Update: the more I think about this book, the more I hate it, so I’m knocking it down from 2 stars to 1 star.

I have a lot of thoughts about this book, most not good…

*Note: Being that this book is by a Black author, I feel the need to state that the way she chose to write her book is valid! Though I do not agree with the way she wrote it, doesn’t mean it’s problematic in any way. Also, I am a Black woman and this review is coming from the perspective of me as a Black woman.*

I’ll start out with the couple of things I liked about this book. I liked the podcast element, since it broke up otherwise monotonous writing. And I thought the character work was good. By this I mean, I thought the characters were exactly who they were supposed to be? Did I like anyone other than our protagonist Maddy? No. But the characters were developed well.

Now, let’s get into the main thing that ruined this book for me and why I hate it. The protagonist of this book was Maddy, but most of the pov chapters were in the minds of racists and racism apologists. I assumed that our protagonist was the main character and that her voice would be centered in this novel, but it was not. Instead the story mainly centered 2 people, one being the main racist’s bestfriend who condones the racist things her bestfriend does and even laughs and enjoys those things, and the second one being the Black boyfriend of that character who only cares about the white gaze and also is okay with the racist things his friends do, even though he himself is Black. We all know people like that right? Well, I  do not want to read a book that centers their povs. It was EXHAUSTING being in their heads. And had I known that we would spend most of our time with them, I would’ve never picked this book up. 

Also, I made the mistake of picking this as a group book for the Black readathon I’m hosting, not realizing that it centers the racists more than our protagonist. So, I definitely regret picking this book for a readathon that centers the Black experience. And I would’ve DNFed this book at about 30% in if I hadn’t chosen it.

I have one more thing to say, but this thing includes a major spoiler, so if you don’t want spoilers please don’t read the review beyond this point😊





❗️❗️SPOILER WARNING❗️❗️

The worst racist of them all not dying at the end was incredibly disappointing. Also, little miss racism apologist that I mentioned up above, got off very easily and no harm came to her at all. A book that’s supposed to be about getting revenge on racists with no revenge on the biggest racists, how dreadful…


Also, why would the Black students want to have an integrated prom with those racists? The whole integrated prom thing would’ve been way more believable if the school wanted to do damage control and decided to integrate the prom. No group of Black people that I know would ever want to go to same prom as a group of racists. I found that to be almost a plot hole.