I love a book that gives you unexpected smiles. It wasn’t the stand up jokes. It was the other. It was the perfect book but it is one of the better books I have recently read. It made me understand gaslighting and what it looks like. A good, quick read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the DRC.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book. It was funny and unflinching. Definitely too mature for my 8th graders, but well at home in a high school setting. It does involve a character lying to many people about her age (pretending to be a college student while still in high school) and lying to her parents as well. I, personally, always feel like these moments in books are good stepping stones for discussions with teens, but everyone has their own opinion.

this is one of the best books I’ve read in a while. I have really enjoyed all of the authors previous works and this one was no exception. It was outrageously funny and incredibly heartfelt. The characters felt so raw and close to the audience. It made me laugh out loud and honestly cry. TW: abusive & toxic relationships

Isabel floats through her world being the "good kid." She is quiet, studies hard and keeps up with her school work, and causes no drama for her busy parents, allowing them to keep their full attention on their important jobs and her attention seeking older twin siblings. Isabel is also the "perfect girlfriend" for her overpowering (essentially abusive) boyfriend. After ditching him one day and lying to make an excuse not to see him, Isabel accidentally ducks into a stand-up comedy club to avoid having her lie exposed. Inside the club, she not only got a table, but unknowingly signed up for a spot on the stage. On the stage, Isabel finally opens her mouth and speaks her mind and becomes Izzy, the girl she has always wanted to be - the girl that people pay attention to and who gets what she wants.

This book was not what I expected, and I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would. I made a lot of connections with Isabel from my younger days in regard to being the kid who just kept her mouth shut, her head down and did what she was "supposed" to do. It's hard to find a voice and begin carving your own path when it is not your normal behavior, and I like that Izzy was able to do that without going completely off the rails.

In the story, Izzy had a hearing deficit and that never quite fit into the rest of the story for me; I felt like it was an added piece to make a scene "work," but then not really relevant to the rest of the story. It's a very minor detail; just something I felt wasn't necessary to the rest of the story.

Great book for teens looking to find their voices and selves and breaking out of the mold of expectation.

3.5/5 stars!! This book made me laugh out loud with the hidden jokes throughout the story, and the stand-up acts!! The one note I do have is the fast pace of her becoming a stand-up comedian. Other than that, the story had some heartfelt storylines and great characters! Memorable read <3

I was given a free copy of the book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Izzy is surviving high school - she sits with her boyfriend's group at lunch, and has given up her best friend because she doesn't like her boyfriend. One day, she lies to her controlling boyfriend to avoid going on a date with him. When she happens to run into him and his group, she quickly ducks into a comedy club to avoid being seen by him - but ends up performing onstage. Once her set is over she meets a group of comedians that are in college. She lies to them and says she's in college to be able to continue hanging out with them. Throughout the story, Izzy is forced to recognize the status of her relationships and the cost of lying to everyone you care about. #netgalley #ThisWillBeFunnySomeday

As the story begins, Izzy (Isabel), is a 16-year-old, struggling to find her place within her family and friends. She has older twin siblings who steal the limelight and conversation when they are home from college, her father who doesn't really get involved with her daily life, and a mother who is a successful, and very busy, attorney.

Izzy has a very controlling and abusive boyfriend, Alex, although she doesn't want to admit this, instead she plays up the times he is nice to her. She's no longer speaking with her best friend and her only other friends at school are all within Alex's friend group. One day, desperate to hide from her boyfriend, she inadvertently slips into a comedy club and meets Mo. Mo, a college-age aspiring comedian and her friends Will and Jonah, take Izzy under their wings and teach her about comedy.

With comedy, Izzy learns to find her voice and her true self while learning to understand and view healthy relationships from abusive, manipulative ones. The story touches upon racism and sexual harassment although these topics are not explored in-depth. I wish the relationship with her siblings had been explored more but I loved how Izzy, a shy, people-pleasing person, finds her voice within comedy. Overall, a good YA read - 3.5 stars.

Thanks to Katie Henry, HarperCollins Children's Books, Katherine Tegen Books, and NetGalley for an advanced eBook in exchange for my honest review.

