I ended up DNFing this book after a few chapters because I was struggling to get into it. I just wasn't connecting to the story or characters and eventually lost interest. The premise of the book was appealing at first but sadly, it just wasn't the book for me and didn't grab my attention from in the first couple of chapters.

I really enjoyed this book! Despite covering some tough topics, pretty much head on, it was largely told in a lighthearted tone which helped the flow of the novel. I almost instantly fell in love with Izzy and the way characters moved around her and the way they featured in her life just felt really real.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley. 

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity. 
Natalie.

Fantastic read and addition for our YA sections across our libraries, very current and really will appeal to our readers. Second half of the novel seemed to really pick up the pace.

DNF. Looking back at reviews and discussing this book with other reviewers, I've realised that this one just wasn't for me. There was nothing inherently wrong with it, but I just didn't feel amazed or in awe of anything that happened, and there was no real clear message, which is something which I think this book was striving for. I love the feminist themes throughout, but I don't think I got what I wanted out of this one. Thanks to Egmont Publishing for the chance to read and review.

This was a great book that explored the timely topics of feminist and slut shaming perfectly. Really great story to follow the Me Too and Times Up movements.

4.5

The only reason for .5 being knocked off is the way the main character speaks to the reader directly, "my publisher", "my manuscript". 

Apart from that niggle this book is brilliant, a book for older teens about trust, consent and how one photo can be spread around the world. It's goes to a very dark place. I enjoyed the characters. I hope the supporting characters get a bit more fleshed out in book 2. I enjoyed the female friendship, although they talked about boys a LOT.

I was surprised to learn that the author is from the UK as the book is set in America, but reading a question on Goodreads, she set it in America because revenge porn is illegal in the UK.

There's some good essays at the end of the book and quotes throughout the book:

“Look at Vaughan. He's done everything I've done. He drank beer, had sex, sent a nude picture. And he just got an offer from Stanford. Why is his life worth more than mine, just because he's rich and male?” 

Definitely a book similar to What's a Girl Gotta Do? and Moxie

I unfortunately haven’t gotten around to reading this one yet. It’s been out to the back burner unfortunately.

I was initially interested in reading this book, however my tastes have shifted and I do not think I will be able to get to it now. Many thanks to the publisher for sending me a digital copy!

Superb contemporary YA which will be sure to appeal to fans of Moxie, The Hate U Give or Holly Bourne's Spinster Club series.

Izzy O’Neill is in the centre of a scandal, she is used to people spreading gossip about her and she tries to laugh it off with making jokes. But when she is photographed sleeping with a politicians son, it soon becomes a national scandal.
This book touches on so many topics, that young people need to here about, especially these days.

LOVED. Laura Steven tackles such taboo subjects with a mixture of genuinity and SASS. I sliced the main character and how she refused to be slut-shamed. The story reveals certain gender issues our society has when deciding what is inappropriate behaviour. Great debut and will definitely be keeping an eye out for future titles.

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

This is a refreshing look at slut-shaming in a book that feels completely grounded in the 21st century. It is an honest and frank look at the culture of revenge porn, body shaming and the sexual double-standard between men and women. With a witty and sharp protagonist and written in blog posts, 'The Exact Opposite of Okay' is a quick contemporary read which is both hilarious at points and a rallying cry.

Izzy O'Neill started off irritating but grew into such a well-rounded person that I loved reading about. The problems she encounters are nothing that I've ever experienced personally but it reminded me of things that happened to other girls in secondary school and highlighted how these issues can affect women from a very young age. I loved Ajita as a side character and would actually read a book from her perspective. 

This is a much-needed read in today's climate and I would highly recommend it to fans of John Green and David Levithan.

This is such an amazing book that I've had trouble putting into words how good it was. It brought me back to my teenage years and made me think of all the problems I've had and how I wish I was as strong as Izzy was.
Izzy is definitely one of my new favourite YA characters.
Definitely one to read, and can't wait for the next book.

