Hi everyone!
This book review was supposed to go up weeks ago but I suppose I'll try to use the line "better late than never" here.
I was very excited about the release of this book so I'm sure you can imagine how much that multiplied when I was offered an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review (I'm just sorry that the review wasn't quite as advanced but thank you to Scholastic for sending it to me!)
Here is the synopsis for You Should See Me in a Crown:
Liz has always believed she's too black, too poor, too awkward to shine in her small, rich, prom-obsessed town. But Liz has an escape plan to attend an uber-elite college, play in their world-famous orchestra, and become a doctor.
But when the financial aid she was counting on unexpectedly falls through, Liz's plans come crashing down... until she's reminded of her school's scholarship for prom king and queen. There's nothing Liz wants to do less than endure a gauntlet of social media trolls, catty competitors, and humiliating public events, but despite her devastating fear of the spotlight she's willing to do whatever it takes to get to college.
The only thing that makes it halfway bearable is the new girl in school, Mack. She's smart, funny, and just as much of an outsider as Liz. But Mack is also in the running for queen. Will falling for the competition keep Liz from her dreams... or make them come true?
And now, on to my review...
To put it boldly, this book is definitely in my top three reads of 2020 so far, out of about thirty books, and although we still have three and a half months of the year left I think it will stay in my top three.
I could go on for ages about how much I enjoyed reading this book, it was honestly that fantastic! I loved the idea of the main storyline and I adored Liz as a main character. She had a lot of personality traits that I could relate too, especially in her awkwardness and thought processes at times. She was a well-established main character from the very beginning and I was routing for her from the very start.
I said that there were some relatable traits in Liz's character, but she is also had a different school experience to the one I had. With the Black Lives Matter movement gaining more momentum and coverage, this book came along at the right time in my eyes. In just the first line of the synopsis, Liz says she has "always believed she's too black, too poor, too awkward to shine" and that goes hand-in-hand with a lot of the experiences of young black people that I have read or heard recently whilst researching and educating myself on the matter more thoroughly.
This book is a gateway with just a taste of how this issue can be tackled through literature aimed at the younger generation and beyond. Although I am no longer a "young adult" at the age of 28, I still enjoy reading this age range of books because they are usually the books that have a message, have better representation and are more inclusive. I know this is not always the case and it still needs to be better but I think YA books are moving in the right direction and have been for a while now.
Leah Johnson's writing style is addictive in that I couldn't - and didn't want to - put this book down. I read the entire book in one day, only putting it down when I moved from the sofa to read it in the bath and then from the bath to reading in my "reading armchair".
As I said the start of this review, this is firmly in my top three books of the year so far, so I think it's pretty clear from that note that I loved this book. The storyline was brilliant, the writing was captivating, the characters were well-defined, the use of text messages as part of the dialogue made it real and the book as a whole was just fantastic.
A truly amazing debut from Leah Johnson!
You can buy a copy of You Should See Me in a Crown here!
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