I have a love/hate relationship with comedy shows, because I feel intense secondhand embarrassment when comedians crash and burn (even if they are seemingly unfazed by it.) I experienced that cringy feeling during some scenes, but that is 100% a personal disinclination and not a mark against the book (I felt the same anxiousness watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, despite finding it brilliant). I also find it challenging when a main character keeps lying to cover a big secret, and you KNOW it’s going to get out and it’s NOT going to be on their terms. I was waiting for everything to come crashing down and was a bit stressed while reading.

Even while dealing with all those squirmy feelings, I was impressed with other issues going on in this book. The author wrote the controlling, emotionally abusive boyfriend very well. I mean, it was slightly tough to read, but Isabel being trapped in that relationship and not having the words to make sense of it felt very real, especially for a teenager. And all of the small (and not-so-small) sexist acts, either confronted by Isabel or discussed by her mom, really took this to the next level.

Fav moment? Isabel’s takedown of Jack in the cafeteria was by far the best. Sooooo satisfying.

This was such a wild ride, a very enjoyable wild ride. Not only was it funny, sometimes even laugh out loud funny, but it also had heartfelt moments where I wanted to cry. Almost every character in the book had parts that made me root for them and that is a talent.
Katie Henry writes exceptional teenagers, especially the fact that they're pretty average.

I got an ARC of this book.

I got this book not expecting much. It sounded like it would be too much and I was kinda excited for a train wreck. I was so wrong. This book might have cured my reading slump. I flew through it and wanted more. I loved it so much. I really should stop judging books by the cover and maybe three lines of the description.

I was so, so incredibly worried about the controlling boyfriend plot. My first boyfriend was this guy. Needed to know where I was, alienated me from my friends, would do everything he could to spin stories (like the time he punched the wall next to my face in front of all his friends, but by the end of the day I was being accosted about why I hit him). I understood how magically it can feel to be on the good end of that energy. I also know how scary it can be to be on the bad end. The way the characters reacted were amazing. The best friend who left, because she was so overwhelmed with the situation. The way an adult reacted and said that only weak people stayed in those relationships. This was me in high school at sixteen.

Also me at sixteen was befriending a bunch of college students and starting to come out. I read the MC as nonbinary and I got so excited at one point when she is talking to her college BFF about what it means to be a girl and why does she does the things she does. It sounded like it was going to be the “I think I am nonbinary”, but it was a reaction to sexual harassment which is a lot less fun. The sexual harassment was a bit scary. I was afraid at how far it would go. My heart was in my throat.

There was casual queer content and casual explanations of privilege. It was a social conscious book and it didn’t read like it was preaching. It was wonderful. It was very much the conversations that I had in college and how my friend group talked. It felt so real and so close to my life. I loved the jokes. I loved the friends. I loved so much about this book. The MC also had an auditory processing disorder that remained unnamed. How badass is it to have a MC that has an auditory processing disorder? I LIVED FOR HER. I got so excited and started sending everyone links for the book before I had even finished chapter two. I was already sure I was going to love it all.

The weirdest part of this book to me is that around this time in my life I started going by Izy. I was starting to transition and Izy was a gender neutral name, because I was not 100% sure I was totally a guy, I knew I wasn’t a girl, but there are a lot of other options. So seeing this Izzy going through things and reading her as nonbinary made this book so close to me. I think that really added to the charm.

Overall, this book is much more serious than the cover allows. I was delighted to be proven wrong about my expectations. I loved this book and I look forward to more from Henry.

I loved this book. It has all of the feels-happy, funny, sad, bittersweet. What a great coming-of-age novel for teens. Watching Izzy empower herself through the course of the books was inspirational.

One of my great literary pleasures of 2020 was discovering Katie Henry’s works. Henry’s young adult novels feature quirky teenage protagonists facing issues and dilemmas that most of us would struggle with as adults. The characters are all frustratingly relatable because, as readers, we can see how they could and should change themselves to make interacting with the world a bit smoother and easier. But, like all of us, they can’t or aren’t ready to make that change just yet.

Henry’s third novel This Will Be Funny Someday may be her best offering so far, which is high praise given how much I enjoyed her first two novels.

