Thank you NetGalley, publisher, and author for the ARC of this novel for an honest review.

When I started reading this I almost stopped I thought "Great here is a typical high school prank war book, boys vs girls" BUT... I am so glad I pushed through it was so much more than that. Samantha Markum did a fabulous job with all the characters and the tone of the book. I devoured this book, it read so quickly and I got way into the story.

***SPOILER ALERT The one thing that disturbed me was the girls not speaking up about their sexual predator. I think it would have been more powerful if the author made a statement with them coming forward and reminding teens and everyone else to speak up!!

I started this book unsure of what to think. The heroine's friend group is large and there are lots of characters to remember. Was she going to end up likable with her single minded stubbornness to "win" this rivalry? The answer is Yes. It was so good. It was such a good fake relationship story. I loved the friends. I loved Wells and Doe together. I loved so much when her focus shifted to taking down a predator in her school. This is the book that I want my girls to read when they need a fun story with lots of growth and love (both friends and romantic), with different perspectives to help them think outside their comfort zone. It was the perfect book to read after dinner and late into the night.

The premise is appealing to teen readers. A school is evolving but the girls don’t want to go down without a fight. They intend to rule the school. It’s a cute read for young readers.

This May End Badly. All’s fair in love and prank wars. If you like fake dating and enemies to lovers trope, this one is for you. Pranking mastermind Doe and her friends are determined t win the was against Winfield Academy. But it’s announced the The Weston School will merge with its rival, their feud spirals out of control. This is a fun YA with a fearless protagonist that will have turning pages fairly quickly. It’s a funny and charming story. Really well written by Samantha. I also loooved this cover.

<b>3.75 stars rounded up! Samantha Markum delivers a fun fake dating YA romance in This May End Badly.</b>

<b>Tropes:</b> Fake Dating, Rivalry, Working Together

<b>Plot at a glance:</b> With a merger between the all-girls Weston School and all-boys Winfield Academy on the horizon, Doe rallies her best friends to take their pranking to the next level and win the century-long war against the all-boys school once and for all. She decides there’s no better way to knock her rival Three off his pranking game than by fake dating his cousin Wells. It’s all fun and games until Doe starts developing real feelings for her fake boyfriend. Soon her lies get out of hand and an incident with a long-rumoured predatory teacher comes to light, making Doe question whether there’s a greater cause she could be fighting for than the prank war.

<b>Review:</b> Samantha Markum perfectly captured the intense emotions and complexity of growing up in <i>This May End Badly</i>. Doe navigates rocky relationships with her friends, parents, first love and even faulty members with rash decision making and a quick-changing spectrum of emotions. Kudos to Samantha Markum for instilling her heroine with such authenticity. Doe is a bit prickly and immature, but she has a good heart that ultimately makes you root for her.

I really liked the colourful cast of characters. Doe’s friends are the kind of ride-or-die friends you instantly admire. The Wellborn boys, especially Wells and Three, seem one -dimensional at first but are slowly revealed to be quite multi-faceted. Wells is a hero after my own heart – voracious reader, intelligent, sarcastic, and protective of the ones he loves. Even Three won me over by the end of the novel.

Your milage may vary with the predatory teacher storyline. It was handled fairly well but may be triggering for some readers.

Overall, <i>This May End Badly</I> is a YA romance that will keep you turning the pages.

<i>Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books for the chance to read this digital ARC.</i>

This book gave me everything I wanted and more. Rival boarding schools? Check. Prank wars? Check? Fake dating? CHECK! Not only was this book full of fun tropes, but Markum expanded upon those tropes to provide nuance and depth to multiple characters in a way few YA authors can. The various friendships Doe has with her group of girls were each unique and well-developed with love, disappointment, and other REAL emotions that exist between friends. The chemistry between Doe and Wells was so fun to watch develop and, similarly, grew so naturally.

The handling and nuance of sexuality, gender, and sexual assault were done so well that I have hope and excitement for the young readers exposed to this book. I wish I had books like these 10 years ago, but I’m so thankful I’m exposed to them now.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and Wednesday Books for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

This May End Badly managed to succeed and subvert all of my expectations going into the story, delivering a refreshing and emotional read that brings its reader into a world worthy of a TV show. With several plot lines crossing one another over a school year, the book’s simple premise is not unlike a prank: it draws you in under one trope then delightfully surprises you with anything but.

