Catching up on DNFs...

I appreciate what Sales was trying to do here, but this book just was not for me. This book was written years ago, and we still see things like this. People acting awful online, the mob attacking, and if this was real, she would be paying for that one comment for the rest of her life. I think I was the wrong reader for this book, and I was unable to embrace the MC or her journey.

I received this free eARC novel from NetGalley. This is my honest review.

This has been on my TBR pile for so long, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. I really enjoyed the storyline and seeing the characters change throughout the story was a great character development. The plot was great and kept my attention. I'm glad I got the chance to read this and will be on the lookout for more in the future!

Leila sales is one of my favourite authors and this was yet another brilliant read, she's honestly so nuanced at making you care about her characters and I absolutely devoured this novel!

No real strong feelings about this book. I think there is a good message here, especially for teens. It was a bit dramatic to read as an adult. I can see recommending it for certain teens to read so they can think a bit deeper about what they are posting online not just from Winter's side but also from the sides of the online mobs and how comments can effect a person's life.

I have read almost everything Leila Sales has written (except Mostly Good Girls) and will continue to read all her books. If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say takes on a controversial topic – what happens when you fall on the wrong side of internet controversy. It is an interesting topic to be sure and one with a lot of nuance. And well, it is one that I think has to be handled delicately, which I think Sales does quite well.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say features Winter Halperin, a former Scripps spelling bee champion who tweets something racist about the newest champion, who is Black. What results is rightful internet anger at Winter. Her life unravels over a stupid comment. So, Winter ends up going to Revibe, which promises to change her life and rehabilitate her reputation. At Revibe, Winter encounters other people who have made mistakes and ended up pissing the internet off. Together, they volunteer, do yoga, eat healthy and repent. The lessons sink in more with some than others.

I thought that Sales did a nice job NOT justifying what Winter said. The book is authentic in that Winter sees herself as the victim at first. She cannot understand why there’s so much outrage. And so, for her, the fault lies with everyone else. She tries to apologize but it just blows up in her face. Eventually though, she takes responsibility for her words and not in a bullshit kind of way – but in an actual remorseful way. I liked that she was able to grow and change. I think that Sales definitely did not go easy on her main character, which makes the book worth it. Is this my favorite of Sales’ books? No, it’s still a decent read though.

This book was just not for me. I struggled to connect with the protagonist and so I was unable to finish this story. I adore Leila Sales so this makes me sad, but I do look forward to what she writes next !

Thank you for the chance to read it early.

Well-written and realistic portrayal of what an online mistake can do to someone. I really enjoyed this book. The teenagers in the story read like actual teenagers I know in real life, which was refreshing. Good reminder to think before you type!

Ultimately, this one only hit about a "meh" on my personal scale. I mean, the idea of this book is, I suppose, better than its realization. That's the best I can describe it. I think the idea of cyber shaming and having to "rewrite" or "rebrand" yourself after such shaming is an important thing for us all to know more of these days. And I am glad that the book uses something like spelling bee as the basis for her fame! That's just fabulous! I even like the idea of the company that gives them tools to overcome and how those don't work for everyone.

I think what struck me as problematic was the swiftness with which the friendships, trust, and romance bloomed. It just didn't seem real and it mostly seemed contrived. I might've given this title a 4 if the characters were more developed, too. I felt like we knew so much about the protagonist and WAY too little about everybody else. So, yeah.......

I’m completely baffled on how to review this book. It’s a complicated subject matter and the author approached it in a very uneven manor. I have lots of thinky thoughts. Plus, my criticisms might reveal spoilers. I guess I’ll just dive in and mark the spoilers if you care to know more.

Winter, a former spelling bee champion, loses her latest competition to a black girl and posts, what she feels, is a joke about the winner to her 100-ish Twitter followers and goes to bed. When she wakes up her notifications have exploded and her life starts unraveling.

She gets death and rape threats, loses her best friend and crush, Jason, who is black, loses her early acceptance to college and has her former spelling bee title taken away.

Winter apologizes, gets called out again, mainly because she makes the apology about herself.

We’ve all seen this and we’re all one tweet, one post away from it happening. And when you’re in the thick of it – there is no explanation, apology that will stop the onslaught of negativity.

