Review - Don't Even Think About It - Sarah Mlynowski

Don't Even Think About ItTitle: Don't Even Think About It
Series: Don't Even Think About It
Author: Sarah Mlynowski
Genre: Young-Adult, Paranormal, Contemporary
Publication: March 11th 2014, Orchard Books
Pages: 304 Pages, Paperback
Source: Thank you to Pan Macmillan for sending me this book in exchange for an honest review!
This is the story of how we became freaks. It's how a group of I's became a we.
When Class 10B got their flu shots, they expected some side effects. Maybe a sore arm. Maybe a headache. They definitely didn't expect to get telepathy. But suddenly they could hear what everyone was thinking. Their friends. Their teachers. Their parents. Now they all know that Tess has a crush on her best friend, Teddy. That Mackenzie cheated on Cooper. That Nurse Carmichael used to be a stripper. Some of them will thrive. Some of them will break. None of them will ever be the same. 
A smart and funny story about friendship, first love and surviving high school from the bestselling author of Ten Things We Shouldn't Have Done.

When I received this book in the mail, I was beyond ecstatic. It sounded great, it got quite a good rating on Goodreads and the cover was gorgeous. When I posted about it on Instagram, I got a lot of comments from people saying how much they enjoyed this book. My expectations were high and perhaps that's what made me feel so disappointed once I read this book. I didn't love it, I didn't hate it but there were quite a few things missing from this novel, which was a pity as it had potential to be great.

Don't Even Think About It is about twenty-two teenagers from Bloomberg High School who received flu vaccination jabs and then developed side-effects, but not those of the usual nature. Twenty-four hours later - they can suddenly read minds. They now know who has cheated on who, who cheated on a test, what that girl really thinks of that guy, as well as what that guy wants for dinner. They now know everyone's deepest secrets and they're not quite sure what to do about that.

It's not like I liked this book, I didn't strongly dislike it either, and my overall reaction was meh.


This novel just didn't seem to necessarily have a point.

I'll start with the positives. Despite that there was nothing that actually happened in this book, it did have a quality that made me turn the pages, although I'm not quite sure why. It was one of those books that doesn't have anything happening and the characters aren't that great either, but you still can't quite find yourself to stop. It wasn't necessarily the writing, as I found the writing quite hard to wrap my head around as it was told from everyone's perspective. I think I was just incredibly optimistic and hopeful that this book that I had set the bar so high for would be as good as everyone said it would and that's perhaps that's what made me keep reading. That, as well as what the story is actually about. I love the idea of superpowers and perhaps that's what made the book so fascinating after all, but because I didn't care any of the characters and all the thoughts heard were from characters that were briefly mentioned, it didn't have any sort of effect on me. I did enjoy the writing at times, it's by no means badly written, it was just that it severely lacked in character and plot. I don't think the author wrote this book with it in mind that it should have an effect on people and I think it was written so that it would purely for fun, as many people said I mustn't "take it seriously". And I didn't. It's just it didn't make me feel anything, it rarely made me laugh even though it was promised to be funny, I felt nothing for this book and, really, what is the point of reading a book if you feel nothing at all for it?

Reading this book did, however, show how it would be to have telepathic powers and how, although it would be interesting to find out what people thought of you, it would also be horrible as well, as not everyone thinks lovely thoughts about other people, which would lower a person's self-confidence and make them feel horrible about themselves. It also showed me how horrible it was finding out that everyone around you were actually liar and that no one ever spoke the full truth and that all of us were hiding secrets, secrets that are best kept that - a secret. It painted the whole telepathic power in a new, more sinister light, and that was quite interesting.

It was actually really hard for me to write a synopsis for this book, because the truth is, nothing much really happened. The only "big" event in this book was when they discovered they had telepathy. Nothing else. We found out secrets about random characters whose names were fleetingly mentioned and who we had no connection to. I didn't care if I found out about that person doing something as they were never going to be mentioned again and they meant nothing to me. All this book seemed to be about was what someone wanted for dinner, or how cute Tess thought Teddy was, or how horrible people thought Mackenzie was. It was basically the same thing, the same thoughts over and over. There was no revelations, there was no character development, there was no plot development. This story literally went no where and it honestly was a waste of my time to read this because like I said, nothing happened.

The characters were completely one-dimensional. One of my pet peeves is that I hate it when characters aren't described first thing in a book, as I like to clearly imagine how a character looks. We weren't really told anything about the characters, we didn't get to know them. Sure, we found out their deepest, darkest secrets as well as their families' secrets, but it didn't really matter as I didn't care any of them. We were just told the surface things. For an instance, Pi's real name is Polly, after her grandfather Paul and she called herself Pi because she can recite the first 39 numbers of pi.. Oliva is a hypochondriac and she has a mom who has OCD. Mackenzie has a fear of needles, has always been called "pretty" and she has dirty blonde hair and cheated on her boyfriend. That's what we know about the characters and that's practically all we know about them throughout the novel, two of three facts which is supposed to make us acquainted with them. Which I didn't. We know the basic facts about them and that's that. There were twenty-two "Espies," as they call themselves, and I had to try and keep track of all of them but I couldn't because I could never remember who was who. It would've helped if their physical appearance was described, as then I would've had a set image of them and perhaps wouldn't have gotten so mixed up with which character was which.

I also found the whole point of view thing kind of confusing, as it's stated that it's told from all their point of views. Which I thought was a bit silly, they should've just made it third person, because it sounded like only one of them was speaking of the events. They would also say that "We didn't think she should've done that." etc, which is absurd as I'm pretty sure twenty-two fifteen year olds aren't all going to have the exact same opinion.

Overall, I was really disappointed with this book. The pretty cover and interesting synopsis made me heighten my expectations which made the disappointment quite substantial. It wasn't very funny, it didn't teach much about friendships and first love as it said it would, and it was basically just filled with random people's thoughts who I didn't know or care about. I wasn't fond of the point of views it was written from as none of the characters were particularly likeable, but there was something about the book that made me want to keep reading. The chapters were quite short and some of them ended with short sentences that made me want to see if anything happened next. If there were more character and plot development I would've liked this book much more, as the author clearly has potential. Despite its flaws, I will be reading the next book in the series, as I would like to see what develops from the story.

I give it: 2/5 CUPCAKES!