This book is most definitely not bacon; it is corduroy. And if you do not know what in the world I mean, don’t worry, the author will try to get you to think that this is the new cool slang for teens about every other page. I am not exaggerating when I say that bacon was used every other page in some chapters which would make for a horribly inebriating drinking game. Additionally, the teen characters talk about swiping right and left on some people and actions which made me realize that the author may not have much contact with Gen Z. While generations from Millenials on up will get the references, I don’t see or hear Gen Z using these terms at all from my experience as a teacher or as a mom to Gen Z teens. Instead, this generation uses TikTok & IG and “slides into people’s DMs.”

I really had high hopes for this book as not many address interracial relationships. But this was a fail all around. Instead, it fell into every single YA trope in existence. We are expected to believe that a school would devote this much time and attention to an entire year-long student body president election filled with this much criminal behavior and insanity. In reality, these things take a month maybe. The couple each have older sisters running in the election who pull their younger siblings in as campaign managers. That is plausible, but that is where it starts to fall apart too. We see the one sister gradually cave into increasingly polarizing and racists views as it gets her popularity in the election, but then she falls into every single Karen stereotype: of course she is blonde and blue eyed (never fear, her better younger sister has brown eyes, a la Jane Elliott’s famous activity), has racist views and tries to circumvent them using her fragility, attacks autistic students, enlists peers with disabilities when it suits her, defends the confederate flag, attacks trans students and so on. The misogyny was ridiculous: the older sister’s boyfriend espouses sexist views, and the third candidate’s older brother talks of cutting girls’ c____s. The increasing violence was a clear shift around page 180 of the digital ARC I read, and it did not seem to flow with what came before it. Not to leave out a YA stereotype, but of course there is a school shooting too.

We want to root for Sally and Uly, but their siblings and the completely unrealistic plot get in the way. I find it interesting that there are no mother characters in the book – was it easier to make everyone’s moms dead than to write one realistically?

I had such high hopes, but I feel that this one does our young people a disservice by not taking them seriously in dialogue or in plot. Instead, it treats their experiences as a bevy of stereotypes.

Thank you NetGalley and Soho Press for the advance copy in exchange for my unbiased review.

If you want to read a book that tries too hard to prove points to the point they have to make multiple analogies and statements, With characters that are so blatantly different races, slang that is repetitive and stereo typical, and no real development within the first few chapters, this is the book for you.

I really wanted to like this book…. I thought finally and little rep, not many books are written as mixed raced, especially in YA (but its starting to happen more which I’m happy about). I thought wow big issues finally being talked about but an own voices author but…….but it was a huge disappointment. This book read like an early 2000’s movie, you have characters who are so obviously two different races with the way they talk and act, as well as their families….. my rating 1.5/5.

I read about 10 chapters of this book before I DNF’d it. I know this books was own voices, but…. I could not relate what’s so ever. To give this a little insight; I’ve been in a mixed race relationship for 8 years new which started in high school. Maybe its just a completely different environments I’m not sure….

There were many things I wasn’t a fan of in the first few chapters of this book. One, the big point to the beginning is how Uly feels like a fraud because in a school play he faints and in his words “black people don’t faint”. (My first red flag) Two being the slang used. Which you get a big indication in the first chapter. With words like “truthanasia” and sayings like “real talk (used 4-5 times in the first few pages of this book) and for a lack of a better description taking things too far for us as readers to get a point their trying to make, for example Sallie asks why “why are they called spaghettini movies and Uly goes on to explain “its like calling a movie made by ( insert country) a (insert country’s stereo typical insinuation) multiple times with different country’s. In my opinion this was completely unnecessary.

We also have. Uly explain that while he finds white girls attractive he’s not ATTRACTED TO them and yes the words are capitalized in the story. But he thinks she’s sexy….. again what….. as we know that this whole story is based on their relationship….

And don’t even get me started on the sister, and family situation. I know that she’s supposed to be the not likeable character and (claps) the job was done, but it was so obvious, She didn’t have ANY redeemable qualities and was so in your face obvious about it ie; “You wouldn’t even last two episodes on the dyke channel” and so on. I was expecting as her being the “villain” in the story and the sister of one of the main characters we’d get a little more from her…..

This whole story (the 10 chapters I read) like I said at the beginning was like an early 2000’s movie. In the era of the Bring it on movies the one that came to mind was All or Nothing. I know we are reading from a highschooler’s POV but….. I didn’t feel within what I read we got any development from out characters and things were repetitive in behaviour and vocabulary. I like what this story was supposed to do and what we were supposed to get out of it but…. It missed the mark for me. My fist DNF of the year.

This is a serious book. It has an important message, deep themes and though it's comedic at its heart, its core is poignant: the ending is terribly sad.

I enjoyed reading this book. Sally and Uly are both developed characters with narrative voices that fit how they behave. They don't act too old, or too young for their ages and they have a nice relationship which again doesn't stretch beyond the realms of believability.

When Leona, Sally's sister runs for student representative at school, everything goes wrong as she reveals some of her opinions which are clearly racist and hateful. It's easy to read this as a student and see that a lot of things that she says, thankfully, wouldn't be put up with in many institutions today but it was good to see how the book strove to call this type of behaviour out.

I especially liked how the author explored the idea of interracial relationships and how these can be perceived– it feels like a topical theme and whilst a lot of YA Contemporary now shows these relationships, here we see all the negativity that surrounds them. Many of the moments in the book made me sad.

As a warning, the book had a lot of language in it so I would recommend this for older teens, given its important message. What I loved about this book was that it took on serious themes that many would seek to avoid yet did it with enough levity so that we are attached to the characters and invested in their journeys.

