This follows and Asian girl who is cast on a reality tv show and ends up getting edited into a person she doesn’t like. Honestly this book was just kind of bland. There isn’t a lot of action or things that happen.

Fun story about reality TV and two friends who realize that the "reality" of the tv show isn't really reality at all.

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books, Quill Tree Books for the ARC!

Based off of the description, this book should easily be a 3.5 star read at minimum and it kind of reaches that point but overall, this just isn't memorable.

I was hoping this would be a feel good book that I could always return to, but it was just a bit bland for me.

3.5 but rounded up.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

This was requested when I first found out about NetGalley and I had requested so many ARCs that I could not get to all of them before they were archived. I really wanted to get to this one, as it seemed interesting. If I can find this somewhere for a reasonable price, I will try to get it! I am giving this book three stars, as I don't want to give it a good or bad rating, since I did not get to it.

3.5⭐️ Sabine just made it on her favorite TV show, Hotel California. It’s only played on the Korean TV channel, and it seems to be real life for the Asian teenagers on it, not some scripted reality show. When Sabine arrives, she is nervous, but excited to live in this incredible house with 5 other high schoolers. As everyone arrives, Sabine feels like she doesn’t belong among the good looking people that show up. Three guys and three girls must live together for 5 weeks, and so far the show has been low on drama, high on relationships and fun. That is all about to change because the show has been picked up by a major streaming service. As the introduce challenges, dates, and other things to pit the housemates against one another, Sabine really starts to wonder how she was chosen. Of course, drama ensues, relationships are challenged, and all the housemates have to decide how far they’re willing to go to get some recognition. This was a quick read. I enjoyed it, although some things were wrapped up too quickly for me. It is a great YA book about deciding who you are, who you want to be, and how far you’re willing to go to get there.

Thank you to the publisher & NetGalley for the advance copy in exchange for a review. All opinions expressed are my own.

I'm Not Here to Make Friends is a fun story about two high school students (Sabine and Yoona) who decide to join a reality TV show that is filming over summer break. This story challenges the reader to think more about how they see themselves, how others might see them, and how others might manipulate situations to get a specific outcome. Both Sabine and Yoona need to overcome their own insecurity to work together to write their own story for the show and not let the producers manipulate the story.

I went into this so hesitantly. I LOVE reality TV and that is exactly the vibe I got from this. Kept me on the edge of my seat and honestly I loved it so so much. Definitely only for people like me who enjoy reality TV. If you do not like reality TV, you will not like this.

This book was really cool. I love the idea of the story! I really enjoyed being able to see both perspectives, how the characters were pitted against each other without their knowledge and how the decided to fight back.

Here's yet another reality TV show YA and, yep, I loved it. It's fun, summery, and I really, really loved the mostly Asian cast of characters. It would have been nice for the two protagonists to fall for each other instead of the friendship arc the book ultimately goes with, but oh well. Definitely a fun book, just not my favorite reality TV YA of late.

(Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes are taken from an advanced copy and may be subject to change upon final publication.)

This book was said to center friendship which it did but it was also such a bland book as there was basically no high stakes at all which makes for a very boring book overall.

I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn't work for me. Honestly, for the most part I did enjoy my time. I really like the reality tv show setting of this book. I also really liked seeing how the producers manipulate the contestants for their desired end result. I think the kind of commentary that came out of that was interesting. The dynamic between our cast was also quite fun, I just wish we went a bit more in depth about the characters that weren't our two main perspectives, but it wasn't anything too bothersome to my enjoyment of this book. I did think Yoona and Sabine were quite unlikeable. Yoona just had a massive victim complex, and I hated how she just couldn't recognise that intent does not equal results. Like if your hurt someone, you need to apoligise, even if you didn't mean to hurt them. Instead she just kept doubling down, and acting like she's the victim and it really got on my nerves. Sabine was also just stupid, and very high and mighty and I rolled my eyes several times at her inner monologue. However, I was hopeful because it did seem like this book was going to make these characters realise their flaws and grow from them. Sadly enough, the ending just let me down on all fronts. Remember how I said that I liked the discussions around the manipulation on reality tv shows? Yeah, those producers just become cartoonishly evil antagonists, and it was laughably unbelievable. It completely undermines the earlier discussions around them. The ending also makes it so that any growth our two main characters went through were completely undone. Like they just reverse to the people they have always been, and it just made me wonder what the fuck the point of this book was. So yeah, I really wanted to like this, and the fact that there was potential here probably is making me even more dissapointed.

