Thank you NetGalley for the ARC! Best friends go to college in different states across the US (one in Cali. one in Boston) and send messages to each other. They make dumb mistakes; they argue; they make amends because they're best friends. It's an OK read. It's quick, but something feels laking in its epistolary style.

'I Hate Everyone But You' was certainly an interesting read, but it wasn't super captivating to be honest. I had a struggle finishing this book. And, personally, I would only recommend it if you're already a fan of Gaby & Allison.

+SPOILERS BELOW*



Maybe if I had read this book when I was sixteen,I would have liked it. But, imagining the actions of the protagonists when they are supposedly 18-19 years old, THAT was very ridiculous.


The good:
* It’s soooo easy to read.
* LGBT + representation.
* Kinda the way feminism is represented.


The bad:
* The protagonists are unbearable and have no personalities (I don’t even have no idea who studied at such a university and who was the one who got drunk all the time, bueh).
* That Gen (or Ava) is queer doesn’t mean that she has to justify her actions (cheating on her “partners”, not talking about her emotions with his friend, etc). She is a mess, period.
* There is no way I can justify Charlotte hooking up with STUDENTS. FOR GOD’S SAKE, She’s not a teacher, BUT SHE IS A FIGURE OF AUTHORITY, she is in her thirties and I’m supposed to justify Gen (or was it Ava?) hooking up with someone like that? who is, also, openly TERF.
* Talking about Charlotte being TERF and Gen doesn’t giving a shit AND HAVING SEX WITH HER AGAIN. EVEN THOUUGH SHE’S “INTERESTING” IN ALEX. Uggggggh. I fucking hated that ending, leaving her friend (tha suffers anxiety) IN A CITY SHE DOESN’T KNOW AND GOING TO SEE A PERSON OPENLY TERF. What the fuck is wrong with you? “Doing it because you are learning who you are” is a fucking excuse.
* UGH. I'd better leave it here because if not, I'll end up giving it zero stars.


*Note: I received a copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. (and sorry for taking sooo long to read the book)

Ava and Gen are high school best friends starting their first semester of college on opposite sides of the country. Ava is in the film program at USC to become a screenwriter. She’s got social anxiety, OCD, and other mental health issues but decides to branch out by trying out a sorority and having her first boyfriend. Gen is at Emerson studying journalism. She is relishing her independence as she works at a student newspaper, goes to lots of parties, and explores her sexuality. The story is told through their exchanges of texts and emails.

The format of the book was cute, reading their texts and emails. It made me wish I kept in better touch with my friends. Maybe it will inspire me to send some texts and emails of my own.

The content of the book was not great. The ups and down of their relationship and their mental health was realistic, both hard and endearing, and I did like that aspect of it. But there was way too much bad language in it, and it gave a glimpse of everything normal college freshmen do if they didn’t have morals and standards: underage drinking, drugs, sorority life, premarital sex. I saw how the other half lives, and I wasn’t missing anything.

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ebook.

I read YA to find books that I can recommend to the students in the classroom. This is just not a book I could recommend due to the drugs, alcohol, and sex content and how loosely those topics are talked about. The format was not bad as many students would relate to the text messages and email as conversation instead of calling each other on the phone. I think this could have been a good book about two friends dealing with attending colleges far from each other and how to support each other but just did nothing in the emotion department.

Ooh, how I wanted to love this book. Working with high schoolers as a school librarian, I was sure that this would be a hit. After trying to get into it, though, I struggled. I found the characters to be a bit cliche and the plot to be somewhat predictable. I suppose this would be a perfect read for a certain type of kid, but when purchasing books, I look for ones to recommend to multiple students. I apologize for not being able to give this a glowing review. Thank you for allowing me to review this book.

I Hate Everyone But You by Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin is an interesting concept of a book, I suppose. Basically it follows two girls – Ava and Gen as they navigate college on opposite coasts. Ava goes to USC. Gen goes to Emerson college. On the one hand, yay for more new adult books. On the other hand, I finished feeling a little bit conflicted.

