3.5 stars. This was an astonishingly quick read, even for a YA contemporary! A cute YA romance without much depth, beyond the character growth of seeing Ashley learn to move on from rejection (both in job prospects and romantic relationships) and make room for better things to come. I liked the boy she ended up with, although they got about 5 pages together as a couple before the book was over. I also enjoyed the focus on Ashley's interest in coding and the hackathon itself was realistic, even if the prizes weren't. Not a standout book, but it fits the definition of short and sweet!

Thanks NetGalley for the preview!

Loved this cute and easy read! A unique spin on the friends to lovers plot. I loved how detailed the characters were. The coding was a nice addition. Would definitely read again!

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

I found this book to be average. Not a favorite, but still enjoyable and has good/likable elements to it. I like the characters, Swiftie fans will appreciate the love for her, and women in STEM are awesome and needs to be more recognized in books. If you want an easy, cute read then pick this one up!

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

I made a mistake and didn’t write my review as soon as I finished the book, and now when I finally sit down to express my thoughts, I realized that I forgot most of the story.

So I guess first thing that I will say about the book will be that although it was easy to read and entertaining, it was also forgettable.

Ashley, our protagonist was not the most likeable person, but at the same time it was easy to understand her.
I love how her interest into STEM was present through the whole story and how it sort of had it’s own role.
The other thing I appreciate was the friendship between Ashley and her friends.

I love to read ya contemporary novels from time to time. My Epic Spring Break (Up) was typical ya contemporary novel, perfect to read in one sitting, but didn’t stand out in the sea of contemporaries.

I love that the MC was part of STEM but I hated that she seemed to be choosing the two love interests over the Hackathon. It was also hard dealing with the MC and the ex-girlfriend being disrespectful to each other. Lift other women up or ignore them, dang. I think some people will enjoy this but this was a miss for me.

This was such a fun book that I’d recommend to all of my students. Bestfriends to lovers was done well and our mcs were both so loveable.

"It's not that I don't want to trust Walker. But wanting something won't magically make it happen."

If you know anything at all about my reading style, you'll know that I'm a sucker for young adult contemporary romance. This particular genre of book is my weakness and I'll read just about any book that is marketed as this genre. This probably stems from my teenage obsession with Sarah Dessen books. This is one of those books that I knew absolutely nothing about but judging by the cover, I requested it on NetGalley. Then in true Danielle fashion, I neglected to read it until now, almost a year after it was published.

My Epic Spring Break (Up) follows high school student Ashley. She is busy preparing her resume for college applications focusing on her grades and enjoying the coding club. Her big project is programming a sweatshirt to light up according to the music being played at the time. (I loved this project. I want this sweatshirt!) Ashley has a major crush on Walker Beech so when she offers to help him with some math work over spring break, Ashley couldn't be more excited. An excuse to hang out with Walker over a break from school? As Ashley and Walker spend more time together, Walker's spontaneous decisions start to rub off on Ashley. All of a sudden Ashley finds herself making up stories to tell her mom, she gets a tattoo, and she starts pushing her curfew. This is all happening as Ashley prepares for an epic coding challenge at the end of break. When Ashley's friend (turned prankster) Jason decides he wants to join the coding challenge, Ashley is forced to reckon with her choices and how she wants to spend her time.

I enjoyed this story for what it was: a fun contemporary young adult novel. This isn't anything groundbreaking, by any means, but it was fun to accompany Ashley on her spring break adventures. I did find it hard to believe that Ashley, a character who is very certain in her choices and spends lots of time making sure she knows what choice she is going to make would spontaneously decide to get a tattoo. This is an incredibly permanent choice and one that seemed out of character for Ashley. I also didn't care for the title of this book. There is no romantic breakup in this story at all so I felt like the title was a bit misleading. Would I have noticed these things as a teenager reading this book? It's hard to say but I'm leaning towards probably not.

3.5 stars

**Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Children's, and Underlined for the advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

TW: grief

This book was an easy read that fell a little flat for me. I enjoyed the fact that Ashley was #relatable to a teenager in this day and age. There were lots of discussions about New York, Taylor Swift, crushes, friends who could be crushes, and breaking into the world of STEM as a woman.

