This book dragged a little bit and I had to skip some parts since it was getting a bit boring but I liked the complexity of the main characters and I think some of the ideas brought up in the book was very interesting.

Was very behind on early Covid era books unfortunately but I finally got around to this one. Two exs, one election and a lot of drama (and romance!). Hilariously over the top political high school story. Told through the eyes of two very different sisters - lots of laughs, craziness and high school drama enfolds. Easy and fast read.

I really wanted to love this book because the story line is right up my alley, but I didn't. I didn't really enjoy the character voice and it made me not love the characters themselves. Because of that, I did not make it very far into the book before picking something else to read.

The characters were a bit cliche, but overall a very good read! I really recommend it for people who enjoy school drama, politics, and influencer culture.

This was a good high school drama that I enjoyed with so many hilarious scenes . Reminded me so much of highschool days and the silliness yet funny moments . Pick this up for a light hearted fun entertaining read.

This is a throwback to high school shenanigans with over the top teenage drama. This is a story of sisters and how sometimes the people that come from the same family couldn't be any more different. Sometimes when you have the best of intentions, things don't always end the way they seem. This story does a good job talking about politics and a two party system in a more high school level way that I think will be acceptable to younger teen readers. Unfortunately I don't think this book was in my vein of enjoyment since media drama and it did come off as a bit outlandish for my taste. I think it will have its specific set of readers who will really enjoy it though

This was a pretty interesting book full of drama! It’s a student election between two exes, as well as discussing womens issues and what-not. And although I enjoyed it, it took forever for me to get invested in the story.

Sources Say was definitely a huge anticipated read for me, but I ended up DNFing at about 60%

Rivals to lovers, second chance romance, and a whole lot of drama sounds pretty interesting, but I was not as hooked as I hoped I would be. I didn't think the book was bad by any means. The writing was good and the characters were interesting, but there was nothing that hooked me on to the story.

I'm not going to discourage reading this book, but it just wasn't for me.

Sources Say is an on-the-nose commentary on the state of political journalism and elections in the United States. Author Goldstein uses the high school at an idyllic, seasonal beach town economically divided between the have’s and the have-not’s as her backdrop to discuss fake news, sensationalism, and political posturing.

Angie, a high school YouTube influencer, throws herself into the school president race at her mother’s insistence. Angie will not be able to attend a prestigious influencer’s boot-camp if she doesn’t try to win the election. Unfortunately for her, her ex-boyfriend, Leo, fresh off their ugly, public breakup has thrown his hat in the ring for equally self-serving reasons.

Cat, Angie’s sister, is devoted to documenting the school election in the hopes of winning a prestigious award to boost her chances of getting into Northwestern’s journalism program.

The campaign’s profile is boosted to a national level when a series of lewd pictures of female students’ body parts are photoshopped together to create a “perfect woman” and plastered all over the school. A sensationalist fake news rag, The Shrieking Violet, starts circulating online, forcing Cat’s fact-checked, hard news to compete against spurious, attention-grabbing articles. Ultimately, Cat ruminates about the future of print journalism and its integrity, and whether she’s willing to compromise her values to keep her paper alive.

Meanwhile, Leo and Angie navigate their latent feelings for each other and newfound political animosity, while Cat and Angie spend time at each other’s throats before finally overcoming past damage to their relationship.

The story integrates popular media (namely Twitter) along with Cat and The Shrieking Violet‘s articles into the story. The review copy I received didn’t have all the final artwork or formatting for those media inserts, so I can’t speak to how effective they integrate into the story. In particular, the photoshopped image of the high school girls could be very powerful, because it justifies a lot of the debate during the election, but my copy did not have the image ready.

Overall, this book is great for budding journalists and politicos. It was a fresh take on an old election-rivalry story and the characters felt realistic. My only issue with the book was that I felt like the last few chapters of the book got very preachy. The characters seemed to be directly speaking prosaic truths to each other about the importance of fact checking and using platforms for public service which were implicit before and did not need to be made explicit. However, the lessons are particularly timely as we approach the November election.

Register to vote and check your registration status: https://www.usa.gov/voter-registration

Sometimes you read and book and you go: I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to read, what I needed to read in this particular moment in time, but now that I read it, I realize this is it. That was me and Lori Goldestein’s Sources Say.