I know it is a little bit shallow to want to like the characters that I read about. However, I haven’t evolved yet into a reader who is blase about that kind of thing. So, okay, this book. It is told in a series of emails and text messages between Ava and Gen. I think that is a really cool concept for a book. The characters certainly do not flinch from honesty and just let it all hang out.

However, Ava is incredibly anxious, narcissistic and kind of a homebody. Gen is much more of an outgoing cool girl type, but also really narcissistic. I found it a little bit hard to relate to these two girls and I have been to college and all that. For me, it was more similar to Ava in that I went close to home but still had some anxiety. Ava is relatively financially privileged. Gen comes across as pretty secure in herself. Still, I just, I don’t know. They were kind of mean to each other and would like freeze each other out and I thought that was a bit of a jerk move.

But, I Hate Everyone But You is a pretty honest book at least. It does not shy from difficult scenes or anything. I felt like I had a good handle on who the characters were as people. But in the end, I just didn’t care all that much for those people. I might or might not check the next book out, because some parts were really funny. Also, talk about great pacing – it took me like a day to read this. I just sit over here, on the fence.

This story is heartfelt and real. If you've ever had a best friend you will connect with this story and its characters on some level.

DNF around 28%. I really wanted to like this book but honestly I just didn't care for it. I was really bored right from the beginning and I think it'll be better for me to just officially DNF this since I've been trying to finish this book for months! Every time I pick it back up and start from the beginning I find myself not being to get too far.

Funny and heartfelt look at a college long- distance friendship between 2 high school BFFs told through texts and emails. The discussions about sexuality, mental health, dating and sex were honest and the friendship struggles are relatable to anyone who had tried to maintain a friendship cross-country. Recommended for mature teens and college+.

I adored the relationship between the two young women in this novel. It was brilliantly written to highlight the differences in their personalities while making it very clear their strong connection and friendship with each other. Knowing how Gabby and Alli are in their own social media and YouTube, it was wonderful to see an extension of that friendship represented.

I have put off writing my review of this novel for quite a while now for a few reasons. First of all, it has been a long time since I disliked a book as much as I disliked this one, therefore, I have a lot to say. So many aspects annoyed, frustrated, and completely enraged me due to how close to home they hit. However, I absolutely despise writing rant-filled reviews—I like to be as fair as possible—and immediately after I finished reading, I didn’t think I was capable of being calm.

Another aspect that is still causing me to be hesitant is my lack of real-life, firsthand knowledge of the situation that one of the girls was experiencing. Even though I was not able to fully connect to what she was dealing with, I still found that I had a lot of opinions on the way it was handled and presented from a bit of an “outsider’s” point-of-view. It’s about time that I gave this a try though, so I will do my best to explain my feelings as well as I can. Please remember, this is all just my personal opinion and interpretation of the novel.

In this novel, we follow two best friends—Ava and Gen—as they navigate their first year of college on opposite sides of the country. This is the first time they have had to deal with a separation this huge, and understandably, the new experiences ahead feel incredibly daunting without the other by their side. In lieu of seeing each other in person, they keep up a correspondence every day, discussing all the aspects of their new lives and trying to maintain their strong friendship.

Admittedly, this is not something that I would have normally been interested in reading. However, the format that the story is told in is originally what caught my eye, and my attention. The entire novel is told through texts and emails sent between Ava and Gen as they support each other while trying to bridge the distance between them. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved stories told through messages—I’m not sure why, but they have always been so much fun for me. Unfortunately, that was not the case this time around.

Let me begin by talking about Ava, as the themes used in her storyline are ones that I have the most personal experience with. These main themes are anxiety/social anxiety and OCD, and the obstacles mental illness can throw in your way—or at least that is what it is trying to portray. Instead, it ends up coming across as a very stereotypical and downright inaccurate caricature of serious mental illnesses, used many times for comedic purposes.