What fell flat for me were the characters! I didn't like Ashley or Walker and I didn't connect to the romance in the story. The storyline felt too cheesy even for me, someone who LOVES a cheesy romcom.

I loved the discussion around familial relationships and platonic relationships between men and women. I also love seeing women in STEM represented in literature for a younger audience.

Technically, I did not finish this book, so I can’t give it a real rating. But I’d like to think based off of the 40% of it that I did finish, I can make a good guess as to how I’d feel about the rest of it. This book was just… not good. At all. I hated the main character, I hated both of her potential love interests, and everything was way too unbelievable for me. Who is able to get a tattoo at 16 and also her tattoo sounded so bad. I couldn’t handle it once she was going to give her laptop to Walker and didn’t want to see how it ended, so I gave up. 2022 is the year of not wasting time on books that don’t spark joy for me, and this definitely did not spark joy.

I thought this was a cute and easy read, though ultimately forgettable. It’s good if you need something to cleanse your reading palate or that you can finish in one sitting at the beach. If a light romance is what you’re looking for this will work.

I feel like I need to give a disclaimer that this is a YA book that reads very much like a YA book for a YA audience. I almost DNFed at first because the characters can be cringey but once I kept in mind that they are supposed to be immature teenagers, I found myself enjoying it. The Taylor Swift love was A LOT and that’s coming from someone who has always loved Taylor Swift too, so there could have been less of that for sure. But, again, for a story about teenagers, it was realistic - let’s be honest, sometimes teenagers are the worst but we’ve all been there. We’ve all been cringey and angsty and made terrible decisions and that’s basically what this book is about.

Thank you NetGalley, author and publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I tried finishing this book and could not get into it. I did not write a Goodreads review because I try not to put out negative reviews for books that are still trying to gain traction.

This was the perfect, heartwarming,

My Epic Spring Break (Up) follows Ashley, who hasn't really explored everything life has to offer. She's never been on a date. Never been kissed. Never been in love. This spring break Ashley decides to change that. Ashley finally wants date her long time crush but she begins to feel complex feelings for her long time friend Jason. This spring break has got a lot more complicated than Ashley expected.

This book is a sweet, soft, feel good, coming of age is story perfect for everyone.

sadly, before i could download this title, netgalley took it off their catalog. that means i can’t review this one. HOWEVER, i will be checking in with my library to see if i can get a copy and review it that way

Not sure why I keep requesting these YA books, but this was a cute little read. I really enjoyed the relationships and all the teen angst that was intertwined in everything.

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book! The title and this beautiful cover drew me in and i was excited to read this book! I will be recommending this book to others for readers advisory

Ashley tem sua vida planejada e impressa na parede de seu quarto. Primeiro ela consegue as notas, participa de vários clubes e tem uma conduta quase perfeita na escola, depois ela será aceita para um estágio no ZigZag (Rede social famosa e descolada), em seguida vai ser escolhida para cursar uma faculdade da Ivy League e vai ser uma programadora famosa e trabalhará no Vale do Silício. Acontece que as coisas começam a dar errado quando ela é rejeitada para fazer o estágio no ZigZag e não dá mais tempo para nenhum plano B. Agora ela vai tentar viver esse verão e se soltar, quando aparece a oportunidade de ajudar sua paixão de escola Walker Beech em matemática e de se reconectar com seu melhor amigo Jason, de quem se distanciou quando ele começou a namorar a famosinha Rachel. Enquanto tenta se redescobrir, Ashley vai encontrar novos desafios.

Com uma narrativa leve e bastante fluida a autora conseguiu construir uma história na qual uma garota descobre que nem sempre as coisas saem segundo o planejado e está tudo bem. Ashley vai aprender que planejar seu futuro pode ser um bom escape, mas que a vida vai muito além de números e planos. Confesso que eu não curti muito a questão do triângulo amoroso, mas como ele só perdurou por poucas páginas, acabou por ser algo que ficou em segundo plano.

