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A review by capesandcovers
A Totally Awkward Love Story by Tom Ellen, Lucy Ivison
1.0
Warning: Possible minor spoilers, but nothing I considered to need to be put undercut.
To start off, despite almost DNFing, this book made me laugh. I enjoyed certain parts of it at the beginning, like the nicknames and the lobster door. Those were cute and entertaining while showing us what a great friendship the four girls (Stella, Tilly, Grace & Hannah) had with each other. Hannah's relationship with her Nan was great too, it was nice to see that she had an adult actively taking part in her life. The writing pulls you along quite nicely too. Unfortunately, after that it all just kind of falls apart.
The main reason I kept reading this was because the book was a gift, and because I was really hoping to see Hannah mature and tell Stella off. Now, if you haven't read the book you're probably wondering why this would need to happen. So, let me tell you: this book has quite possibly the most toxic friendship I have ever read in a book. And there's no resolution too it, Hannah just remains spineless and abused. Her friends see it and are fine with it, and she has literally no reason not to have stopped being friends with her so-called BFF but she never does.Honestly, all of the friends, both Sam's & Hannah's, are terrible people (with the exception of Tilly and one of Sam's friends who had no personality). There's a point where I think she was supposed to have matured, but literally a page later it's all retracted and she's back to begging Stella for forgiveness.
I really hadn't been expecting that in the book, since almost everything I had seen about it made it seem like a fluffy romantic-comedy. For the most part this book has been marketed in two ways; mainly as a cute coming of age love story and as a book about virginity. Trust me when I say the latter is the more accurate one. The entirety of the book from start to finish is about sex and not wanting to be the last virgin of the friend group. There was so much sex and so much drama I almost DNFed. It wasn't in a coming of age way either, like the DUFF was either (which it was compared to in the blurb).
There was no love story in this, it was more like "The Summer of Bad Hookups" than a "Totally Awkward Love Story." Because when it came down to it, there was no love, just drugs, sex and alcohol. It was so unrealistic at times it became laughable. I don't mind having any of the above in my books, but the way it was used was terrible and came across as almost mocking teenagers. Overall this book was just so unbelievable from the depiction of the teens lives, (no parents in their right mind let teens go to a known drinking festival) it came across like it the authors' main source of knowledge on teens was from Seth Rogen and Mean Girls.
All in all this book was just every negative social behavior rolled into one book, it had sexism, slut-shaming, lying, cheating and abuse to name a few. It was just...bad.
To start off, despite almost DNFing, this book made me laugh. I enjoyed certain parts of it at the beginning, like the nicknames and the lobster door. Those were cute and entertaining while showing us what a great friendship the four girls (Stella, Tilly, Grace & Hannah) had with each other. Hannah's relationship with her Nan was great too, it was nice to see that she had an adult actively taking part in her life. The writing pulls you along quite nicely too. Unfortunately, after that it all just kind of falls apart.
The main reason I kept reading this was because the book was a gift, and because I was really hoping to see Hannah mature and tell Stella off. Now, if you haven't read the book you're probably wondering why this would need to happen. So, let me tell you: this book has quite possibly the most toxic friendship I have ever read in a book. And there's no resolution too it, Hannah just remains spineless and abused. Her friends see it and are fine with it, and she has literally no reason not to have stopped being friends with her so-called BFF but she never does.Honestly, all of the friends, both Sam's & Hannah's, are terrible people (with the exception of Tilly and one of Sam's friends who had no personality). There's a point where I think she was supposed to have matured, but literally a page later it's all retracted and she's back to begging Stella for forgiveness.
I really hadn't been expecting that in the book, since almost everything I had seen about it made it seem like a fluffy romantic-comedy. For the most part this book has been marketed in two ways; mainly as a cute coming of age love story and as a book about virginity. Trust me when I say the latter is the more accurate one. The entirety of the book from start to finish is about sex and not wanting to be the last virgin of the friend group. There was so much sex and so much drama I almost DNFed. It wasn't in a coming of age way either, like the DUFF was either (which it was compared to in the blurb).
There was no love story in this, it was more like "The Summer of Bad Hookups" than a "Totally Awkward Love Story." Because when it came down to it, there was no love, just drugs, sex and alcohol. It was so unrealistic at times it became laughable. I don't mind having any of the above in my books, but the way it was used was terrible and came across as almost mocking teenagers. Overall this book was just so unbelievable from the depiction of the teens lives, (no parents in their right mind let teens go to a known drinking festival) it came across like it the authors' main source of knowledge on teens was from Seth Rogen and Mean Girls.
All in all this book was just every negative social behavior rolled into one book, it had sexism, slut-shaming, lying, cheating and abuse to name a few. It was just...bad.