A fun middle grade read. If I pretended I was a high schooler, I think the book would’ve been a more fun read for me. The way the characters processed their feelings felt like how I was in middle school haha. The story took some turns I didn’t expect with the reality show that kept me interested.

While I enjoyed this book about two girls finding their own way it was a little more of a middle grade read than YA. Sabine and Yoona come from very different worlds but both are needing a chance to find themselves. Will a reality show be the way to do this? During the course of this show they have to continually ask how far they will stray from their own personalities before enough is enough.

This book was enjoyable, it was slow and bland but in a good way. It felt like a relaxing day at the beach. I am always a fan of a reality show setting, this one wasn't very high stakes and there was little to no drama going on. all of the characters were so different and very easily distinguishable. if you usually enjoy a plot-driven story this one is probably not for you we were very focused on Sabine and Yoona and getting to know them.
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thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review.

following two teens and their unforgettable summer on a reality show.When Sabine Zhang is picked for Hotel California, a teen reality show with an all-Asian cast, she jumps at the opportunity. following two teens and their unforgettable summer on a reality show.When Sabine Zhang is picked for Hotel California, a teen reality show with an all-Asian cast, she jumps at the opportunity.

Thoughts

You know what reality tv is all about? The drama. You know what this book was lacking? Drama. Sure, there are some squabbling kinds of conflicts, but overall, this book is rather bland and tensionless.

Pros
Uncertain Footing: The one thing that this book gets right off the bat is placing these characters on uncertain footing. The whole setup of the show (and the book) is meant to play on their insecurities. Yoona and Sabine are two girls who are, in personality and personal philosophy, diametrically opposed. They are like oil and water: unlikely to mix well. They both want to get along for their own reasons, and so they work hard at this aim. But even as they start to fall in with one another, gain each other's trust, they rub each other wrong, making them doubt their friendship or inadvertently undermine their own will. And that feels incredibly--almost excruciatingly--realistic. It's painful to read, in a good way.

Manufactured Drama: It's what reality tv's all about, right? I really hate when an author adds drama to a story unnecessarily, so this sort of manipulative drama isn't usually to my taste. Except when it so clearly fits the plot... like when the director of a reality tv show is the one pulling the strings. When the layers of subtle manipulation were pulled back bit by bit throughout this book, it made me unfathomably angry... also in a good way. How dare they?!

Calm: Sabine heads into this reality show knowing what to expect: low stakes, friendly banter, and a lot of lounging with new friends. The show doesn't turn out the way she expects, but the book does. This isn't a book full of melodrama, high-key action, anxiety-inducing stakes. It's not whacky or off-the-walls. It's just people being people and living their own lives, and to a certain level, I appreciated that. This book is relaxing. It's perfect for lounging at the beach, dipping your toes in the sand, and just reading.


Cons
Drawn-Out Intros: Right off the bat, this book is slow, slow, slow. It starts from the character introductions. I get why this happens. Yang is mirroring reality-tv intros, the filtering in of the personalities, the close-ups and the interview-worthy moments. But what makes those opening scenes in a reality show interesting isn't the fact that they happen but that they're edited to the extreme. These characters are introduced in a way that feels like raw footage: it takes too much time, and I definitely lost interest by the end. And when you're losing interest in the characters right from the beginning, well, that's never a good sign.

Lost the Plot: After a set of long, drawn-out introductions, my only question was, really, what's the plot here? What are we setting up to happen? And that was never really answered for me. There isn't really an actual plot until the very end, and that doesn't go much of anywhere. The characters are bland, and without great characters, the plotlessness of this book just left me feeling lost. What was I meant to be rooting for? What was I meant to want? Everything felt so aimless, and therefore, everything felt so tensionless.