Thank you to NetGalley and Soho Press for a digital review copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

'The Problem with the Other Side' starts with a blooming high-school romance between a white girl, Sallie, and a black boy, Uly. At first, their relationship is uncomplicated and easy. Anxiety is there, as with all first-loves, but what they have feels huge, good and important. Things get rocky however, when both of their sisters decide to run for school president, Leona (Sallie's Sister) with a campaign focused on 'making their school a safe place to be' and Regina (Uly's Sister) with a Platform made in rebuke to Leona's racist undertones. The siblings are asked to be campaign managers, which puts strain on their relationship. The Situation escalates and Sallie struggles with her loyalty to her sister and her morals, while Uly struggles with his love for Sallie and her blindness.

Reminiscent of "The Wave", heaps of important issues like mob mentality, white priviledge, white supremacy, trans rights, loyalty, racism, and standing up to the people you love in the name of what is right were touched on. I thought the way these topics were introduced felt easy to understand and suited for teens. It will stay with me for a long time. However, as a white reviewer I can't truly offer an opinion on how well the issues concerning race were handled, so I urge you to look to OwnVoices Reviewers regarding this.

I enjoyed the romance in this book, the characters had chemistry and felt the way teenagers feel: like their love is the most important thing in the world, indestructible, perfect. The Characters were fleshed out and well-described. I generally enjoyed the wealth of characters that were each unique. I also felt like the coming-of-age bit that books like this inherently have was well-done.

There were some things that bothered me however. The first big thing is that I felt like a lot of false equivalencies were being made. Especially in the beginning. I can see how this was used in the story, letting us literally feel how confused and irritated Sallie felt, but it did bother me a lot in some parts.
I also disliked the way the book was generally written. This is very much a personal preference, but the writing felt extremely casual, like the characters diary or a rundown of their thoughts. This often confused me. I didn't even realize what was bothering me until halfway through! Actually, I'm still not sure what exactly the format was supposed to be, since Uly apologizes to the reader for not speaking for about a month at one point. Who is he apologizing to? What was I reading?

This was truly an impactful read that I'll be thinking about for a long time.

This review will appear on my Instagram @flybybooks within the next week.

It was great to see this was actually written by a teacher. A timely relevant story that is well written, with so much potential for further depth and discussion.

This is the first time I have written a review like this where I wasn’t super excited about a book.

I loved the concept of the book and that a teacher had written it. I just felt like there was too much going on, and not all of it was well developed. I think the discussion about race was fantastic but then the story of uly and Sallie got lost and then ending added another level that never really got developed.

I also had a hard time with the way the kids were speaking. I am a teacher as well and my kids just don’t speak like that. Maybe the slang was from Phillly but it was nothing I had heard before and it was so repetitively used it was hard to get past.

I will not publicly review this book bc I would never want to put bad publicity out on someone’s work but this books just wasn’t for me

The story begins with a news report of a violent incident at the school's Inauguration Day. We don't know who did it, and we don't know who the victims are, but it truly begins four months earlier with the beginning of Knight High School's student body president elections.

Ulysses Gates and Sallie Walls have never paid attention to what each other's families will think of the other until Sallie's sister, Leona (FUCK that bitch), announces her run for student body president and gives a speech about wanting to stop students from certain neighborhoods (neighborhoods which are primarily Black) from attending school there. Uly and his sister Regina, who are from one of the mentioned neighborhoods, are outraged, and so is Sallie, although she finds it difficult to confront Leona. When Leona comes up with her new campaign slogan, "Turn Knight Back to Day," Regina has had enough and decides to run against her.
Regina bases her platform on making sure that all students feel safe and accepted, while Leona's is mainly focused on putting an end to "PC culture." Leona's campaign soon leads to racist attacks and vandalism across the school, and threats are even made against Uly. Sallie must come to terms with who her sister really is, and the sisters soon learn of a threat that could affect them both.

It's really hard to review this book without spoiling, but I'll try my best. With the exception of one or two scenes that had nothing to do with her political position, I really liked Regina and how she wasn't afraid to call out bigotry, whether it was affecting her or someone else. As for Leona, I already made it clear how I feel about her. She's like that annoying news commentator who's always saying things like "why does everything have to be politically correct these days?" and "you all get so offended over everything." Instead of promising what she could do for the school, like Regina did, most of Leona's statements were about things like why they had to cast a Jewish actress to play Wonder Woman or how she expected her Black friends at camp to be offended when she said that she didn't like a certain Tyler Perry movie. I hated her and everyone who thought like her, and her campaign emboldened some of the worst bigots in the school. Swastikas were drawn on lockers, trans kids were physically attacked, and actual white-supremacist groups formed. And Leona was responsible for all of it.
I did really like the storyline of Sallie realizing that even though her sister was one of her best friends and got her through the hardest time of her life, she could still be hurtful to others. There's even one part where Sallie thinks to herself that Leona can't possibly be a racist because her image of "racist" is a Confederate-Flag wielding white dude. While in reality, racism takes many forms, and it's important to recognize it and put a stop to it.

What I didn't like was how both of the protagonists had to have dead parents. Even though Uly's dad and Sallie's stepmom were still good parental figures, it really didn't seem necessary for either of them, but especially not for Uly. It was only brought up maybe three times, and mainly just as backstory for Leona and Sallie being so close. I mention this all the time, but I'm tired of seeing dead parents randomly thrown into books that have nothing to do with it.
The ending was also disappointing to me. I won't spoil anything, except that it takes place nine years later, and while things did technically turn out good for both Uly and Sallie, I just wish it would've been better. "Bittersweet" endings are honestly overrated.

4 out of 5 stars.