So, I may be overreacting to this as I do on occasion when it comes to the depiction of mental illness. And I completely understand that all mental illnesses manifest in unique ways for every single person dealing with them. But, as someone who has dealt with severe anxiety/social anxiety and OCD all their life, I am incredibly upset by the way it is shown here. Believe me, I am someone who truly values the medicinal effects of humor, and I do enjoy poking fun at the strangeness of my anxiety plenty of the time. However, here, every aspect is treated as a complete joke.

The absolute biggest problem I have with it is that a huge part of the time, her actions show the exact opposite of the severe social anxiety she claims to have—no, joining a sorority and throwing yourself at men is not a good example. As I said before, her anxiety only pops up when it can make a situation into a joke, and it is written in that clichéd “oh, I’m so ‘hashtag relatable’” kind of way. I apologize for the way I’m coming across here. I’m just absolutely fed up with the way people belittle the incredible amount of pain that this type of mental illness inflicts on those of us who have to deal with it on a daily basis.

Then we have our other main character, Gen. The main themes in her storyline are exploring one’s sexuality, experimenting and discovering what is right for you, and how one’s sexuality does not need to conform to a strict label. However, this is not the message that I feel her actions conveyed. It comes across more like she is very sure of herself and is just using people, manipulating their emotions, and putting herself at risk.

Granted, maybe this is my interpretation because of my own personal experiences, or lack of experience. I connect with her on what it’s like to learn about one’s sexuality and that desire to break away from society’s habit of labeling it. I am unable to connect with her actions though, as my journey, purely due to my personality, has been much less active. All in all, I am fairly irritated because I do not feel like her plotline positively or realistically portrays the queer community, particularly what it is like for those of us who find that we attracted to both genders.

Now, on to Ava and Gen’s friendship in general. Things started out well at the beginning of the novel—they are shown to have a rather sweet relationship and are incredibly close to each other. It’s very easy to relate to the sadness of having to be separated from your best friend whom you’ve always had by your side to face the challenges of life—I have been going through the exact same thing in the last few years. They are faithfully there to support each other through the changes that come with college living. However, somewhat quickly, things begin to take a turn for the worse, and by the halfway point of the novel, their friendship has proven itself to be horrendously toxic.

First of all, Ava is constantly acting relatively homophobic in many of her conversations with Gen when Gen shares things about her sexuality. And again, this is used as another tactic to create humor in the plot, which I think is atrocious. But the most major issue with their friendship is how they support and strongly encourage each other to make terrible, dangerous, and damaging decisions. It is so over-the-top, it’s extremely hard to believe that either of these girls actually cares about the other. Their relationship feels manipulative and destructive more than anything.

Suffice it to say, I think we can conclude that I Hate Everyone But You was clearly not for me. I of course applaud any authors committing themselves to helping diversify literature. Diversity is something we need so much more of, and sexuality, gender labels, and mental illness are all wonderful topics to choose. And I did love the format of the book—it made for a very fast read, and was the only really enjoyable part. The overall story itself just did not come across in the right way at all. Personally, I cannot, in good conscious, recommend giving this a read.

I read this mostly because of the authors, but it wasn't my favorite. I wasn't a fan of the character banter and found it boring and dramatic. Though, I think the idea was creative and would read more from the authors.

I really enjoyed this book. I'm usually not too fond of this email-and-texts type of format, but in this one it was actually well written. The conversations felt very natural, like I was really reading actual texts and emails between two friends.
I found it really great that the narrative didn't leave me feeling like I needed descriptions to fully understand what was going on or to connect emotionally with the characters. Also the book managed to represent and comment on anxiety issues and lgbtq matters through the girls exchanges.
This is an easy, quick and entertaining read, and it had a bit more depth than I expected. I would definitely recommend it. Also, from what I've seen, the hardcover is absolutely gorgeous, so I certainly intend to get myself a copy.