So Much Talking: This comes in conjunction with the first two critiques. So many of the scenes in this book are just dialogue, no action. It's not even witty banter. (It's not even banter at all.) All of the characters sound pretty much the same, down to our diametrically opposed central duo. These characters are so very different that their perspectives should sound different, too, both internally and externally. But everybody conforms to a very distinct sort of speech pattern that they all blend together. It felt weird. It felt bland. It was unfortunate.


Rating
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5/10

Fans of Abigail Hing Wen's Loveboat, Taipei will love this new Asian-American cast. Those who enjoyed Sophie Gonzales's Never Ever Getting Back Together will like dipping their toes into the world of "reality" once again.

okay hear me out. i really wanted to like this book. truly, i did. but alas, it did not work for me. i'm so sorry! but i'm so thankful to netgalley for allowing me to read it early!!!

3.5 rounded down to 3

This book was enjoyable, and I had a fun time reading it! Besides the overall plot of them being on a reality show, it was a pretty average ya novel, which is why I gave it that rating.

THINGS I LIKED:
- the main characters! They were all so different and I could easily tell the difference between Sabine and Yoona’s povs.
- the setting. I’ve never read a book that takes place on this type of reality show, and it was interesting to read about how it didn’t meet Sabine’s expectations

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE (as much)
- the side characters. They weren’t developed as much as Sabine and Yoona. The two people who instantly got together (i don’t remember their names) were practically useless to the plot
- the plot twist wasn’t much of a twist. Sabine couldn’t see it coming, but I definitely could

It's a teenagers-stuck-in-a-house-together reality TV show with a twist: the cast is all Asian American. And another twist: this has always been a low-key show that is just about normal teens' lives, with none of the drama and puppet strings of other reality shows.

But yet another twist is in store: this year, the show has been bought out...and the new producers want DRAMA.

Parts of this I really love—almost the entire cast is Asian, which is fantastic and still unusual in YA. I love that the ultimate emphasis is on friendship rather than romance (I spend a lot of time bemoaning the YA focus on romance—I want so many more friendship stories). It's light and fluffy and summery. It also seems to be operating in an interesting gap of "almost"—could be one thing, could be another thing. (More on that in a moment.)

Another part of me wants to take Sabine by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. She's of a generation that has grown up with reality TV—it should be basically her first language. And yet she's still surprised to find that the producers will prioritize ratings over feelings, and will slice and dice footage however they see fit, and will resort to whatever underhanded ruin-your-life threats they have on hand. I think this part of things will work for a lot of readers, but it left me cringing (mostly on Sabine's behalf) for much of the book, and secondhand embarrassment isn't really something I enjoy, even about a fictional character.

I'd have liked to get to know the other characters a bit better—as it is, we have Sabine and Yoona, who spend the book locked in a will-they-won't-they place between friendship and enmity, and we learn a fair bit about them. Then there's Danny (bro), Grant (exists), Chris (would-be actor, but I guess he's locked in a closet, making out with Mari, for most of the book), and Mari (artsy, but presumably locked in a closet to make out with Chris, except when she escapes to play peacemaker and then goes back to the closet). Sabine acknowledges at the end that she didn't actually get to know most of the other players well, but...well, I just wish we'd gotten a bit more of them. More nuance, more flaws, some intersectionality.

On the "almost" gap: I read another review noting that this felt middle grade, and in retrospect I can see that too—it would take some changes (unsupervised 13-year-olds are a different challenge than unsupervised 17-year-olds, or however old they are here), but as it is it's a very clean and uncomplicated story: no drinking, no kissing, no swearing, no innuendo, etc. etc. But there's also an almost-LGBTQ story: it would take even fewer changes to turn this from a platonic friendship story to a f/f romance, which at times I genuinely thought was the direction the book was going in. (Or it could have been both MG and queer!) As it happens, that's not the case, but it does make me quite curious about the choices made during writing and revising and editing.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.