Category: Reviews

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts are my own.

Oh dang. I set out to rate this 5 stars, have the best time, and get to know this crazy family. And I didn’t hate it! Not at all. But I damn sure didn’t love it, which bums me out.

*stares at three unread Morgan Matson books on my shelf*

I can’t believe I even got this ARC, considering my NetGalley rating is so low. ANYWAYS. Let’s do this list style.

Pros

• Waffles the beagle
• J.J.
• the aLaRM lmao
• fun, light-hearted, family-centered plot
• the coMIC STRIP oh man I could’ve had a lot more of that pls and thanks
• the writing was fantastic. Morgan truly is talented
• the fact that the plot was about a weDDING I LOVE weddings !!
• Bill was funny and sweet
• The papergirl storyline omg that was hilarious

Cons

• this book was 432 fricken pages
• FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY TWO
• 400+ pages for a contemporary is longgggg
• and I felt it. It felt incredibly drawn out and stretched to add things that weren’t really needed
• it just…it coulda been done up in 250 pages and I would’ve been completely satisfied
• I didn’t like our main character, Charlie Grant, very much at all. She was kind of flat and rather annoying at times
• WHY WAS CHARLIE SO RUDE TO BROOKE RIGHT OFF THE BAT ASHDLSHF I HATED IT
• I also didn’t like brooke tho lmao
• the rOmAnCE
• the beginning was so good like that jesse x Charlie scene was STEAMY and I wanted more of that but then jesse had a total character flip just so Bill could be eligible to Charlie and I didn’t like that at all
• honestly we could’ve done without a romance
• bill and Charlie would have been the cUTEST friends so I appreciated the open ending for that but meh
• charlie’s mom is the worst oh gosh
• danny is a wet towel lolol

I did enjoy the book though ! despite the cons list being longer than the pros. I almost gave it 4 stars but the last 100 pages were really boring that I found myself skimming, so down a star for that. But I did enjoy it, it just wasn’t as exciting as I was hoping it would be.

I also think it’s really hard to do what I call “bottle books” (or bottle episodes for tv shows). This is when the book (or movie or tv show) is set in one or a handful of locations, and that’s it. The setting for this book was primarily their house and backyard, with a couple of scenes splashed in at the tailor shop, Jesse’s house, and the street where the governor lived, over the course of three days. I think these can be done really well in movies or tv shows, but it can be difficult to execute in a book. I think that was part of the reason why I found it boring. Kasie West, for example, did a bottle book with By Your Side, and I thought it was fabulous.

The love triangle that was trying to happen but wasn’t really happening I felt was completely unnecessary. This was a family-focused book. We didn’t need to have a romance. Not to mention the brother/sister type of relationship we got with Bill and Charlie, and when they would have romantic moments, I couldn’t help cringe.

Also I’m sorry but Bill isn’t a name that is going to make me swoony and shipping them.

I LOVED the comic strip! I thought it was so cute and fun. I liked all of the things going wrong to an extent, but then we reached a point about halfway through where I was just too stressed.

Overall! I enjoyed this book and I’m glad I read it, but it didn’t change my life. Here’s hoping I like her other books more! *eyes books on shelf*

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Bleh. I should’ve known that a book by a Riverdale writer would be annoying and problematic. I have lots of feelings and I’m not completely settled on my 3-star rating. I’d even say if Goodreads allowed half stars, I’d give it 2.5 which is very disappointing, seeing as it’s been compared to some of my favourite books (Queens of Geek, Geekerella, Fangirl, Eliza and Her Monsters) AND the fabulous Mackenzi Lee called it “one of the good ones”.

Spoiler alert: it’s not.

I was so excited for this book. Come on: a book about queer fangirls with awesome rep? Sign me up!

If you want that, read any of the books listed above instead.

Let’s break this down bullet point style because I have too many things to say:

Likes:

• Rico, my innocent cinnamon roll
• Trudi and Chuck (the main character’s parents)
• uhhhh
• Rico
• The writing style *heart eyes*
• The nerdy references
• did i mention Rico

Okay, when it’s all out there, there wasn’t much that I liked. Rico was literally the only character I actually enjoyed reading about, and who didn’t make me roll my eyes.

Dislikes:

• Claire, the main fucking character
• Tess, the love interest
• Forest, the other main character
• Caty, the ACTUAL PYSCOPATHIC social media manager person or whatever
• Every single character could drop dead and I wouldn’t give a shit tbh
• THAT NOBODY’S ACTIONS HAD CONSEQUENCES *insert that vine*
• fucking dumbshit Claire
• TESS AHDKSHKAJH
• Smokey and Heart are the WORST names EVER WHY WOULD YOU NAME YOUR SUPERNATURAL RIP-OFF CHARACTERS S M O K E Y  AND  H E A R T  WTF

Writing this is making me really want to lower my rating. Lol.

