By now you all may know that I don’t read a lot of contemporary, but the moment I saw the synopsis for That’s Not What I Heard I knew it was the kind of contemporary I enjoy. It sounded like a really fun and fast read, perfect to read in between some heavy fantasy novels. So when I got the chance to participate in the blog tour for this book I jumped on it! Thanks to the publisher and The Fantastic Flying Book Club I got to read an eArc of this one. Today I have my review for you all, so let’s get into it!
About the book
That’s Not What I Heard
by Stephanie Kate Strohm
Publisher: Scolastic
Release date: January 29th 2019
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Synopsis
What did you hear?
Kimberly Landis-Lilley and Teddy Lin are over. Yes, the Kim and Teddy broke up.
At least that’s what Phil Spooner thinks he overheard and then told Jess Howard, Kim’s best friend. Something about Teddy not liking Kim’s Instas? Or was it that Teddy is moving to Italy and didn’t want to do long distance? Or that Kim slid into someone else’s DMs?
Jess told her boyfriend, Elvis, that he needs to be on Kim’s side. Especially if he wants to keep her as his girlfriend. But Elvis is also Teddy’s best friend.
Now, Kim’s run out of school for the day. Jess is furious. Elvis is confused. And half the lunch period won’t talk to Teddy. Even the teachers have taken sides.
William Henry Harrison High will never be the same again!
Review
I was going into this book with the expectations of a light-hearted, fun and fast read. And that was exactly what I got! I read the book in one sitting and was laughing out loud all the time. The book starts out with the POV of Kim Landis-Lilley on the morning of the break up. We get the whole story so there wasn’t any guessing of about whether any of the rumors were true. You can clearly tell Kim didn’t actually want to break up with Teddy and pretty quickly I got the feeling Teddy didn’t either. So it was a little bit of a guessing game whether they would end up back together.
But the biggest guessing game was where the story would take me. I think we got about 15 POV’s in total and I definitely wouldn’t have been able to accurately predict what would happen in this story. The rumors and the events following the break-up are super over the top but SO MUCH FUN. I was laughing out loud at the crazy situations Stephanie Kate Strohm created for us to enjoy. The story takes place over a span of 4 weeks and every chapter tells you clearly what day you’re reading about. We didn’t get any weekend chapters because the focus was truly on what was happening at the school. I thought that was a lot of fun. It was incredible to see how out of hand a story can get when no one is communicating clearly and every one has only a part of the story.
Like I said, there were about 15 POV’s but it never got confusing. I think the author did a great job of creating distinct personalities with their own thing going on. While the break-up rumor mill was the focus of the story, most of the characters had a little something extra going on. It was so interesting to read about the same story from so many different POV’s, everyone looks at the situation with their own filter and that really showed.
There was quite some representation in the story, which I appreciated a lot. It truly felt like a high school with all kinds of kids. You could also tell the story was clearly set in this time period because of all the fun references to pop culture the author embedded in the story. And she showed a difference between the adults and the teens as well. Their talking about sliding in someone else’s DM’s and the teens are clearly talking about Instagram. But the adult only got the part about the DM’s and were wondering if kids even still used Twitter. I really enjoyed those little generation gaps and think that showed how well Stephanie Kate Strohm crafted this story.
All in all this was such a fun read and exactly what I wanted out of the story. When you’re looking for a ridiculous but hilarious story about a diverse high school this is the book you want to pick up. I know I’ll be reading more books by this author soon!
Blog tour
Today is the first day of the blog tour and there will be other bloggers posting about That’s Not What I Heard all week! You can find the schedule for the blog tour here. The schedule will be updated with links.
Links to the book
Goodreads
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Book Depository
Kobo
IndieBound
iBooks
About the author
Stephanie Kate Strohm is the author ofThe Taming of the Drew, Pilgrims Don’t Wear Pink, Confederates Don’t Wear Couture, It’s Not Me, It’s You and Prince in Disguise. She grew up in Connecticut and attended Middlebury College in Vermont, where she was voted Winter Carnival Queen. Currently she lives in Chicago with her fiance and a little white dog named Lorelei Lee.
Giveaway (US only)
This was such a fun and fast read! If you’re in the mood for something light and you want to laugh out loud, this is the book for you!
