed up with those apologies with actions. When she does start to get her head out of her own ass, she's a pretty kick ass 17 year old who could absolutely run the world if she set her mind to it. I also liked the budding romance between her and Wells, and they played well off each other. I wanted to say that the love was a bit instant, but it really wasn't. I was still a bit surprised over the "Falling in love with you" bits, but they're 17 and dumb so I forgave that.
All in all, this was cute and an easy read. This was the unedited version so I'd be interested to see how it shaped up once it's been edited and officially published. But I think regular contemporary young adult has lost its appeal to me because I can't bring myself to care about the hijinks of teenagers anymore.