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A review by acdom
The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions) by Amy Spalding
3.0
Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC. I've been looking forward to this book since I finished Amy Spalding's last book.
Here's the thing though, I wanted to badly to love this book, but I didn't. If this review was based on swoon alone, I'd give it 5 stars, but everything else involved ruined that.
First thing, attention authors of YA, if you are going to write about teenagers and high schools, I really recommend you have a teacher beta your books. If not, you write things that make me, as a high school teacher, really mad. Example, it doesn't take a teacher five minutes to take attendance. I realize your characters need that time to catch up on their lives, but it takes me 15 second, 30 seconds at most, to take attendance. By you pointing out that the teacher has to take attendance by looking around and then the kids get five minutes you talk, you just lost any sense of realism you had going. Also, OMFG a student can't be a replacement for a substitute teacher!!!!! Yeah, Jules is super responsible, but she can't be in charge of the class for a week. That's so fucking illegal and gives me hives just to read about. There has to be an adult in that classroom.
Second thing, Jules is insufferable. Yeah, she talks like a teenager and has a great voice, which is awesome and what I love about YA, but she's basically a terrible person. She can't take 30 seconds and text her best friend back but then feels bad when her friends get mad at her for being incommunicado, even though she never ever texts them back. I get she's focused on a boy, but that doesn't excuse her shitty behavior to her friends, to her boyfriend, to her parents, and to everyone else she's shitty to. I also don't even understand why Alex likes her. She's obsessed with the paper (which isn't a bad thing) to a point that makes her awful to be around.
Listen, I'm not going to stop reading Amy Spalding books, and I'm going to continue to recommend them to my students, because I do like her writing style and her stories and she's awesome on social media. But there are a few things that lost me here. I'll do a reread when the book comes out and see if those things still annoy me.
Here's the thing though, I wanted to badly to love this book, but I didn't. If this review was based on swoon alone, I'd give it 5 stars, but everything else involved ruined that.
First thing, attention authors of YA, if you are going to write about teenagers and high schools, I really recommend you have a teacher beta your books. If not, you write things that make me, as a high school teacher, really mad. Example, it doesn't take a teacher five minutes to take attendance. I realize your characters need that time to catch up on their lives, but it takes me 15 second, 30 seconds at most, to take attendance. By you pointing out that the teacher has to take attendance by looking around and then the kids get five minutes you talk, you just lost any sense of realism you had going. Also, OMFG a student can't be a replacement for a substitute teacher!!!!! Yeah, Jules is super responsible, but she can't be in charge of the class for a week. That's so fucking illegal and gives me hives just to read about. There has to be an adult in that classroom.
Second thing, Jules is insufferable. Yeah, she talks like a teenager and has a great voice, which is awesome and what I love about YA, but she's basically a terrible person. She can't take 30 seconds and text her best friend back but then feels bad when her friends get mad at her for being incommunicado, even though she never ever texts them back. I get she's focused on a boy, but that doesn't excuse her shitty behavior to her friends, to her boyfriend, to her parents, and to everyone else she's shitty to. I also don't even understand why Alex likes her. She's obsessed with the paper (which isn't a bad thing) to a point that makes her awful to be around.
Listen, I'm not going to stop reading Amy Spalding books, and I'm going to continue to recommend them to my students, because I do like her writing style and her stories and she's awesome on social media. But there are a few things that lost me here. I'll do a reread when the book comes out and see if those things still annoy me.