I received a complimentary copy of 10 Truths and a Dare from NetGalley.  Opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

This was a great book! (Although it is a stand alone, I have previously read another book from this author which included many of the same characters—a large, close-knit family that I easily fell in love with!) Salutatorian Olivia’s frantic plight for a required half graduate credit leads her to a dreaded golf tournament obligation and a bit of unexpected romance. Fantastic writing, excellent story-telling and realistic, lovable characters create a beautiful and uplifting reading experience.

10 TRUTHS AND A DARE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ cute stars

This was a cute, quick YA read that want so sweet to give a toothache but just sappy enough that I could soak a pancake. 🥞

NOTE: I was given an arc in exchange for an honest review. Thanks Netgalley and Hyperion!

I love this book. I teach in the Chicagoland suburbs and thought this book was a great example of our diverse population. I think this would be a great gift for a graduate or fun read towards the end of the year. I think the mix of character viewpoints made for a fast, engaging read. The use of technology was appropriate for 2021 and did not distract or overwhelm as I have seen in others. Thank you for the advanced reader copy.

10 Truths and a Dare was a really enjoyable, light, and easy read. However; it definitely had some parts that were a little bit much at times. For example, the MC's mother is a bit overbearing and controlling, and sometimes, it felt like a bit too much in the book. In some ways it was light, fluffy, and predictable. Her family overall seems to look out for each other which is a nice aspect as well. I would not say this is one of my favorite books ever, but it definitely was easy to read.
Thank you so much for the ARC!

This is the fourth book I've read by Ashley Elston, and the first that I didn't feel was five stars. Ashley's novels are typically great are blurring the lines between YA and adult fiction. I absolutely loved The Lying Woods, This Is Our Story, and this book's predecessor, 10 Blind Dates. But, this one felt a little juvenile and had me questioning if I'm getting too old for YA genres (at 27, I probably am).

I tried hard not to compare this novel to the masterpiece prequel, 10 Blind Dates, but since it's set in the same world, it was impossible.

What I liked:
The idea for the story was so cute. The ending was happy, albeit predictable. And I enjoyed catching up with the Messina's again.

What I did not like (my personal annoyances):
- Olivia's overbearing mom who tracks her every move through phone, always asks her what she's wearing, and tells her what kind of underwear she should pick out for the day
- The romance aspect just kind of happened with not much anticipation or build up other than a few texts and glances
- The golf setting was boring and felt like plot filler
- We did not get to experience the Messina family shenanigans like we did in 10BD
- That Olivia, a supposed star student, STILL continued to show up late for the golf tournament despite being given a second chance to redeem herself
- There were lies upon lies and unnecessary situations that kind of annoyed me, considering it was all because of a PE golf class

If you read and loved 10 Blind Dates, you might be disappointed with this one. However, I think my gripes about this book stem from being an adult, and those in a younger age group would find this more relatable. It's still worth a read if you want something light.
I still love Ashley Elston's books! This one just missed the mark for me.

Much thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Its no secret that I loved 10 Blind Dates and I was really looking forward to this companion story. I was looking forward to more antics from this quirky cast of characters and while they were all there they weren't used as much as in the first book. This book focused more on the Fab Four and even alternated through their POVs at times while they all worked together to hide where Olivia was at any given time. This was because of a tracking app on her phone that her mom obsessively checked while she and Olivia's dad were out of town. I know this is a thing that parents do but it seemed a bit much. I also didn't feel like Olivia and her love interest got all that much time together that it felt hard to cheer on their HEA as it just felt a bit forced. 10 Truths and Dare was a fun book but in the end there was just something missing that I can't quite put my finger on. I enjoyed it but I didn't love it.

Simplistic and and fun teen story of miscommunication with a light touch of romance. Olivia finds she is shy a PE credit and must complete it in a week without her wonderfully, overbearing extended family finding out. She has the Fab Four help her out with some hilarious results. Language very clean for a YA..

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Thank you to Netgalley and Disney-Hyperion for a chance to read and review Elston’s new novel; 10 Truths and A Dare prior to its release in May!

This is the companion move to Elston’s 10 Blind Dates, which I adored! In this one we follow Sophie’s cousin Olivia.

This was just as fun and witty as the first one and I loved everything about it! This follows Olivia and the gang right before high school graduation and It was fun relieving the week before commencement through our characters. Plus, we got old characters from the first book to make an appearance!

Olivia was fantastic! She grew so much in this story and her love for her friends is admirable.

This is a fun & short novel that everyone should pick up in May! 🎓

10 Truths and a dare is a book that a reader cannot put down. I felt I was experiencing everything that the main character, Olivia was going through. The author had a fantastic way of making the story believable, like you could be in the story’s situation, which not a lot of authors can do. My only wish is for more, as it is a shorter, yet still a worthwhile read. I highly recommend 10 Truths and a Dare to any young adult reader. Thank you to Netgalley for providing me the opportunity to read a new favorite!

10 Truths and a Dare is a standalone but contains characters from Ashley Elston’s 10 Blind Dates. I was excited to see more of the Messina family.

