The Thing About Lemons by Tasha Harrison

Pages: 320 

Publisher: UCLan Publishing

Released: 1st of June 2023 

Ori Reynolds has just made the biggest mistake of her life. One that’s resulted in:

1) losing all but one of her friends,

2) feeling like the World’s Most Terrible Person,

and

3) having all her fun summer plans cancelled.

And, as if things couldn’t get any worse, she now has no choice but to go on a road trip with her estranged grandad Claude to his home in the French countryside.

Talk about life giving you lemons!

However, while Ori scoffs at her mum’s suggestion to “make lemonade”, her sour situation is about to turn significantly sweeter than she could ever have imagined…

What I Have to Say 

I tried to read this book with an open heart, because people make mistakes and it can be hard to move on from. Love is complicated and falling in love with the wrong person can be really difficult. But even though she didn't intend to kiss him, Ori was scheming to "get to know Jackson better" behind her friend's back. The fact that this led to cheating, was really not surprising. (This is all on page one, by the way.) 

So after not warming to Ori at all, she spent most of the book wallowing in her teenage drama. I read a lot of YA, so I don't use the term "teenage drama" lightly. This was just too much angst and self-pity for me. And then she very quickly moves on to the next boy she decides to have a crush on, after deciding really quickly that Jackson is not for her. I just felt if he was so easy to move on from, why did she kiss him in the first place?! 

So yeah, to say this book wasn't for me was a massive understatement. I just did not get on with it at all and would advise other people to stay away unless you can get really into teen drama. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and UCLan Publishing for providing me with this copy for review. 

Bad Girls with Perfect Faces by Lynn Weingarten

Synopsis (Goodreads) 

Pages: 304 

Publisher: Electric Monkey 

Released: 11th of January 2018

No one is good enough for Xavier. Not according to Sasha, his best friend. There's nothing Sasha wouldn't do to protect Xavier from getting hurt, especially by his cheating ex Ivy, who's suddenly slithered back into the picture. Worried that Xavier is ready to forgive and forget, Sasha decides to do a little catfishing. She poses as a hot guy online, to prove cheaters never change.

But Sasha's plan goes wrong fast, and soon the lies lead down a path from which there's no return . . . 

What I Have to Say 

This book was absolutely not what I expected. It changed so much and so quickly throughout the book, often changing the feel of the book or even what you think you've read so much. I liked it. I think. It's hard to really say when it changed so much. I definitely liked the catfishing element of it and what it sort of became. Then the twist in the middle shocked me a lot and I wasn't really prepared for it, but it was okay. It all makes sense in the end and you can see where it comes together.  So I liked it over all but there were a lot of times where it was like what's going on. 

I liked the characters a lot. I liked how they were so defined. I think that made the book for me really. Though I think i would have liked to hear more about Ivy and her viewpoint. There wasn't really much time to get to know her and understand why she treated Xavier the way she did. 

It's a good book, but I think you have to like dark stories. I think it threw me a bit because I was so unprepared for quite how dark it was going to go. I also felt more could have been said about Sasha's bisexuality. Because it was just sort of thrown out there that she liked girls as well and then it wasn't really picked up again. For a while, I wanted her and Ivy to get together, because I thought that would be a good twist and be interesting. 

So yeah, mostly just prepare yourself for the fact that it gets really really dark. 

My thanks go to Electric Monkey and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review.