The easy reasoning behind that would be because the book touches so many subjects that are important in today’s world, from how hard it is to get facts in a polarized world, to what constitutes fake news and why they exist in the first places. The second easiest conclusion would be because the book, somehow, manages to do both those things while still not being – at face value, a political book.

And yes – as a political science major, I certainly appreciate these things. Talking about politics is often framed in the least friendly way possible, and if we could all present important topics in such a fun, easy way, our youth would be much better off. Far be it for me to tell you these lessons aren’t important, or that picking up the book for those reasons would be a bad idea.


But that’s not what got me about the book, no. What got me about the book is that, deep down, it’s mostly about feminism, but not the feminism of people who have had time to sit with the concept, to study it, to find their own place within that word, but the feminism of girls just trying to figure out what that word means …for themselves, and the world around it.

Fittingly, this book is also about what it means to be a sister, and the bonds women create with each other. This is especially refreshing considering the media we consume, still, in 2020, relishes pitting women against each other, often, because of a man. There’s very little space for friendship, sisterhood, and the many, many ways women uplift each other, instead of tearing each other down.

Here, however, there are two sisters who have issues, yes. They don’t have the perfect relationship by any stretch of the imagination. But their issues are real, and the author examines them in a funny, smart and relatable way.

We feel for them – in good and bad ways. And that’s really all we want out of a book. To feel. If you’ve consumed some form of entertainment and came out on the other side not really caring, then that was just a waste of time.

Sources Say is the opposite of that.

IN FACT, SOURCES SAY MIGHT JUST BE THE BEST BOOK I’VE READ THIS YEAR. NO, WAIT, LET ME TAKE THE MIGHT OUT. IT DEFINITELY IS.

High school isn’t exactly my domain these days, but you don’t need to be a teenage girl to relate to what these characters are going through, and you don’t need even need to remember high school to relate to topics like female ambition, accountability and how to enact change in a world that seems determined to push back.

And that’s why this book works on every level. Because the politics, the juggling all kinds of information and especially, the having to find your own place in a world that seems determined to push you down is something every teenager, no, every woman can relate to.

I certainly did.

Lori Goldstein is one of my few auto-buy authors. Her writing style is nothing short of brilliant. She has such an understanding of how to write a story that it feels like she's writing with magic in her veins. She knocked it out of the park again with this story. I could not put it down once I started, I devoured every word. I have been telling everyone they need to get this if they have not already.

Thank you to Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

High school drama at it's finest. I flew through this book, it was so engaging and funny.

Sources Say is a young adult contemporary standalone by author Lori Goldstein. I thought this book was a lot of fun, park high school hijinks, part revenge competition between exes, and part mystery. Sources Say is about a high school power couple that recently split up. For various individual reasons, they each find themselves running for student council president. When they find out that their ex is running, it makes them each step up their games in a big big way. I really enjoyed this high school election that was also shrouded in a fun mystery. 

Sources say is told in multiple points of view, including sisters Angie and Cat, Angie's ex boyfriend Leo and a great cast of supporting characters surrounding them. I loved that there were so many characters because that meant there were multiple different storylines we were following. There is obviously the tension between Angie and Leo as they run against each other, but there was also a good focus on Cat as she ran the school's newspaper as newly appointed editor in chief, as well as the interaction of the strained sister relationship between Cat and Angie. Lori Goldstein managed to pack a lot into this novel, and I loved all of the layers and themes woven in. 

Sources Say was a bit immature at times, but I wouldn't really expect anything else from the revenge prank election that it turned into. And it wasn't off-putting to me. I thought all of the characters acted very age appropriate. The mystery of who created the pictures of the "frankengirls" and who was behind the online newspaper- the shrieking Violet were fun additions to the story as well. I wasn't really expecting much of a mystery element when I first started reading the book, but it because a pretty big plotline. 

if you are a fan of standalone young adult rivalry stories, I think you will really enjoy Sources Say. I found this to be a very fun and satisfying read. It even managed to surprise me with a few of the reveals!

It seems like the 2020 election will never end, even as President-elect Biden’s inauguration draws nearer. Even though we all have election fatigue, it’s still important to be politically aware and responsible consumers of media.

Enter Lori Goldstein’s Sources Say, a young adult novel focused on a contentious high school election between two exes. Caught in the middle is a reporter, the sister of one of the candidates, attempting to do her best at covering everything truthfully and fairly.