This is an incredibly relevant topic and interesting to see from the perspective of the person on the receiving end of the call-out culture but…

Winter is a pretty unlikeable character and she tells you that up front.

“Before we go any further, I want you to understand this: I am not a good person.”

Ok, she's not likable, for sure, but not a serial killer either. She’s really just a self absorbed teenager with no self awareness and is slightly narcissistic.

The problem is that she did hurt people around her, intentionally or not, and her goal is not to understand how what she said might be hurtful but to go after the person who RT’d her and to blame Jason for being hurt and not apologizing to her.

Early on, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, brings up a lot of issues that could have been explored with nuance and empathy.

To what extent should a person be punished for one tweet? What about threats/lies posted on the internet? Especially when that person is underage. When does a call out become bullying? What about the people hurt by your *joke*? Why do people who say horrible things all the time get to judge you for one mistake because it’s been made public but get to go on with their life without judgement? What about the people who initiate the frenzy with a RT without a second thought of what they've done or how they've changed someones life?

That would have been interesting and the book does touch (briefly) on all those things but takes a bizarre detour.

Winter enters a Malibu rehab facility called Revibe, where you basically eat granola, do yoga and try to break you internet addiction. You also have to write letters of repentance to those you’ve hurt.

This is the wackiest place y'all!

First off – the people there are supposedly all *victims* of SM shunning but they vary from a boy who killed a cat for no reason, a man who killed an escaped zoo lion that almost attacked his toddler daughter, a former Disneyesque type star with bad press, a musician that slept her way to joining a band and then was slut-shamed, a conservative politician who was caught having a gay affair, and a boy, Abe, whose father was an Enron type executive that bilked millions out of old people’s retirement accounts. The son is hated by association and tried to kill himself and is now paralyzed.

Which one(s) of these is not like the others??

They are all in the same facility. Given the same treatment with a a quick – don’t have personal relationships with each other rule tossed out. Welp, ok. A 15 year old psychopath that’s killing cats, next to a 50-ish year old man mixed with rebellious teens, next to people with real issues who may need counseling. The book didn't take the time to look into each patient/story so conflated them all into a horror story of social media shaming and that's where the book derailed for me.

The goal of Revibe is to write those damn repentance letters – even if you aren’t actually sorry – and even if you didn't actually do anything wrong. It doesn’t matter. Just lie and write them so people will move on.

So what does Winter learn from the experience? Not much. She chose the place herself to “become a better person” but she never really listens to what people are telling her about what she said – despite several people taking the time to talk to her about it. She only cares about getting her writing career back on track and making Jason forgive her (& have him apologize back to her).

Once people start liking her writing again (an article she shares in the local paper about her own redemption) then she’s all good. She becomes the poster child for people shunned on the internet.

She’s thrilled that a group of cheerleaders who blocked out letters on their uniforms to make racist words about Asians have found solace in her comeback. She combs the internet for scandals and writes letters to let people on the receiving end of a call out that she supports them – regardless of what they did because call out culture is bad. Yes…

But here’s the thing with that.

Sales is conflating a poorly worded tweet and truly vile acts. Like the cat killer, or people who go undercover to entrap and out gay men. They are not the same. And shouldn't be treated with the same broad stroke. No one should be threatened with death or rape but does someone who kills a cat and basically lies his way through rehab with no remorse deserve forgiveness in the same way as someone who said something dumb?

The author also inexplicably throws in a few more plot threads - Winter's mom is a popular mommy blogger who has written several child rearing books. It is relevant, in the sense that Winter's problems make her mom's parenting look bad & lose business - another consequence of the tweet going viral - but it's all brushed under the rug. Much like her mom would like to do with the problem. Her sister is unhappy at school but so?? There's more than enough going on without it.

The beginning of this book was thought provoking but then it veered off into too many directions, trying to address everyone’s side but not giving the plot the space to dig deep into issues of racism, bullying, shaming.

Part of me thinks that's the way Sales intended this book to be consumed. As a starting point to a discussion. Throw all the opposing views out there and let people hash it out. And if that was the goal - then it is successful. I just think if the story focused more on Winter's family and friends trying to cope with this but in different ways (good and bad), and add more from the POV of the adult who made a teenage girls tweet go viral (a power imbalance) not understanding the impact - you could have touched on everything and dug deeper making this a truly uncomfortable book instead of a detour into the silliness of Revibe.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book and chose to review it. This in no way impacts my opinion.