This was a light and predictable read. I enjoyed it but it felt like it wasn’t really upper YA. I think it would be great for a younger reader.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of 10 Truths and a Dare in exchange for an honest review.

This was cute! A healthy amount of teenage shenanigans and miscommunications with zany results. It doesn't exactly do anything groundbreaking which makes it kind of predictable, but its a fun, comfortable, teen romcom.

This book is super cute. It is fairly predictable, but many YA books are if you ask me, and it is the rare gem which shines through. Despite this, it is a super sweet story that sucked me in from the first page. Nothing seems to go the protagonist's way from the beginning, woe is the life of a teenager! I love that this book is told from multiple perspectives. Apparently, there is a previous book primarily written from another perspective of a character in this book, but this book can completely stand on its own. There was no point I sat there thinking that events or characters didn't fit and were possibly just placed there to fit in the world of this series. I never questioned past events or who certain characters were, which is great! It's quite well written, and I very much recommend it--as a standalone or part of a series of books.

I loved 10 Blind Dates and couldn’t wait for 10 Truths and a Dare. However, this one fell pretty flat for me and didn’t have the same hype/cuteness. I liked that the characters were all the same from the other story, but now we’re focusing on Olivia rather than Sophie. It wasn’t hard to remember who was who in this book even though it’s been a while since I’ve read the previous book by Elston.

I enjoyed the graduation parties aspect of the book. Although some of these parties were so different than what was done back when I graduated (13 years ago), I can still remember the thrill of being so close to graduating and the promise of the unknown. I think my biggest dislike of the book was how Olivia (over) reacted to some news. Obviously the adventures wouldn’t have happened if she didn’t react the way she did, but to me it all felt so silly. Just talking to her mom or family could’ve solved a lot of headaches.

Thank you to Netgalley and Disney Publishing for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Was super excited to get this ARC copy as we enjoyed the previous book 10 Blind Dates. Sophie and her family were so fun to read about!!

In this installment, we get a book about her cousin Olivia. Olivia, her schools Salutatorian, is supposed to be graduating in a few weeks and she learns that she may not as the teacher of her off campus PE class did not pass her. She talked to Coach Cantu and agrees to help with a gold tournament for 4 days so he’ll sign the paper and she can graduate. She colludes with her friends to take over her phone and pretend to be her as her parents are out of town but installed an app on her phone to know where she is at all times (kind creepy since she’s about to graduate high school and go to college). This begins a fun time of boys pretending to be teenage girls and go to a week of graduation parties and Olivia works at the gold course. You can clearly feel her anxiety while she searches and tries to complete the needed work to get her extra credit to pass but in a quirky fun read.

This is a standalone and you do not have to read 10 Blind Dates to understand the family dynamics or what is going on. It was a super cute, easy read but didn’t hold our attention the way 10 Blind Dates did. You still get the quirky, eccentric loving family from the first novel. The premise is rather unbelievable: a meticulous AP student who ditches her off campus PE class and may not graduate….we just can’t see that, if you’re orderly enough to take off campus class to take another class at school then we don’t see you as skipping the class and not finishing it or not paying attention when the Coach clearly told you he wouldn’t pass if you didn’t do make up work. The other issue was that she tried to incorporate a romance at the end and it was a little too late and not fleshed out enough in the book. The book would have been a success without it.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy in return for an honest review!

-- Staci and Angie

10 TRUTHS AND A DARE is a cute sequel to Ashley Elston's 10 BLIND DATES, and it brings one back to the kooky events of the first book. Very fluffy, very light.

I'm graduating high school this year, so I knew I had to read this book as soon as I saw the official description and release date. My senior year has been all online community-college dual credit classes, so my experience won't exactly be like the one in the book, but I just found out that I'll still get to do a smaller in-person ceremony, so it's all good.



Olivia Perkins is finished with high school and now looks forward to a week of parties before she graduates as salutatorian of her class. She doesn't think she needs to look back, until the teacher of her off-campus PE class informs her that due to a few absences, she hasn't met the required number of hours to pass the course and won't be able to graduate unless she makes them up somehow. The only available option at this point is for her to volunteer at a four-day-long local golf tournament and assist the school's golf team.
She agrees to do it, but the only problem is that her mom is out of town and is constantly tracking her location through her phone. So Olivia and her "Fab Four"- her favorite cousins Charlie and Sophie, along with Sophie's boyfriend Wes- devise a plan where one of the three will swap phones with Olivia each day that she's at the tournament. Whoever has Olivia's phone will show up to the location of every daytime grad party she's invited to, and have to convincingly talk to her mom, with pictures and all. And Olivia's mom is constantly texting, whether it be a request to see Olivia's party outfit or an inquiry on why she showed up at a certain place.
Turns out pretending to be someone else is easier said than done, and Sophie, Charlie and Wes are thrown into the parties themselves. And for Olivia, driving golf carts and handing out water might not be so bad after all when she sees that her childhood friend and neighbor, Leo Perez, has returned to town for a week to compete.

