- The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life - Review & Giveaway -

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Book Info: The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life by Dani Jansen

Genre: Young Adult LGBTQ+ Contemporary

Publishing Date: September 22, 2020

Alison Green, desperate valedictorian-wannabe, agrees to produce her school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That’s her first big mistake. The second is accidentally saying Yes to a date with her oldest friend, Jack, even though she’s crushing onCharlotte. Alison manages to stay positive, even when her best friend starts referring to the play as “Ye Olde Shakespearean Disaster.” Alison must cope with the misadventures that befall the play if she’s going to survive the year. She’ll also have to grapple with what it means to be “out” and what she might be willing to give up for love.

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- Review -

I’m a sucker for anything that has to do with Shakespeare if it's a retelling to books based around his plays or so on. Once I heard of The Year Shakespeare Ruined my Life, I knew I had to read it. In the book, we follow Alison who has agreed to produce her schools play of A Midsummer Night's Dream and when she does other things follow that leads her to choices she wouldn’t usually make, like say yes to go on a date with one of her oldest friends while having feelings for someone else, and other things that I don't want to spoil. There's a lot of up and down Alison faces. Being the top of her class is hard as it is but she takes on this play and things just unroll from there.

I lot of my favorite scenes were the parts with or about the play. I enjoy stuff about theater so anything that had even a drop of behind the scenes, I will enjoy it. Plays in books spark my interest and it's the main thing that drew me to this book. I like seeing how she would hand putting together this play.

I like the characters, they were easy to read about. I do have to say there is a character who pressure there partner to be ”out more” and it's never the best to be with someone who pressures their partner to do something they don't want to do, if it's being out or drinking, it's something I don't like to read about.

This is a very much of a coming of age story, and though there are some parts I don't agree with, there are some people in the world who had/are going thought what Alison went through.

This is a very cute YA, there were a lot of fun, light heart parts and it's a great book to end the summer with but I do wish there were a little more hard-hitting parts and more development.

This was such a fast read and I had fun! It's a light and over the top with the the drama of theater and teen life.

So if you kike Shakespeare, theatre and/or romance than you may enjoy this read!

Dani Jansen is a teacher and writer who lives in Montreal. She should probably be embarrassed to admit that she has performed as part of her school’s Glee Club for eight years. She should probably also be ashamed to tell people that she named her cats after punctuation symbols (Ampersand and Em-Dash, in case you’re curious).

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- Giveaway -

Two Finished Copies of The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life. The giveaway ends on September 15th.

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