I think this could have been a good book because I like the idea of it but the execution wasn't good. It felt like a book from a white person to make other white people feel better about themselves and I'm not here for that.

We actually did a podcast review of this novel, so I don't have a written review. However, here are some quotes from the episode.

Danielle: 03:13 And one thing I wanted to talk about before we went any further was that in this novel it is made very clear, also in the same conversation with Jason, that Winter was not trying to reveal any systemic oppression or anything like that in a way that was just taken poorly by the online community, her tweet really had racist intentions. Um, Jason asks her, "Why do you think there aren't more black champions?" And Winter says, "I don't know, maybe they're bad spellers."
Amanda: 03:45 Yeah, and it's interesting that you say "racist intentions", because that's something that Winter talks about a lot through the novel, because she says like, 'I am not racist, like, I've never had racist thoughts or opinions ' and yet she still makes this comment that is clearly racist, but doesn't realize. She just says 'I didn't mean it that way', and somehow that is supposed to absolve her, even though, like, clearly she harbors these racist thoughts that maybe black people are just bad spellers, but she still can't see that.

Danielle: 19:44 Right? So, it's kind of like this "Breakfast Club" mix of people who have been shamed online. They do yoga, stuff happens. Now, while this is happening, Winter really wants to know how her posts got retweeted, and how this flood of stuff happened, because she'd only had like 100 followers or whatever. And she's able to track down the original retweet, and it's like this reporter who had done a story on her mom and she wants revenge, and she, like, calls the reporter and they end up having a pretty great relationship. This reporter basically asks her to do, you know, an exposé of life within Revibe, and at the end of the novel, Winter actually turns this into her Third Option. So she's not going to completely apologize for everything she's done, she definitely wants to explain her growth as a person, she's not just going to make a blanket apology to everyone who said that she should kill herself. Right? Like, that's what Kevin wants, Kevin wants an apology to everyone who's been hurt by her actions and Winter's like, "No, really I just want to apologize to Jason." And she does. And that is a great third option.

Amanda: 21:09 Yeah, I'm still not sure where I, where I stand on the ending and her writing. I don't know. I'm not sure. I don't think it's satisfying in lot of ways. I don't think that she goes far enough in acknowledging, like, why she tweeted that in the first place, that it wasn't just a dumb moment, that she has like these internalized racist ideas.

Danielle: 21:29 Right. And she also says in the end that she is writing to other people who've been shamed online and she named some people who I'm like, "Uh well, you know, like that's not the greatest person. They probably don't need your support."

Amanda: 21:45 Yeah. And I guess it's like the whole point of the book, they're like, "Oh these people are people too", but like if these people suck, like, I don't know. Like, Winter was humanized throughout this book and that was the whole point, but like, she did still say this terrible thing. But she was only 17, like it was a one time dashed off thing, she has a lot to learn. I said a lot of dumb stuff when I was 17, 18, that I would be absolutely mortified if anybody heard now and thought that I still held these beliefs, because you just learn a lot of dumb stuff when you're a kid.

Originally posted on Forever Young Adult 30 April 2018

BOOK REPORT for If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say by Leila Sales

Cover Story: Tone-deaf
BFF Charm: Yay!
Swoonworthy Scale: 6
Talky Talk: Straight Up with a Shot of Wry
Bonus Factors: Society & Social Media, Words
Relationship Status: Favorited

Cover Story: Tone-deaf

We hosted the cover reveal for this novel back in October, and at the time, I dug the pop of colors and the way Leila Sales' other books got a branding makeover to match. Aesthetically, I still think the design is cute, but now that I've read the (pretty serious) pages between the jacket, I can't help but wish the artwork was a little less bubblegum. Also, what the hell does a girl listening to music in a field of flowers have to do with a story about social media crucifixion?*

*Yes, I realize that by now, I should know better than to expect a YA cover to actually relate to the book.