Sources Say is a fun and easy read for readers of all ages to learn more about the realities of misinformation and politics in an accessible environment. The characters are likable and easy to grasp on to and the romantic plot is compelling. Though at times the plot devices and framework can feel a bit gimmicky, they work well within the overall story for a unique twist on social media and news.

I started off by really enjoying this, there was something about the small town setting and sisters that I was really drawn to. As the book progressed however I quickly fell out of love with it. That's not to say that the book doesn't take some time to look at the bonds of sister through the lens of a high pressured Student Council election, it's just that as the book went on I started to care less and less. At times the book felt too focused and not expansive enough, which feels odd to say considering the genre, but even with the slight mystery elements I never really felt like the scope of the story was really wide enough for the reader to actively engage with it and instead was expected to wait for the story to unfold in a rather bland way. The twists that the book concludes with were also odd, feeling more like a hard stop only to then start again and then eventually turn into a rather sad downhill slide to the end of the book.

If there was a saving grace of the novel I did think that Cat and Emmie had an interesting dynamic, I thought that in some ways that relationship was the best develop. There were definitely times were I found that Cat and Emmie had more chemistry than Cat and her actual love interest.

As for how the book actually ends it feels more Saturday made for tv movie than I personally would have liked. I'm certain that there is an audience for this book, and based on the synopsis I thought I was in that number but after having finished the story I find myself wishing that I had chosen to leave this one on the shelf.

This wasn't a bad book, it just wasn't the book for me. There were a lot of aspects that I enjoyed but I lacked emotional investment in this story and the characters. With that in mind, I lost interest in the story part way through and didn't really care about what was going on. There were aspects I enjoyed, but nothing that made me emotionally invested in the story itself.

Of the things that I did enjoy in this book, I liked the political commentary. I thought the school's election was an interesting concept that was well put together. I liked that Angeline was a social media influencer. I thought that was an interesting touch and I enjoyed seeing how it shaped her narrative. Then, the book felt very atmospheric.

Otherwise, I don't have a lot more to say on this one. I wasn't emotionally invested and because of that it took away a lot of my enjoyment for the story. I wasn't very concerned with who won the election, or the truth behind Leo and Angeline's relationship. None of the book really grabbed me and held me in it. I'm honestly really sad about this! I was hopeful going into it, and now sad that it didn't get me emotionally invested at all.

This was a cute story about romance, rivalry, and I enjoyed reading it. The drama seemed a little over the top at times, but I was rooting Angeline and Leo to get together. The "Frankengirls" issue was definitely something that I felt needed to addressed more seriously instead of being used as ammunition during a student council election, but I found it a fascinating part of the story. I will also say that I was surprised at how much more of a main character Cat was, because the summary didn't seem to indicate she would be a major character. It was a more palatable storyline for me because I could identify with her and her actions more than I could Angeline. Overall, it was a cute story that I think teens will love if they're looking for a fun romantic comedy.

I really wanted to love this one, because the plot sounded amazing, but for some reason I just couldn’t fully get into it. I’m not sure if it was the writing style or that the characters fell a little flat for me, but I just couldn’t get into. Angelica just seemed way too self-centered for me to really like her, and I couldn’t connect with Kat at all. And honestly I thought it would be a dual POV between the couple, and be their perspective for a second chance romance type of trope. That’s on my for not realizing though. The one thing I did like was the sister relationship and how ghat developed.

Angeline and Leo are both popular students at their charter school, are running for student council, and… they are exes. With all eyes watching and school media weighing in, this is a timely story.

While the premise is promising, I had trouble liking both self absorbed main character Angeline and her judgemental sister Cat. Given that this story alternates between each sister’s point of view, connecting with this story was a challenge for me. I did appreciate the development of the sister relationship over time as well as the very real subjects of taking one’s right to vote seriously and discerning spin vs. fact based news.

I’m not really big into reading contemporary books but Penguin Teen sent it to me and I decided to give it a shot. It was interesting enough but at times, I found myself skimming to get through chapters. I can’t say that I particularly loved any of the characters that much because I didn’t feel like I knew them enough. I did love the concept of this book but I did not enjoy the end product as much as I hoped for.

This book did take me a while to get through because I was not super invested in it. I didn’t dislike the book but I do not think I will read it again and the story probably won’t stick with me.