This book has been such a long time coming!! Izzy was such a relatable, confident character who does what every other person has done - gets drunk and sends a nude - but there is a huge backlash, and this book tackles the sexualisation and vilification of young girls, while guys who send pics suffer little or no consequence.  Laura Steven also portrayed the difficulties of simply being a confident teenage girl who enjoys sex.  It proves too much for Izzy eventually and her confident facade crumbles but her friends and family help her through it, whilst all the while society is vilifying her for participating in healthy, consensual sex.

Im going to begin by saying wow, what a cover. Its just so beautiful and full of colour. This book definatley gave an insight into what school especially secondary or high school  is like when it comes to friendships and bullying. The main character Izzy is well developed and strong. She gives off strong feminist views and points which makes this book a good book for a feminist person to read as I feel that they can relate well to her as a character and an individual. As I read the book I found that this book covers a wide range of issues that are in our society today such as slut shaming, the concept of being friend zoned, Revenge porn, sexuality, religious views and money issues. I feel that this book is a must read for readers who love diversity. This book was also very emotional in how we saw how much izzy was affected by the  outcomes that she couldn’t even go to her teachers for help against it.

I gave this book 4 stars as I loved how diverse it was, however there was something missing which I cant put my finger on

This book is both easy and difficult reading: easy because it's well-written and the diary format it adopts makes it accessible, and difficult because the subject matter made me absolutely incensed.

This is an issues book, as you've probably guessed from the blurb, but it's essentially an exploration of shame. It has a good message, and it delivers that message confidently, so you have to forgive the incongruities of the story, but nonetheless I did find it difficult to imagine an eighteen-year-old being so resolute in the face of such a terrible situation. She reacted to her slut-shaming in the way that I think we all hope we would react, rather than in the way that we would actually react. I was furious just reading it (which is a mark of the writing quality), so I can imagine that undergoing such an experience would be absolutely devastating. But still, we suspend disbelief for the purposes of the message.

The reader must also suspend disbelief to accept the structure of the novel, apparently created from Izzy's blog posts, but containing page after page of verbatim dialogue. Anyone who has ever tried to write a diary knows that's not how it works, but again, it functions perfectly as a frame for the message. What I didn't understand is why she would keep a blog and then password-protect it so no one could read it. That seemed a little pointless to me - why bother putting it online? - but then I'm probably out of touch.

It was DEFINITELY strange that she didn't have a passcode on her phone (and another character pointing out that this is strange does not, in my eyes, absolve the author from taking such an illogical narrative shortcut), and I was bewildered by the fact that the person who created the slut-shaming website was apparently able to hack into iCloud. That struck me as a little unlikely, as did the accidental social media sharing that apparently implicated the culprit. A more sensible plot solution would have been for Izzy to contact the domain registrar to find out who the registrant of the domain was. It's boring, but it would have made more sense.

Further incongruities appeared in the characterisation. Izzy was brilliantly consistent, but some of the others felt a little plastic. Danny in particular seemed to undergo a complete personality transplant in the course of the book.

But still (and I know I'm picking up on a lot of negative), I found the book really hard to put down. The narrative has a very strong flow to it, the dialogue is fun, and I was desperate to get to the end so I could find out who was behind the slut-shaming, and whether Izzy had a happy ending.

The good:

The voice of the novel is very engaging, and it grabbed me from the very first page. It is the voice that transforms the book from painful reading into a humorous journey with an endearing protagonist.

The bad:

I just didn't love it, probably because of the incongruities mentioned above.

The ugly:

There were a few formatting errors in my advance review copy, but this was an ARC, so those errors should be corrected before publication (I hope!).

The quote:

"The garden bench picture was on the evening news last night. The evening news! Seriously, I am just some random teenage girl with a penchant for nachos and peanut buttercups and sexual intercourse. Why would the host of a primetime TV show invite some political analyst into the studio to discuss Ted Vaughan's campaign, and his flawed parenting, and the implications of his son's involvement in this stupid, small-town scandal?"