The Deal

The road ahead for Winter Halperin is looking pretty smooth. She’s a National Spelling Bee champ, a beloved daughter of a parenting guru and a high school senior set to enroll at Kenyon College in the fall. But all of that goes to shit when, in response to the latest Spelling Bee, she sends out the following tweet:

We learned many surprising things today. Like that dehnstufe is apparently a word, and that a black kid can actually win the Spelling Bee.

It takes less than 12 hours for Winter to become Internet Enemy #1 and only a few days more for her entire life to fall apart. But it requires months (and a stint at an identity rehab center called Revibe) for her to pick up the pieces and finally answer the question: is she a bad person?

BFF Charm: Yay!

It might seem strange to want to be besties with a girl who wrote a racist tweet, but that just goes to show what a layered, complicated character Leila Sales has created. Winter is far from perfect, and that’s exactly what makes her so relatable—she’s a teen who, like many of us, has a major blindspot, and while that’s a problem, it’s not her defining quality. It’s an exception to all of the great things about her: her fierce intelligence, her loyalty to her friends and family and, my favorite, her obsession with words and grammar. Take, for example, Winter’s reaction to Kevin, one of the directors of Revibe, when he uses the phrase “completely unique”:

This made me immediately dislike Kevin, since modifying unique is one of my pet peeves—either something is unique or it’s not unique, but “completely unique” is redundant.

She’s a nerd, basically, which makes it that much harder for her to wrestle with her culpability. And for every time I wanted to smack her because girl, you are so not as woke as you think you are, there were multiple moments when I applauded her attempts to learn and change and grow.

Swoonworthy Scale: 6

At Revibe, Winter meets an assortment of other social media pariahs, including Abe, whose father cheated his clients out of billions of dollars of their investments. The first thing that Winter notices about Abe is that he’s in a wheelchair, but after their first night at the center, when they stay up late talking, she notices that he is legit great. Candid, thoughtful and without pretense, Abe listens to Winter and seems just as bent on helping her as he is on helping himself. Their connection is sweet yet substantial, and if I were to tweet about it, heart eyes emojis would be plentiful.

Talky Talk: Straight Up with a Shot of Wry

I’ve been a fan of Leila Sales since her first novel, and while I’ve always admired her writing, this book truly raises the bar. In spite of the sobering themes explored, her signature wit is still on display, particularly through Winter’s fellow Revibe residents and her high school friend, Mackler:

“When I eat cinnamon Jelly Bellies, it’s only because I thought they were cherry,” Mackler declared. “Cinnamon is wannabe cherry. Cinnamon is a pathetic sack of sugar dressed up in a cherry cloak.”

Her conversational tone, which I adore, is peppered with snappy dialogue and embellished with clever turns of phrase like, “her sweetness by now wearing as thin as ribbon candy.”

All of that is what I’ve come to expect from Sales. What sets this novel apart is her piercingly insightful exploration of and commentary on the judge, jury and executioner known as the internet. More on that below, but TL;DR, this is Leila Sales’ best book yet.

Bonus Factor: Society & Social Media

I wasn't sure how to label this at first. At its core, the book is about internet shaming, which seems more like an anti-bonus factor, but the way that Sales tackles the facets of internet mob justice is my favorite thing about this novel. She masterfully exposes the dark side of social media vigilantism without making Winter the victim--there's a significant acknowledgement that what Winter wrote and thought was wrong, but there's also a brave examination of the blurred ethics and destructive toxicity of the internet's herd mentality.

So many passages struck me like whoa, but I'll limit myself to two:

When we decide someone is an angel, she is an angel only until she falls from the sky. But when we decide someone is a villain, she is a villain forever. Everything she says or does is only more proof of her villainy. She cannot be redeemed.

And this one, when Winter is reflecting on the residents of Revibe and their varying degrees of transgressions:

But when the internet responded to every one of us with the same level of judgement and punishment, then it was impossible to distinguish between who really was or wasn’t a true villain. When everything’s a ten, then there’s no point to having a scale.

No matter what you think about online culture, this book is guaranteed to impact your perspective.

Bonus Factor: Words

As a former Spelling Bee champ, Winter’s passion for words should come as no surprise. But her interest lies far beyond the letters that compose the words—she relishes the meanings, the origins, the applications. Because of this, the book is laced with references like this:

Maelstrom. Dutch origin, obviously. If a single word alone could make you want to go to the Netherlands, it’s that one.

