Review: Smash It! by Francina Simone

Title: Smash It!

Author: Francina Simone

Publisher: Inkyard Press

Published: 2020

Genre: YA Contemporary

Pages: 368

Format: Hardback

Summary: At a Halloween party where multiple people give her well-intentioned but un-asked-for advice, Olivia “Liv” James comes to the conclusion that her life isn’t living up to her expectations. She decides to create a list of to-dos to change herself and her future. She’s inspired by Shonda Rhimes’ book, The Year of Yes, and vows to be bold, learn to take a compliment, stand out instead of back, go on a date, and stop crushing and move on. As she goes about these tasks the tagline says it all, “Mistakes were made”.

Featuring: angsty teens, body positivity, and a love rectangle.

Liv has to find out the hard way who her real friends are and that love doesn’t come easy.

My thoughts: This book unexpectedly made me cry. I wasn’t ready for the depth of emotion we get out of Liv. Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than a decade out of my teenage years and I found myself frustrated by her lack of maturity and her inability to communicate as a crux of the book. That being said, I like the character growth that we see throughout the book from nearly every character, not just Liv. Don’t let the bright colors on the cover fool you though, this book packs a punch. The teen characters are going through very difficult times in their lives. There’s racism, sexism, bullying, fatphobia, you name it and it’s pretty much in here.

I will offer some of the same criticisms that other reviewers have though, in that there are some lines of dialogue in here that go too far for my personal taste. I understand that teens will unintentionally say things that are incredibly insensitive and often will not get called out for it by their peers, but there were comments in here that were downright painful to read. The teens in this book call each other out on a lot, so it’s hard to see comments that are insulting to many groups go by like they’re acceptable jokes. This book tried to tackle a lot of hard topics, and it didn’t hit them all with the same level of sensitivity.

My rating: 3 stars

This marks book 1/25 from my Netgalley Shelf of Shame. See post here.