If I find out a book is written in an epistolary format–in this case emails and texts–I will almost always pick it up. This is easily my favorite type of writing, and it works beautifully here. I really enjoyed the way this story was written and consumed this in a couple of days.
Ava and Gen are best friends who are going to college on opposite sides of the United States. Ava is staying in their home state of California, staying close to her parents (but still living in the dorms), while Gen is going to school at Emerson in Boston.
The story mostly focuses on the first semester of school. Both girls are going through a lot of changes. Ava is dealing with depression and anxiety in a new environment. She has been on medication for years, and is disgruntled that the therapist she is stuck with is still in training (this made me think of Anna Kendrick’s character in 50/50–a movie I loved). In an attempt to make new friends and step out of her shell, she decides to rush a sorority, even though she knows it probably won’t be the best fit, and starts to date a frat boy. She also makes tentative friendships with other members of the film school that she is attending in order to be a screenwriter.
Gen has come out as bisexual to her friend for the first time and almost immediately starts tenuous relationships with both a girl her age and an older woman who has a position of power over her. She is writing for the school’s prestigious paper with hopes of snagging the permanent position that will open up the following year.
There was a lot to love here. If you’ve ever had a friendship with a polar opposite, you will immediately recognize the dynamics of the girls’ friendship. My best friend is an extreme extrovert. It is her mission in life to make a new friend everywhere she goes. I’ve always been more withdrawn. I wouldn’t call myself a straight introvert, but I definitely need more quiet, alone time than most people and find it exhausting to be around people for too long. So I very much related to their dynamic and thought their arguments and conversations were very realistic. Again, I also really loved the format, as well. I also liked how both the LGBT themes and emotional instability were handled. Even though this is a simple story told in a fairly simple format, there is meat here.
While I found both girls well-written, I found both exasperating. Both girls make seriously questionable choices in their romantic relationships. I also hated the way Ava constantly praises her parents while hating on Gen’s. Gen’s father, who has had a drinking problem her entire life, is obviously not awesome, but it felt like Ava was rubbing it in. Finally, I wish Gen would have been a bit more understanding toward Ava and her point-of-view. Gen also makes decisions regarding her college and professional career that made me want to give her a good talking to.
Overall, I really enjoyed this story and would recommend it to anyone who wants a quick, easy read that isn’t full of fluff.

3.5 Stars

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This book was interesting. I tried to read it a few months back, immediately after receiving this book but disliked it. Upon restarting this book I like it a lot more, but there were many times where I saw why I had put it down in the first place.

Here's a brief summary of my mixed-up thoughts:

The good:
*I thought it was funny. The characters have a great dynamic and use humor a lot to deal with stressful situations. I even laughed out loud a few times, which was nice.
*I appreciated the way the long distance friendship was depicted. They had a strong history that kept them together, but they still fought as all friends do, and the distance between them only made it more difficult to reconcile when they did.
*I liked how both girls had very different college experiences, yet I could relate in some ways to both.

The bad:
*Some of the situations the girls got into felt a bit extreme and unrealistic. I feel that common sense could have prevented about 30% of all the conflict in this book.
*I disliked Gen's personality. I liked her as a character, but I felt that she started unnecessary drama wherever she went.
*I think in the end what really brought it down for me were the parts of the book that I just couldn't relate to.

All in all I still would recommend this book. It's a funny, fast-paced piece of literature.
It may not be a favorite, but I'm still glad I ended up reading it.

I think that because I am not a late teen, early adult I could not really get into this book. I thought it would be an interesting take on the use of text/email relationship of the two girls but I lost interest quickly.

This was a hilarious and very easy book to read, but it seemed to move very slowly at some points

Explorative. Funny. Genuine. Indulging. I Hate Everyone But You was a blastingly bold and a great read.

I have a strong inclination towards books told through letters, emails and such.

Truly enjoyed this metamorphosis of a book.

After having this book on my shelf for a long time I ended up losing interest on it so I won't be reading this one.