Review: Don't Even Think About It by Sarah Mlynowski

Title: Don't Even Think About It
Author: Sarah Mlynowski
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: March 11th 2014
Genre: Young Adult,
Rating: Three of Five Stars
 
Summary: We weren't always like this. We used to be average New York City high school sophomores. Until our homeroom went for flu shots. We were prepared for some side effects. Maybe a headache. Maybe a sore arm. We definitely didn't expect to get telepathic powers. But suddenly we could hear what everyone was thinking. Our friends. Our parents. Our crushes. Now we all know that Tess is in love with her best friend, Teddy. That Mackenzie cheated on Cooper. That, um, Nurse Carmichael used to be a stripper.

Since we've kept our freakish skill a secret, we can sit next to the class brainiac and ace our tests. We can dump our boyfriends right before they dump us. We know what our friends really think of our jeans, our breath, our new bangs. We always know what's coming. Some of us will thrive. Some of us will crack. None of us will ever be the same.

So stop obsessing about your ex. We're always listening.

Review: A cute, fun little book. Definitely skewed a bit towards the young end of the YA scale, but I still enjoyed it.

What happened when a group of teens, hopped up on hormones and highschool angst, get the flu shot and suddenly become telepathic?

The short answer is a lot of drama.

The perspective in this book jumps around a bit, which I found a little disconcerting though it works in the overall concept of the book. We go from one kid's head to another, and there are a lot of different kids involved in the story, as well, which makes it a little confusing to follow.

Right off the bat there's a lot of angst. Who likes who? Who's smart and who's not? Who's cheating on their boyfriend? Who's shy? Who's snarky behind their friends' backs? And of course, with telepathy comes the drama surrounding everyone else - the parents, the other students at the school.

There were a couple of characters who I really enjoyed reading about - Olivia and Tessa stood out, in part because I could empathise with them moreso than some of the others. That's probably going to be true of a lot of readers - when you have so many characters in one book, different ones are going to speak to different people. Tessa's storyline in particular made me smile.

The one thing I'll say about this book, is that nobody should expect any big insightful answers as to the why of it. The answers are very superficial, but the book's not really about that, anyway - it's about being a teenager and all the problems that come along with it, and dealing with ESP on top of it. It's about the fluidity of highschool and how things can change from day to day even without mindreading going on. The book is also realistic about the amount of sex and cheating and drama that actually goes on when you're a teenager, and I appreciated that - I'm all for media that embraces the reality that teens live with.

I'd probably recommend this most for teens. 

Disclosure: I received this book through Netgalley in return for an honest review.