Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry
Score: 5/5 Bookmarks
Thank you to Harper Teen for gifting me with a review copy of Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by Joya Goffney.
Having your journal found by someone at school has to be every teen girls’ nightmare. Well, this is even worse. Quinn keeps a journal of lists, it’s where she writes down her worst fears, the most terrible things she’s ever done, and her most secret and private thoughts, and not only did someone find it, but they’re using it to blackmail her!
Quinn uses list-making as a way to get her fears out of her head and onto paper instead. It’s her coping mechanism. But when someone finds and steals her journal and starts posting a list a day to a blackmail Instagram account for the whole school to see, she has to keep the blackmailer at bay long enough to work out who it is and stop them.
An unlikely friend (Carter Bennett) joins her quest, helping her tick off the items the blackmailer demands of her, and supporting her as she works through her fears and the trauma of being bullied. Along the way, this new friendship helps Quinn open her eyes, experience things outside of her comfort zone, and develop some unexpected feelings. Oh how I love a good enemies to lovers story!
I adored all of the characters in this book (main and supporting) and couldn’t get enough of them. This book will tug at your heartstrings in a big way—I dare you to try not to be moved. It’s not all romance either, there are themes of bullying, racism, peer pressure, drug abuse, sex, strained parental relationships and so much more.
When I requested this book on NetGalley I obviously didn’t look closely enough. I thought I was requesting an audiobook, but what I actually got was a ‘voice galley’ which is a synthetic voice reading the text. I assume this is the step before an actual audiobook is performed. But imagine Siri reading an entire novel to you. It was very difficult to listen to, and obviously, the emphasis wasn’t in all the right places, nor was there any emotion portrayed. It’s my own fault, and I’ll know to read more carefully before pushing that request button, but I think it tells you just how good this book is—that even with ‘Siri’ reading it to me I still loved it enough that I gave it five stars.
If it’s not on your TBR, add it now. It comes out May 4, 2021.
Synopsis:
Quinn keeps lists of everything—from the days she’s ugly cried, to “Things That I Would Never Admit Out Loud,” to all the boys she’d like to kiss. Her lists keep her sane. By writing her fears on paper, she never has to face them in real life. That is, until her journal goes missing…
An anonymous account posts one of her lists on Instagram for the whole school to see and blackmails her into facing seven of her greatest fears, or else her entire journal will go public. Quinn doesn’t know who to trust. Desperate, she teams up with Carter Bennett—the last known person to have her journal—in a race against time to track down the blackmailer.
Together, they journey through everything Quinn’s been too afraid to face, and along the way, Quinn finds the courage to be honest, to live in the moment, and to fall in love.