Ashley é uma mocinha que vai se descobrindo e desabrochando ao longo do livro. Ela é bem séria e tem algumas cicatrizes emocionais deixadas pelo pai que parece se importar mais com os filhos da nova esposa do que com a própria filha. Além disso, ela se distanciou do melhor amigo por não suportar a namorada dele e se dedicou ainda mais aos estudos e a olhar secretamente para Walker. Isso não a tornou aquela personagem isolada, mas fez com que ela ficasse cada vez mais cautelosa quanto ao seu verdadeiro valor.

Por sua vez temos aqui Walker que é um babaca e Jason que também é um babaca, são dois personagens que não merecem nossa protagonista por várias razões. O primeiro por ser um cara galinha e perigoso com cara de santo e o segundo por quase colocar a perder o sonho de Ashley para agradar Rachel, que é outra personagem que personifica o que há de pior no ser humano.

Sinceramente eu acho que a protagonista não tinha que ficar com nenhum dos dois, mas sozinha e pleníssima no final. Apesar disso, o livro é da Ashley e ela dá um show de maturidade e conquista com seu jeito bastante honesto até nos erros que comete. É uma das mocinhas que merecia mais do que recebeu no final.

Considering how much I hyped myself up with that excellent premise and wonderful cover, having read the entire book, I feel vaguely lied to. This is not a good feeling.

'My Epic Spring Break (Up)' follows Ashley, an aspiring computer scientist, and all the mishaps that follow when she decides that she's going to go off-script this spring break and follow her heart, to have fun.

The best part of this book, hands down, was Ashley's representation as a woman in STEM. I loved that she had a passion for this subject and that it was consistently written into her character. It wasn't something that was simply stated at the beginning and then brushed aside for the rest of the book; it was consistent, and that made me really happy.

That being said, there were a lot of things about this book that I really didn't enjoy.

The very first being, of course, the love triangle. It won't come as any surprise but I'm not the biggest fan of love triangles, especially when they're written in a way where you know exactly who the main character is going to end up with at the end of the book. This book's love triangle was exactly that: obvious and a sad attempt to create drama in the book.

Speaking of the romance, it felt that as soon as Ashley fell for either boy, she seemed to ignore her prior commitments to the hackathon, as well as her life goal in general? It was strange to read about, and honestly, quite unrealistic.

There's also the matter of just how naive and prone to peer pressure Ashley was. I can't even begin to count the number of times I had to shut my laptop and attempt to calm down as I was reading about Ashley making a decision she would no doubt end up regretting, and gave entirely too much trust and benefit-of-the-doubt to Walker.

The secondhand embarrassment was so strong with this one, but somehow I was able to make my way through it with my braincells (mostly) intact. I was expecting character growth and development in Ashely as she made mistakes and hopefully learned from them, but I'm sad to say that she doesn't really "change" until the end. It felt sudden compared to how she was behaving earlier in the book, and didn't feel like solid character growth for me.

To add to that, there was a fair amount of girl-on-girl hate, mostly between Ashley and Jason's ex-girlfriend whose name I can't remember at the moment. I abhor girl-on-girl hate in contemporary novels especially, because they make the main character out to be some sort of angel, while the other female character is slut-shamed or something to a similar effect. It's annoying and reminiscient of bad 2010s fanfiction.

A certain romantic revelation at the end was described in such dramatic detail that I was struggling not to laugh in public. This whole book, in fact, can be extremely over the top with a flair for the dramatic that I haven't seen since 'Loveboat, Taipei'. Sometimes, that was a good thing. Other times, well, not so much.

All of that being said, however, I really liked the relationships that Ashley had with her closest friends. They were supportive of her and her actions, although I felt that they were barely in the spotlight to have any lasting impression on the reader.

Overall, this book definitely wasn't for me. While I certainly can see where some might enjoy it, some parts of this book just didn't work for me, and I wasn't able to enjoy it as much as I hoped I would. Some coming-of-age themes as well as themes of resilliance attempt to shine through, but are ultimately covered up and pushed aside by the sheer amount of love triangle drama present in this book. There was a lot of potential, but I don't think that it was used to its fullest, which made for an overall unsatisfying read.