The book, on its upmost surface, is about Dorothy “Doe” Saltpeter’s senior year at all-girl’s The Weston School as she engages in a prank war with the neighboring all-boy’s Winfield Academy, their historical rival. Doe lobs pranks against the school with her close group of friends, all of whom have helped her battle since freshman year: Sumi, Jade, Gemma, and her best friend, Shawn. However, Winfield Academy gives as good as they get in the prank war, led by Nathaniel “Three” Wellborn III, and his unit composed of several cousins. Running interference as a (mostly) neutral messenger between the two groups is Three’s cousin Gabriel “Wells” Wellborn. When both groups become aware of plans for a merger between Weston and Winfield the following schools year, they decide to amp up their pranks to stop it from happening.

However, whereas the two schools have always been at war, Doe and Three take the rivalry to a personal level. Every conversation between the two is a battle of the wits, with insults hurled fast and frequently. Angered by one such conversation, Doe arranges to kick Three in the knees metaphorically by fake dating Wells, who has his own personal reasons to want his cousin humbled. Their ruse continues alongside bigger and ballsier pranks. Things diverge from the plan as Doe and Wells begin to know one another beyond their expected roles, mixing their fake relationship with real feelings.

Weston and Winfield, alongside their Midwest host town of Delafosse, are the perfect backdrop to the antics of Doe, Wells, and Three. Boarding schools in novels seem to generally have an air of romanticism and idealism, which This May End Badly is not exempt from partly falling prey to. In the small details that flesh out this world, the reader is able to understand how their environment has fostered the war. Certain restaurants are declared Weston territory or Winfield’s; the bookstore is neutral; both schools are reliant on Delafosse’s public students for off-campus parties. Administration at both schools turn a blind eye to the pranks unless they’re forced to address them, all while ushering students to quickly accept the changes being forced upon them. Something I could not help but notice, however, is that despite its necessary links to Delafosse, neither school really acknowledges the impact they have on the community they live in during the school year.

This silence speaks to a pattern in This May End Badly of ignoring the inherent privilege each player has that enables their game. Jade briefly brings up Doe’s racial privilege during the consequences of a prank and Doe mentions several times how the Wellborn’s wealth underwrite their battles. Beyond that, however, this novel allows its soft framing of how wonderful it is to be a Weston Girl or Winfield Boy obscure more realistic implications extending beyond its interior. I could put this framing out of my mind if not for how it directly impacts Doe’s character. In total honesty, Doe is a hard character to root for. She is tenacious, has a victim complex, and praises an experience formed by white feminism. Unfortunately for me, the novel is a first person point of view from Doe. During the events that are light-hearted and silly, this is not a problem. Once the plot starts thickening and Doe is put in tougher situations, reading her view becomes annoying.

Her unlikeable character is tempered by her relationship with Wells. Foil to her in many ways, Wells is the perfect vehicle to begin the change in Doe’s perception of himself, Three, and the merger as a whole. He is charismatic and tries to remain as neutral as possible. He sees why Doe is hurt by Three and Weston becoming co-ed, but more than that, he sees what Doe tries to ignore by focusing on the prank war with such narrow-mindedness. Wells is far from an angel himself, and indeed, I wanted to shake him for his communicative skills for a majority of the novel. But he manages to bring out the best in Doe, and vice versa, which makes him a compelling romantic hero that keeps from being too perfect. While the prank war serves as the basic arch moving the plot forward, it is Doe and Wells’s relationship that carries This May End Badly’s evolution.

What marks This May End Badly as different from many of its YA peers is that Doe and Wells’s relationship does not overtake the prank war as the most important plot line. At its heart, this book is about Doe, Weston, and her legacy at the school. What affects her legacy changes throughout the acts— stopping the merger, beating Three, and later, dealing with a predatory teacher. It is solely Doe in control when she works to overcome these challenges, drawing upon Wells for strength and friendship, never pushing him to use his privilege for her gain. This change to similar novels made me smile, as I may not like Doe but I do respect her immensely for this.