There’s lots of fascinating words and definitions scattered throughout the pages, but sometimes Winter just says a word, like pulchritudinous, and I have to use my Kindle dictionary to look it up. Which I simultaneously love (because I’m learning!) and hate (because it makes me feel like an idiot).

Relationship Status: Favorited

If this novel was a Tweet, I would favorite it. If this novel was a Facebook post, I would share it with all of my friends. If it was an Instragram pic, I'd re-gram it and hashtag the cuss out of it. And if it was a Snap, I would... do nothing, because I don't know how to Snapchat (get off my lawn!). In other words, I want to fill everyone's feeds with my admiration for what Leila Sales has accomplished with the story of Winter. This ain't fake news y'all, it's the real deal: read this book!

Winter, a high school senior, starts out by telling the reader that she is not a good person. Then she explains that she made a remark online about a spelling bee winner, a remark that she claims she didn't intend to be racist. Because Winter was a former spelling bee champion herself, a journalist re-posts the remark and the internet turns on Winter. She gets hate mail and death threats. She posts an attempted apology that only makes things worse.

On the positive side, the book did make me think about what Winter could or should do in her situation. But I found it frustrating to read about what she did do. It was pretty uncomfortable to watch her go through virtually all of the book with a continued sense of privilege, defensiveness, and narcissism. (Though perhaps that was what the book intended.) I also wished that the issue of racism in general (and Winter's racism in particular) had been more directly addressed.

I thought the way Winter chose to "fix" what she did was bizarre. Then, at the end, when I thought Winter might have gained a tiny bit of self-awareness, she hadn't. Once again, she acted in a way that was weirdly tone-deaf and inappropriate, a centering of herself YET AGAIN.

I think this topic as a book plot presents a conundrum. If a character like this is too sympathetic, then there's really no point (plus it makes her into a victim). If she shows quick and easy growth, that would feel too unrealistic and/or sappy. But the third choice, to make her a clueless villain, didn't really work for me either.

In sum: definitely thought-provoking but also discouraging in the main character's lack of growth and self-awareness.

I have read and loved many books by Leila Sales which is why I was so excited to get approved for this one, but this book should not have been published. I couldn't even get through it. No, just, no. Why was a book about a racist, privileged white girl approved?! I can't even imagine how this book would alienated readers of color. I almost feel like I have no business reviewing it as a white reader.

I received a free copy from NetGalley. When an older teen posts something online as a "joke" that isn't found funny, her life is "ruined". I alternated thinking every young teen should read this before they are allowed on social media with; this was a little too mature for the audience that would could use the lesson. But everyone should think twice about what they post, and how they react to posts online, after reading this story. While the story was entertaining, I found the author was like her character and used five sentences, when one or two could have done the job.

I didn't know this book needed to exist until I started reading it. But from the first chapter, I recognized that this was a game changer just like the internet and our online communities have been game changers. This is the book everyone needs to read. It's a welcome warning for all parties. It shows us the problems of both sides: recognize that you don't know where your words may lead you in the public space of the internet. AND recognize that behind every comment you want to use an example of whatever is the problem with it sits a person who may not actually be a horrible human being but just didn't think before they said what they said.

"I think the moral is that we can do bad things and not be bad people. That we can make mistakes and do better next time."

I didn't have much of an experience while reading this book - but that being said, I still think it'll be good for teens to read.

I've been reading Leila Sales for a few years now and I've really enjoyed some of her books and didn't enjoy one of the books that I've read by her. After reading this one, I have not enjoyed another one of her books. This was almost a DNF but I needed to know that things turned around for the main character, needed to know that she learned her lesson and I was really interested in seeing how it all ended.

I feel I should warn you guys that there will be hella spoilers in this review because I've got shit to say and I'm going to say it all here...so this is your warning.

