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A review by lbarsk
This May End Badly by Samantha Markum
3.0
Actually 3.5 stars.
This was a fun, quasi-enemies-to-lovers YA romance and feminist character growth book. I obviously love the fact that Wells LOVED DOE SO MUCH and was all in on supporting her and stanning, and I found Doe’s gradual realization of her own feelings for Wells charming too. The female friendships in the book are what its core really should be, and for the most part I found those compelling; at times it did seem like “hey we are just constantly throwing new side characters at you,” but also in high school my friend group was huge too, so I get it.
The issue I think is that the book was trying to handle like five plots at once, and while it did round all of them off in a fairly satisfactory way at the end, I wonder if cutting even one of those strands out would’ve given the other plots room to breathe. Doe’s conflicted feelings about leaving high school and heading to college; Wells’ own interiority and the ways in which he and Doe are really good for each other; Doe’s friendships growing and changing as each young woman pursues her own interests while still loving and supporting her friends; THE SEXUAL HARASSER CHARACTER and that entire subplot; Doe’s complex relationship with her parents! Like… WOW okay that is a LOT to pack in. And again, it’s not like any one strand is tackled poorly, it’s just — how much *stronger* could some of these have been without the other ones going on?
All in all, though, I’d definitely recommend this to high school aged girls because the romance is sweet and it has a bunch of good messages about friendship and feminist action/allyship/protest tactics.
This was a fun, quasi-enemies-to-lovers YA romance and feminist character growth book. I obviously love the fact that Wells LOVED DOE SO MUCH and was all in on supporting her and stanning, and I found Doe’s gradual realization of her own feelings for Wells charming too. The female friendships in the book are what its core really should be, and for the most part I found those compelling; at times it did seem like “hey we are just constantly throwing new side characters at you,” but also in high school my friend group was huge too, so I get it.
The issue I think is that the book was trying to handle like five plots at once, and while it did round all of them off in a fairly satisfactory way at the end, I wonder if cutting even one of those strands out would’ve given the other plots room to breathe. Doe’s conflicted feelings about leaving high school and heading to college; Wells’ own interiority and the ways in which he and Doe are really good for each other; Doe’s friendships growing and changing as each young woman pursues her own interests while still loving and supporting her friends; THE SEXUAL HARASSER CHARACTER and that entire subplot; Doe’s complex relationship with her parents! Like… WOW okay that is a LOT to pack in. And again, it’s not like any one strand is tackled poorly, it’s just — how much *stronger* could some of these have been without the other ones going on?
All in all, though, I’d definitely recommend this to high school aged girls because the romance is sweet and it has a bunch of good messages about friendship and feminist action/allyship/protest tactics.