I will be buying a copy of This May End Badly upon its release, as the story makes me smile as much as it makes me roll my eyes— a reaction which transports me back to the joys of being a teen navigating high school. Samantha Markum is an author to watch and I eagerly await her follow up.

**I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

I picked up Samantha Markum’s This May End Badly when I was in somewhat of a reading slump . . . which Markum promptly ended. I could not put down this book!

The novel begins with Doe and her best friends (Gemma, Jade, Sumi, and Shawn) in the midst of pranking their neighboring boarding school as part of a tradition that goes back generations. The girls of The Weston School and the boys of Winfield Academy have had a rivalry that permeates every event throughout the year, and Doe and her friends (but particularly Doe!) take that rivalry to new heights, driven by the extra-special loathing that Doe and Winfield boy Three have for each other. As seniors, they all realize this is their last chance to win the prank war, so the creativity is rampant.

That rivalry is the center of the book, and it creeps out into every corner of Doe’s life. It causes her to set up a fake dating scenario with Three’s cousin Wells, to keep secrets from her friends and family, to lose focus on her academics despite her continued need to earn her spot at Weston (she entered the school under less-than-ideal circumstances).

Doe is brilliant and fun and funny and also deeply, deeply flawed. I loved the varied relationships here: Doe’s close-knit friendships and her great relationships with her parents and even the growing friendship she has with Wells. I also appreciated watching as Doe lost her grip on the real purpose of the pranks and as she became so laser focused that she lost sight of where it all had started.

There are serious threads running through the fun of the Weston-Winfield battles, threads that pull tighter when a merger between the schools is announced and Doe has to start considering what she really loves about Weston and herself . . . and what needs to change.

Markum navigates the unfurling plot and Doe’s character development beautifully, offering complexity and nuance as Doe reflects on who she is and who she wants to be.

Trigger warning: sexual assault

This book was an adorable view of someone struggling to come to terms with change in such a connectable way. The way Doe fought change in her school, in her friendships, and in romance was so incredibly relatable, especially as I thought back on my senior year of high school. And while I didn’t go to a boarding school, this book sure made me wish I did!

This was such a fun and enjoyable story about growth, friendship and love! Despite there being so much going on (okay, maybe it was a tad bit *too* much), I was thoroughly entertained from start to finish, even in the middle part, where things got dragged a little. This book would’ve probably benefitted from keeping things more simple, maybe even cutting out a couple of subplots, but the banter more than made up for it and had me cheesing through it all! One thing I will say: I wish to have gotten a little more insight into Wells’s character to understand him better; it wasn’t easy at times. As for Doe… she’s flawed, but she’s trying her best and learning from her mistakes, and that’s what matters, 3.5/5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/Wednesday Books for the ARC.

I liked this! It’s not my usual type of read but it was an enjoyable , quick read. Recommend to people who enjoy a boarding school book (not quite dark academia but kinda?)

This was such a fun read! I found it to be the perfect balance between plot and character development. I also really loved the relationships between the main characters.

DNF. I really liked the premise but the writing did not work for me at all. It wouldn't be fair to the book if I finished reading and gave it a low rating.

Overall I felt this to be a cute and enjoyable read. Occasionally the obstacles the characters are presented with, as well as their actions/reactions, felt forced and more to drive the plot than anything else. In the end, though, the bigger themes of friendship, community, inclusion, standing up for what you believe in, and more - are powerful and heartfelt; and I love the imperfectness of the main characters as they struggle with real life lessons and doing the right thing.

OK this was so fun!! Loved the whole rivalry and all the pranks! The characters were all great. The friendship with her girls was wonderful. As for the love interest, I was rooting for them the entire time. It did get a little slow in parts but for a debut, this was very well done. I'd recommend it. .

Thank you NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the ARC!

I quite enjoyed this one. I’m not really in the demographic, but it was nice to read something totally different than what I’ve been reading of late.

Two rival schools, Weston (girl’s school) and Winfield Academy (boy’s school), two leaders Doe, and Three. Prank wars. For once, they aren’t interested in each other which was a nice change from the usual pattern.