Sixteen-year-old Izzy has always felt a bit out of place. In her family, she sees herself as the odd person out when it comes to the matched pairs — her parents and her older twin siblings. At school, Izzy is protected by her relationship with her boyfriend, though even that has come at the cost of alienating her best friend. Izzy has deep-rooted issues when it come to assigning herself value — whether it’s the (misconception) that she ruined her mother’s career when her mom discovered she was pregnant with Izzy or the emotionally abusive nature of her relationship with her boyfriend.

One day while hiding from her boyfriend, Izzy stumbles into a bar and an open-mic night for aspiring comedians. Using the story of how a guy her in class didn’t take a Shakespeare scene seriously, Izzy stumbles into the world of comedy — and meets some new friends along the way. These older friends (who believe Izzy is college not high school and she isn’t quick to disavow them of this), begin to encourage her — not only in the realms of comedy but also in accepting herself for who she is and speaking up for herself.

And so, Izzy begins to live a double-life of sorts as she hones her set, borrowing heavily from her life for her comedy.

Filled with relatable, fully realized, and wonderfully flawed characters, This Will Be Funny Someday is chock full of the best kind of teen angst out there — teen angst that is built on characters and our relationships with them. There are multiple points in which you may want to scream at Izzy to just tell her friends or family the truth or to get far, far away from her boyfriend (this becomes even more apparent when Izzy finally comes clean with readers about how far over the line he’s gone in his abuse), but Izzy (like us) frustratingly refuses to do so.

This was one of the best novels I read in 2020 and I’m grateful to the publisher and Ms. Henry for the digital ARC I received on NetGalley. The only drawback here is that while many anxious readers will let to get to dive into a new Katie Henry novel next week, I will have to wait a bit longer for the pleasure of reading a new-to-me Katie Henry story.

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Katie Henry has yet to disappoint me with her unique and entertaining contemporary fiction. It's no secret that I am especially picky about which contemporaries I pick, but this is the author's third hit for me, so she's firmly cemented herself as one of the few contemporary authors on my auto-buy list. This book may have actually been my favorite of hers, as I found the characters really enjoyable and the story fun and inspiring.

Izzy is great. She's so wonderfully flawed as a person, but she is also really awesome. She's got a hearing issue too, which I have not read about before. And she has been in this pretty awful relationship for far too long. She feels like a fifth wheel in her family, and she just seems so lost in general. She wanders (accidentally) into a comedy club where she finds herself taking the stage and actually really enjoying it. While she's there, she meets some comedians who treat her kindly and want to show her the ropes. Of course, they are in college and Izzy lies and pretends she is too. (This is the one thing I don't love about the book- these lies always come back to bite people, why do they do it? Actually, my problem is likely less with the book and more with humanity, but that is a post for another time*.)

As the book evolves, Izzy begins to find her strength as she becomes braver behind the mic. One of my favorite aspects of the book was Izzy coming to terms with what a complete asshat her boyfriend was. Like I want to push this guy in front of a bus. (It's fine because he's fictional; faux-murder is allowed.) She's finding her agency with her current relationships, including her family. But at the same time, she worries about her new friends finding her out, and balancing her real life with her "college comedy" life.

Bottom Line: Ultimately it's a fun, sweet story with a great character who learns quite a few life lessons along the way.

3.5 Stars. I truly love Henry's ability to create an authentic interior monologue. Bonus, set in Chicago too. Izzy finds her strength through stand-up to stand-up to emotional abuse. Accessibly complex emotions and situations, although perhaps too many situations to be thoroughly handled.

Then I hit the middle of the book where Izzy says something like "might wake up in Englewood in a tub of ice and missing a kidney." This left a sour taste in my mouth. For those unfamiliar, Englewood is an impoverished black neighborhood in Chicago. Did the author need this specific name drop? No. It felt particularly gross when she started talking about casual racism with another character not 3 pages later. How could the author not realize what she just said just did? Of course perhaps this only strikes a chord if you live in the area and recognize what was done.

Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for the Advanced Reader Copy.