Okay let’s get into some details. Claire Strupke is a hardcore fangirl for the (like I said above) demon-hunting-teenage-heartthrobs-Supernatural-rip-off TV show called Demon Heart. And yes, the show is about a demon named Heart who, you guessed it, is the only demon who has a heart.

Wow. So creative. Such imagination.

Claire finds out that the actors of Demon Heart, Forest Reed and Rico Quiroz, and the showrunner, Jamie Davies, are coming to the Comic-Con near her town. She somehow convinces her hippie artist (and probably stoner) parents, Chuck and Trudi, to let her go, so off Claire and Trudi go.

Long story short: Claire goes to a Demon Heart panel, is her obnoxious, annoying self, and has this whole thing with Forest Reed in front of everyone. Forest calls the fans of Demon Heart ‘crazy’ and Claire leaves the panel in tears, which made me chuckle tbh.

The publicity team for the show goes into overdrive and they form a plan to get host a contest, but Claire is the only entry, so she of course wins. Claire wins the chance to travel with the Demon Heart team to the rest of their convention stops and do social media stuff to make them look better.

Stay with me here. You’re just going to have to expand your limits of belief.

So, Claire and her mom join them on the tour bus off they go. I honestly can’t remember what cities they go to, but I think it’s Portland and then Seattle.

Oh, there’s also this girl Claire meets back in line for the panel, a chubby black girl called Tess, and they exchange Tumblr URLs. Claire realizes from Tess’s bio that Tess is pansexual. Okay, a chubby black pansexual girl. Rep for the win. Claire also realizes she thinks Tess is hot as hell (well, she doesn’t say that, but she might as well have).

The rest of the book is filled with pretty unmemorable events, so I’ll just gloss over those: Claire and Forest fight, Claire and Tess go on a date and make out, Claire and Forest fight, Claire writes sexytime fanfiction, Claire and Forest fight, Claire’s mom is funny and nice, and Claire is mean to her, etc. etc.

Now we’re at the last thirty or so percent of the book. Claire has been obsessively trying to get Jamie Davies to change HIS show to represent what SHE wants, and she even resorts to hacking his Twitter account (with the help of Caty, mentioned above), changing his banner to smutty fanart, and tweeting nice things about the Demon Heart fans. Uh, okay, this is officially insane. And sure, Jamie admits to queerbaiting with Smokey and Heart (ick) to get more viewers, but like, just stop watching the show then, Claire. You can’t force people to write their shows for you. There’s a reason fanfiction exists.

OH MY GOSH. How could I forget to mention? There’s a scene in, I think, Seattle? Claire and Tess have gone to sushi place to talk, I forget about what or when this scene happened. Whatever. Anyways, they’re talking, and Tess’s friends show up, because of course they do. Why is everything so damn convenient in this book? So Tess invites them to sit with them and she becomes a completely different person, which Claire is confused about, but then figures out is because Tess’s friends don’t know she’s a total nerd. Also, somehow this group of “tank top and heels” wearing, skinny, white girls, are friends with Tess. This doesn’t add up, tbh, because she obviously doesn’t fit in with their clique.

Claire eventually decides to tell Tess’s friends about her Demon Heart obsession, which honestly isn’t that embarrassing in the year 2018 and literally should not have been such a big deal. Tess asks Claire to talk privately so they step outside, which leads to them yelling in the street and Tess outing Claire to her mom, who shows up during the fight.

“Your daughter’s gay.”

This will sit with me for a while. Tess, a pansexual girl, who claims to have been discriminated against for multiple things, has just OUTED A QUESTIONING PERSON. This is DISGUSTING and quite frankly, I wanted to stop reading right then and there.

A lot of other stuff happens, like Forest and Rico kissing during a panel (and I honestly feel like Forest and Rico were queerbait because Forest ends up with Caty after the two dudes kissed and Forest felt SPARKS AND ALL THIS GAY SHIT. But nope. Wow, Britta Lundin, did you base Jamie Davies off yourself???). Claire moderates this panel and then after being asked by a 10-year-old fangirl how to respond to mean people about writing fanfiction, Claire launches into this ridiculous rant about who-fucking-knows-what. I don’t even remember. It was lame and ended with her coming out as queer. Which is cool, but she’s still a terrible person.

Claire and Tess both apologize (right…because telling somebody that you like an “embarrassing” tv show is the same as OUTING someone. Bullshit.) and they make out in front of everyone.

Hold on a second. *opens Goodreads* *changes rating for Ship It from 3 to 2 stars*. Okay, I’m back. That’s better.

Well, I think that about wraps it up. Overall, I adored the first 25% and I was expecting it to be a 5-star rating, but it fell quickly and boy howdy am I livid. Lol.

Would not recommend.