They find out their schools are merging next year and much chaos ensues. The story actually got a little dark for a bit, with some things involving a creepy teacher. Not sure that needed to be part of the story, but it did end up bringing the schools together, so in that way it did indeed help with the plot.

I’d definitely recommend this one if you want some good fun, with definite seriousness thrown into the mix.

This was a fun read! I enjoyed the coming of age story and the arc of the main characters. My only complaint was that there were too many supporting characters that were difficult to keep track of at times.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this novel. 3.5/5 stars rounded down.

I really liked the concept of this. I'm a sucker for fake dating, and I'm an even bigger sucker for academy/private school novels. I thought the synopsis sounded SO good, and the idea of prank wars also intrigued me...but the protagonist Doe is....well...obnoxious? Which, I GET is a point of her character. She's meant to be self-centered and obsessed with pranking (since she resolves it in the end)...but it was just horrible to read the self destructive behavior and literally not caring about anyone else due to her obsessions. Wells, though, Wells was amazing. I'm also a sucker for book boys who like books...especially those who reference SMUT as the topic of books.

I think there's a lot of good content in this book, but toward the middle there were way too many plot lines going on with the merger, the addition of potential transphobia from Doe's wishes, and then the plot line with the pervy teacher at the end coming to fruition. Especially if you're including something with teachers abusing their power, I think that should take the height of the plot...not just an addition to bring the schools together.

I did like Doe and Wells' relationship development, and Doe's redemption at the end...but I could not tolerate reading Doe's perspective.

I was approved for this arc on NetGalley so long ago and I stupidly waited to read it. Well, I’m kicking myself now.

This book has found its way onto my absolute favorites of 2022 because every single thing about it was perfect!

If you want a book with female empowerment, strong, diverse friend groups, great writing, funny banter, a rivalry, and the most adorable fake relationship situation, THIS MAY END BADLY is something you will need to pick up for yourself!

Doe and her besties are entering their senior year as Weston girls. And their rivals, the boys across the street at the Winfield school are the target of their shenanigans. These two private schools have participated in a generations-long prank war that Doe has now taken into her own hands.

Her arch nemesis, Three is one of the most prominent students from Winfield. And he is an insufferable jerk that she is desperate to put in his place. When the opportunity arises to best him come is the form of a proposition from Three’s cousin Wells, Doe finds herself unable to resist.

What starts as a fake relationship between Doe and Wells l, begins to form into something more… but Doe has trouble seeing past her hatred for Three and her dire need to keep Weston’s reputation strong. And this causes her to basically implode her whole life.

I loved this because it was so relatable. I know what it’s like to be so hyper focused on something that you lose sight of what is really important; what it was that it ever started for. And Doe was incredible. She was strong and kind and so compassionate. But she was stubborn and bull headed and, at time, could be her own worst enemy.

The characters that make up the rest of this book, like her group of friends, some of her foes (both in the all boys school and even some within her own school) and Wells (oh how I loved him) were all fantastic!! This book as a whole was something I enjoyed reading so much!!

This book also talks a great deal about needing safe spaces and the very real and very scary element of predators in schools who find themselves in a place where they can easily prey on young students. That was an aspect of the book that I didn’t see coming but loved how it was done so much.

This May End Badly by Samantha Markum

In this YA read, two rival boarding schools (one for boys and one for girls) find out that they must merge at the end of the year. The schools have participated in decades long prank wars and the main character, Doe, hates her boys school counterpart, Three, with a fiery passion. To get back at him one last time, she starts a fake relationship with his cousin which he agrees to in exchange for her help with stealing a family heirloom. I really enjoyed some aspects of this including the fake relationship trope and the way it addressed who exclusionary single gender schools can be for trans students, but there were so many elements that I just couldn’t buy. For example, the motivations for many of the characters’ actions felt super unrealistic and that bothered me throughout the book, but if you’re able to put that aside and go along for the ride, it’s a fun read.

And all that being said, I’ll be buying a copy for my classroom when it comes out on 4/12 because my 11th graders want books with the fake dating trope and who am I to deny them. 😍