<center><strong>***BEWARE: MARJOR SPOILERS AHEAD***</strong></center>

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So this book follows Winter Halperin, a former spelling bee champion who made a racist remark online and pays the price for that remark. Her past is blasted and made fun of online and needless to say, she's devastated. She didn't mean the remark the way that everyone took it but it was still a shitty thing to say and she is remorseful but in my opinion, she wasn't remorseful for the right reasons. As I was explaining to my daughter while talking about this book with her, Winter didn't deserve a lot of the shitty comments that were thrown her way (you know all of the, you should go ahead and kill yourself now because you're stupid cow and the you should be raped for what you said - those comments) but she 100% deserved to be educated on just how privileged her way of thinking was.

I'm sorry but if your apology includes the word "but" in it, you ain't sorry for shit and Jason, Winter's black best friend wasn't here for that kind of apology. He was hurt by her words and he had every right to be pissed at her. They were close friends and she said a shitty thing online that hurt his feelings but she didn't get why her comment was so bad. Jason explains why he was so mad at her and she was adamant that she's not like that. Her defense was, "I have black friends, I can't be racist!" She really didn't get why Jason was so mad at her. This part of the book had so much promise and it could have gone down in a way that taught Winter a really good lesson but what actually happens had me all...

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Because no she didn't make the white girl say a racist thing and then make the white girl the victim and then make her black best friend the bad guy by doing some shady shit. Jason deserved better than that and I almost stopped reading the book because I was getting mad but I needed to know that Winter turned her ass around and that she learned some important life lessons from all of this. I needed to see this happen with my own eyes and you guys...that didn't happen. Or actually, it happens but it came with a whole lot of shit on shit on shit that kept knocking me on my ass.

So Winter went to a sort of rehab clinic and it was a safe space for her to finally take a long look at her way of thinking, to learn and grow from her past mistakes. That was probably the best thing for her because by the end of the book, Winter learns her lesson. She does eventually get where Jason was coming from, she learns to be genuinely remorseful for her actions and she does learn just how different her life is from Jason's, how different her life is from the black girl in rehab but holy cow, the delivery sucked huge donkey balls for me.

Winter really comes into her own over the course of the story and when she finally gets it, I breathed a sigh of relief because, freaking finally, right? I was satisfied that the main character finally saw the light but one of the last things to happen in the book left me speechless, left a really bad taste in my mouth because I honestly didn't think it was necessary. It took a huge shit on the message of the book.

So Winter learns her lesson, she's back at home and she's not googling herself twenty times an hour, she's evolved as a person and genuinely wants to be a better, more enlightened person. She's at peace. One of the things that she hasn't given up is googling others that are going through what she went through. The latest victim? A happily married white man in his thirties who set up a dating profile on a gay dating app for the sole purpose of outing the men he met on there who work in politics in D.C. He's a reporter and was doing all of this for the story. Needless to say, the online social media justice department went in on this guy and our newly enlightened and evolved protagonist wrote this asshat a letter that basically said, "I feel for you man. Just know that you'll get through this and I'll see you on the other side."

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I can't imagine why that needed to be included in this book. What lesson was being pushed here? It doesn't matter what your actions are, nobody deserves death threats? People don't deserve to lose their livelihood after doing shitty things that hurt others? That lesson could have been taught without victimizing the asshole who violated so many people, willingly.

I closed this book and was so very angry that I don't think I can ever come back from it. There aren't too many books that have angered me as much as this book did and I honestly don't think I'll be reading anything by Leila Sales again. I would be too scared that I'd get another one of these and no. Just hell fucking no.

<strong>Grade: 1 out of 5</strong>

I didn’t like the message of this book. Look I have no problem reading a book about terrible people who never get redeemed. I just feel like this isn’t the message of this book. The message I got from this book is that we are supposed to be sympathetic with people who are “victims” of the call out culture online. No sorry I am more sympathetic with people who are hurt by micro aggressions and racism online. Really disappointed in the book as I usually love her books.

I loved this book! What happens when the Internet attacks you for a small, thoughtless post? The author explores the impact on high school senior Winter when her post goes viral and anonymous people vilify her. This is a difficult yet timely topic and as I was reading, I was constantly evaluating my own social media posts. Sales shows how hard it is to come back from something like this, as well as Winter's slow but gradual understanding of her own role in her stunning downfall. As a middle school librarian, I would love to share this with my older students. The content is mature and definitely perfect for high school readers.