This was one of those books that sneaks up on you, and then it's 1am and you don't want to put it down even though you should sleep. The plot was so interesting. The characters were so well developed. I loved Isabel's voice telling the story and how through comedy she gains a voice for herself. I laughed out loud at this book. I cried at this book. I cheered at this book. I'm so glad that I got the chance to read this book and I now will be reading everything else Katie Henry has written.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with access to the digital ARC of This Will Be Funny Someday, by Katie Henry. This is an unbiased review of the book. 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Our protagonist, 16-year-old Isabel, stumbles into a world she didn't realize could exist for her - doing stand up comedy routines at open mic performances. An introverted "good girl" who feels unremarkable and ignored in her own family and high school, Isabel finds a braver version of herself, "Izzy", as she learns the comedy ropes from the new college-aged friends who take her under their wings. As she journeys farther into this new world, she discovers what has been hiding inside her - but it comes at the cost of lying to the people who love her and care about her. A very satisfying read, due to the perfectly-paced plot, and believable characters. I loved that it introduces us to performing stand up comedy - a fun twist for a YA novel.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Isabel had grown accustomed to keeping her thoughts to herself and trying not to rock the boat. As the outsider in her own family, she was always being cutoff or ignored. After stumbling into an open mic, she might have finally discovered her voice via standup comedy, but would she be able to find her way out of her tangled web of lies.

This is my third Katie Henry book, and once again, it was a hit. Henry never shies away from tough topics, but she always tackles them in such an interesting and thought provoking way. I like that I am always left with something to think about when I finish one of Henry's books.

Five things I LOVED about this book!

1. Isabel was a character I wanted to hug and go to bat for. Yes, she let a misunderstanding turn into a lie, but she never meant to hurt anyone. She just wanted to be a part of this world that had offered her an escape from her own. Because of how well Henry captured Isabel's loneliness, I forgave her poor decisions, I even cheered her on, though I knew she would have to face the consequences at some point.

2. Comedy was king in this book. It was fantastic the way Henry wove the "tutorial" through the actual open mics. From writing the set to shutting down a heckler, I got to read the how-to and see it put into action. Issues in comedy were addressed as well. I had previously read other books, where the issues women faced in comedy have been explored, but Henry went further and explored the challenges faced by comedians of color as well.

3. Friendship was also an important part of this story. Isabel had been feeling left out by her family and isolated at school, and to have these three college aged comedians welcome her into their world with open arms was a big deal. Isabel was also trying to rebuild a relationship she let crumble, and needless to say, I had my fingers crossed she could mend that bridge and any others she damaged along the way.

4. It was about finding her voice. Isabel had lost herself in an abusive relationship and trying so hard to be "the good child". Watching her rediscover herself via comedy, via this awesome group of friends was a joy for me, and reminded me that everyone needs an outlet, where they can express themselves.

5. This book explored so much and did so with a lot of heart and a touch of humor. I especially liked the way Henry tackled Isabel's romantic relationship. It's important to show both healthy and unhealthy relationships in stories.

This was quite a journey! It was funny, heartfelt, and honest. It was about growing up, finding your voice, being seen, and making a place for yourself in this world. I absolutely adored meeting Isabel and cannot wait for everyone else to make her acquaintance.

There are no better writers of contemporary YA out there than Henry. The book is accessible and relatable but also full of poignant messages that will stay with readers for a long time. Where do we belong? What does belonging mean? How much responsibility do we bear for our own sense of alienation?

These, and many other themes, that teens deal with growing up are featured heavily in this book, and they are handled with aplomb.

The use of flower and plant imagery, in particular, is excellent and works really well with themes of rebirth, grown, blossoming and finding one's place in the world. All in all, this is a wonderful, wonderful novel that deserves to be read.

I cringed, I laughed, I cried. Aside from the "all too close to my own dating history" relationship, I really enjoyed this book. As advertised, it definitely will appeal to fans of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (which I now want to rewatch). Discusses difficult issues with self-esteem, friendship, bullying, relationships, and more while still having a few great jokes and plenty of empowering scenes.

The one issue that I had was with Isabel's hearing difficulties, which seemed to come and go conveniently. Like, she has difficulty with her "friends" in the cafeteria, but no problem hearing at night clubs and bars?