The Gin Book Club received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

This book basically broke the book community when it was announced and released, and for good reason! It was funny, cringe-worthy, adorable, clever and so damn good! It dealt with, and beautifully, by the way, themes like slut-shaming, teenage sexuality, male entitlement, the friend-zone (ha, social construct!) and friendship. Izzy is my new heroine, she had such a great voice, so charming and self-deprecating, yet completely lovable. The things she had to deal with were quite rage-inducing - the whole situation was such bullshit and I hope it teaches plenty of young women, and men, how to act and not act when it comes to discussing sex, sexuality and relationships.

So many things going on in this book...I don't usually class myself as a feminist, so I am not often drawn to those types of books, however I very much enjoyed this book.
Very funny and shocking at times, about a young girl dealing with the effects of Internet gossips.
Great take on  a witty, smart and very relevant story of sexuality and slut shaming.

Fans of Holly Bourne will love Laura Steven!

Join the Bitches Bite Back club you'll want to after this story. Izzy O'Neill is unafraid of her reputation, she's a girl who likes to have fun, she's a girl who like to write blog posts and also playscripts, she's a girl unashamed of who she is and what people think of her. So one night at a party, two boys like her, kiss her and have sex with her. She's happy, it's consensual, there's nothing bad about it. is publicly shamed, vandalised and striped naked when a photo is shared online of her at a night at a party. She writes about it on her blog,

Izzy is hilariously honest, brutally and unashamedly funny and a total ace of a character. She is like all my favourite parts of characters out together. She is just so realistic, and she is proud to be so. That comes across loud and clear and you can’t not love her. Although in a way it’s kind of glamour to the person she learns to be painfully so. After her parents died, she uses comedy as a copying mechanism, she got that from her grandma, Betty. She is also undeterred about being an idiot sometimes too, she doesn’t care what people think, but she also learns too. Also she wants to care about is the people she loves around her, those are her...

Izzy has the best of relationships with her family and more importantly to some of her dearest friends. Ajita is absolutely the best person for Izzy, she is the funniest and totally unashamed to be Izzy best friend. She's their for the long haul, through the rough and that why I love her. Betty, her grandma, is best grandma in world. Why you might say, because she will do anything Izzy, she work her feet off trying to provide for her, and she doesn't get any rest-bite. She is truly extraordinary and a grandma and gran-daughter relationship to be proud of. But it's also the likes of her Drama teacher that really takes a shine to Izzy, with her script-writing as well as her favourite Reese snacks. Mrs C is one of the first teachers to really see the potential Izzy and her career. She has always felt that her script-writing was that, just writing for her own amusements, what she realises is that she has a talent, for putting her own character into something unique. I'd also say that Mrs C is the best fictional teacher I've read in a long time.

The Exact Opposite of Okay really focuses on how we as girls are treated or even viewed. It has a very feminist, realistic view that is touched by some many people now. What we wear, how we act, what we do is frowned upon and Izzy's story is the embodiment of this. She put the comedy to it as a way of shielding what she is really feeling. We shouldn't have to do that, should we? We shouldn't have to be the same, we are our own people. Our sexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, and that the awful thing, we are made to feel like that constantly especially if it's in the spotlight.  I commend Laura for really creating something that ultimately shouldn't go unnoticed, it's the people like Mrs C and Betty and Ajita that are also the bomb to Izzy when they were indifferent to her depsite her own assumptions to what they might be thinking. We are in control and nobody else should have a say unless it's consensual.

Laura is a power symbol among YA writers. She's bold, strong, realistic, she's doesn't shy away from the hardcore something either scary or cringe aspects of teenage life. This book is placed with the great Teen drama and queen of feminism, Louise Rennison and Holly Bourne. Laura Steven is YA author to look out for and I can’t wait for her return in 2019 with a sequel to this brilliant book.
“What do I want to be now? Bold. Fierce. Honest. A fighter. A revolutionary. A bitch. Because the way the world treats teenage girls – as sluts, as objects, as bitches – is not okay. It’s the exact opposite of okay.”

Rating - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Thank you to Electric Monkey for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review.