Delacorte Press
March 11, 2014
336 pages
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Contemporary teen fiction with romance, secrets, scandals, and ESP from the author of Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn't Have).
We weren't always like this. We used to be average New York City high school sophomores. Until our homeroom went for flu shots. We were prepared for some side effects. Maybe a headache. Maybe a sore arm. We definitely didn't expect to get telepathic powers. But suddenly we could hear what everyone was thinking. Our friends. Our parents. Our crushes. Now we all know that Tess is in love with her best friend, Teddy. That Mackenzie cheated on Cooper. That, um, Nurse Carmichael used to be a stripper.
Since we've kept our freakish skill a secret, we can sit next to the class brainiac and ace our tests. We can dump our boyfriends right before they dump us. We know what our friends really think of our jeans, our breath, our new bangs. We always know what's coming. Some of us will thrive. Some of us will crack. None of us will ever be the same.
So stop obsessing about your ex. We're always listening.
Sarah Mlynowski's Don't Even Think About It is a fun, quick read. When one sophomore homeroom develops an interesting reaction to the flu shot, they wonder if their lives will ever be the same again. And whether or not they want them to be.
At first, they think they're going crazy. After all, who hears what other people are thinking? Soon enough, it becomes clear that it isn't something they are imagining: they can hear other people's thoughts - and those in their homeroom can hear theirs. The time of being able to keep secrets has passed.
Whether it's the summertime affair one of them had, what their parents are really thinking about during dinner, who their crush is or anything they think about at all, homeroom 10B now knows it all.
I liked that, although the cover is only girls, it was a co-ed homeroom class affected. Meaning an interesting, discovery filled start to the day for the teens, it takes the story in an a fun direction. We hear both the girls' and the boys' thoughts, how they deal with being able to hear each other. This diversity in the characters pulls both the characters and readers into the drama of relationships, friendships, social hierarchy . . . and involves hearing some things they might not want to, whether it's painful or just not something they want to know.
There are a lot of characters in Don't Even Think About It but they each have their own story, their own secrets they don't want discovered and their own things currently happening. It is easy to keep everyone's story straight and this is an example of numerous characters really helping the story. Everyone gets involved in each other's business in a way they wouldn't have before, with good and bad outcomes.
Don't Even Think About It was a fun read, but did sometimes feel more like it was trying to be cute than that it actually was cute. Still, I liked that it was a humorous story that still dealt with some deeper issues. When you're hearing everyone's thoughts, it's not only going to be what you want to hear. The novel did a really nice job handling the tougher, more painful side of the telepathy without losing the lightness.
I didn't enjoy this as much as Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn't Have) but it was a cute, well executed concept and I 'm curious to see what happens in the sequel.
received for review from publisher through NetGalley
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