This was a concept I've never seen before, and it was really nice to see something new. Sure, there were a few tropes, like the "evil cousins" Mary Jo and Jo Lynn, or the "kid I used to know comes back and now he's super hot" but the majority of the book was original. One of my favorite parts was that even though a lot of it did rely on Olivia lying to her mom, there was never a #exposed moment where someone found her out and told her whole family. In fact, Olivia is the one who eventually comes clean, and I liked to see that she wasn't punished or lectured at all. Her family actually ends up being completely understanding, and there's an overall message of how Olivia appears to have it all together but still deserves room to make mistakes like everyone else.


Also, no miscommunication. If you're worried that there could be the miscommunication trope in this book, THERE ISN'T. I worried about this early on because when Olivia gets Leo's number, she saves his name in her phone as the wrong name, because she thinks the texts are coming from another guy on the team, Locke. When she finds out it's Leo and not Locke, she changes it to "L" without informing the Fab Four. I was never entirely sure if Leo knew about the phone switch, so I was hoping that none of the Fab Four would send "L" a confessing-feelings type message with Locke's name. That didn't happen, and that was the biggest relief.


And the parties are very realistic, with themes like pajamas, cupcake baking contest, old Western, and fancy tea party. None of the jumping-on-furniture, everyone-is-blackout-drunk, music-blasting type of parties I normally see in YA books. It's obvious that the author actually took the time to understand teenagers instead of just giving the characters her own dream lives at that age.

Read this book if you 're a teenager who misses life before COVID-19, or if you're graduating this year like me.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with this digital ARC for an honest review. An enjoyable story about the week between the end of senior classes and graduation. During what should be a week of parties and celebrations, our MC, Olivia, ends up scrambling to ensure that she makes up her missing half-credit PE class, to prevent being disqualified to graduate, while trying to keep her screw-up a secret from most everyone she knows. In the midst of her turmoil is her big extended family, her best friends, her worst enemy cousins, a golf tournament, a potential love interest, and disaster. Olivia has the opportunity to make things right - if she's brave enough to be honest.

I was really curious of this book, because I'd really enjoyed 10 Blind Dates. Unfortunately, this one didn't quite have the same charm. I enjoyed 10 Blind Dates for three reasons: the Christmas vibe, the big family that was front and center in the book, and the plot, which was funny. This book missed all of those elements: obviously it's set in a different time of year, which would have been fine on its own, but the family also played a much smaller role, and I wasn't engaged in the plot at all. Especially the golf aspect just wasn't interesting to me. I also thought the MC's mother was really overbearing and controlling and it creeped me out.

I enjoyed this YA story about a group of graduating seniors one or which finds out that she is about to miss out on graduation because of a careless mistake and her journey on how to correct the mistake. It is funny and charming with a group of loveable characters. I found myself wanting to continue reading about the trouble they could get into when they enter the college world. Sweet , fast paced read about responsibility, telling the truth, and family.

Review to be posted publicly on 3-11-21 (Note: I'll be adding the review links here on this same date)

Okay, so this was SUCH AN AMAZING BOOK! There were so many moments where I was laughing out loud and getting so invested in the story. The characters were so cute and enjoyable to read about and I just grew so attached to them. There are a few minor things that bothered me about the book and that's why I didn't give it 5 stars, but other than that, this is a book I can probably re-read multiple times and not get tired of it. I know it's a good book when I'm reading and I lose all concept of time...

Because there aren't a lot of complaints, I'm just going to start with them. I really found the main character, Olivia, annoying at first. I eventually got used to her and started getting invested in her story, but it took longer than I would've wanted. Don't get me wrong, I was interested in her story, but just not right off the bat. At the beginning of the book, Olivia's so arrogant to think that she could do no wrong when it came to academics and it was honestly the only reason she got in this predicament. She did eventually learn her lesson but while reading it, it was very irritating in my opinion. Then there's the love story which was very enjoyable but it didn't start out in the most favorable way. I feel that her hating the love interest is really forced and I think it should've lasted longer. On one page she has a lot of chemistry with him and then in another after that, she talks about how she genuinely doesn't get along with him... I was just a bit confused. After that initial thing, I enjoyed them but it wasn't my favorite love story I've ever read.

Now onto stuff that honestly made me LOVE the book! Her cousin Charlie, is the leading reason that I love the book. His humor is my absolute favorite and he's so enjoyable to read about. I looked forward to every POV of his in the book because his inner dialogue and his actions just killed me. I was genuinely laughing out loud! Then there were moments where he was purposely putting minor inconveniences in Olivia's life and he would do it so nonchalantly and with no hesitation that I had nothing to do but laugh! The way he interacted with everyone around him was the best too. He had such clever wit so he was always making comments to his friends about those he didn't like and it was entertaining, to say the least! Note to the author: I would love there to be an entire book from Charlie's POV!

I mentioned before that I would re-read this book for sure and I mean that wholeheartedly. It made me so happy while I was reading it and it uplifted me completely! I wish I could've given 5 stars for that, but there were still some complaints. Please do not let those put you off completely though because this is an amazing feel-good book. Whenever I feel like crap, I would want this book to read to help me feel better!