I was not to get interested in this book and I did not finish it. The characters and the plot did were not able to catch or keep my attention

Oh why would you compare this to The Breakfast Club with a side of Veronica Mars. This was not as advertised and I could not finish it to the end.

i really enjoyed reading this book, the characters were great and I really enjoyed the timelessness of the plot. Overall i really enjoyed reading this book.

I have mixed feelings about this book. The majority of what I read, I was able to enjoy, but I do believe it had the potential to be much better.

Admittedly, the male protagonist is no Bender. Just as the female is no Claire. I understand the direction and feel the author wanted this book to have but I think maybe they tried a little too hard. I thought it started out strong and I personally believe the first half of the book is much better than the second. We have the typical high school character stereotypes with the popular kids, jocks, cheerleaders and outcasts.

I didn't mind the back and forth between the 2 protags at first, but around half way through, it becomes a bit tiring. I found some of the private conversations between them, lengthy to the point it became uncomfortable and stagnant, with what became a pointless back and forth with no traction.

There was a fair amount of effort put into character development but I personally struggled to connect with most of them at times. That feeling really only worsened the further the book progressed, as there is a lot happening and there are so many new developments, some of which I found too unrealistic.

Samantha seemingly goes through a major revolution in the space of one night and one phone call.

I think this is one of the challenges when writing a book in which, you're trying to convey to the reader a believable sequence of events, that occur over such a short period of time.

I managed to keep it together, all the way 'til around chapter 36. Their relationship, the conversation that transpired on the bench, what happened with Samantha and the actions she took at the club.. it was all just a bit much and too unbelievable for me personally. So, I probably would have given a more favourable review, if it wasn't for those last chapters.

The last thing I have to mention is the amount of mistakes and typos in this book. I believe this is the final copy (not an arc) and it's just a pet peeve of mine when there are an abundance of mistakes present. It makes it feel like the author didn't care enough, so why should the reader.

Unfortunately expectations peaked this book much higher than the content could deliver. I was bored and found the storyline tedious with too many assumptions and stereotypes. I struggled to finish this one.

It was okay. Not my favorite but perhaps it just wasn’t my genre. The writing style was what got me, but it wasn’t badly written. I can just be a bit picky I suppose!

Thanks to netgalley for the opportunity to review this book.

I liked it enough. The description made me feel like I would be reading through a John Hughes movie, and I loved that idea. The book was good, not great, but good. It had all the team drama pieces: preppy girl, bad boy, school war. Trite idea, but she pulled it off mainly.

I was just a little girl in the 80’s, so the parts I most remember are bright clothes, big hair, fun music and great movies. I knew that wasn’t all there was to it, but let’s face it, most stories/movies/tv set in the 80’s just focuses on the light and silly bits. You might read the description of this book and have it remind you of The Breakfast Club. That’s absolutely fair. But this is a darker, heavier story. This book was not fluffy, and as much fun as fluffy can be, I felt like I respected this story a lot more for being serious.

Everyone is more than the tag assigned to them.
Samantha is the pretty popular girl.
Jason is the gorgeous Stoner boy.
Pris is the punk rock chick.

Samantha and Jason have gone to the same school for years but they don’t know each other at all.
One day Jason makes an inappropriate joke about Samantha. He doesn’t realize that Samantha is very innocent and inexperienced, she doesn’t even understand his joke.
She tells him off in front of everyone, she says basically that someone like him has no right to talk to her like that.

Later, Samantha’s friends explain the joke to her. She’s still bothered by it but she’s a really good person and she actually feels guilt for how she responded to Jason. She knows it’s ok that she defended herself against his joke but she didn’t mean to imply that she thought she was better than him.

Jason feels terrible when he realizes his joke bothered Samantha so much. He doesn’t meant to be a jerk but he keeps putting his foot in his mouth.
When Samantha actually apologized to him, he would have been smart to apologize for his own actions but he just can’t bring himself to do it.

This kind of sets the tone for their future interactions.

Jason has a terrible home life. His mom is on drugs. His father is gone. His sister has left and she was also on drugs. Unfortunately they managed to pull him into a world he wants no part of. He doesn’t want to do or sell cocaine and he’s fighting like crazy to keep the drug dealers out of his life.
It’s not easy that his slimy best friend is also in the world. And unfortunately Jason feels like his buddy is the only one he’s got in the world.

When Pris comes back into the picture, she shakes things up a bit. She becomes a real friend to Jason. She also reconnected with Samantha after she moved back home.

The end of the book got a little wild but all in all I thought it was a really good book.

It is a good reminder that you can’t and shouldn’t stick one label on a person and think that’s everything they are.

I got to read an early ebook edition from NetGalley. Thanks!

DNF @ 52%

I could not stand this book. It had a lot of potential; there could have been a much deeper exploration of classism in high school but instead, it hyperfocused on the incredibly boring relationship between these two boring teenagers who were obsessed with the politics of cliques. The comparison to The Breakfast Club and The Outsiders is laughable - at least those two books explore deeper themes and have likable characters.

Jamison completely sabotages the reader from liking the two characters by making the male MC a racist. He uses the slur for Chinese individuals at least twice from what I read, with the piss-poor excuse that he hates everyone equally so it's fine if he's ignorant. The book doesn't call him out for it either. The female main character is also woefully ignorant about race - she doesn' think black people blush for some reason? Like really?

The romance is so forced between the two of them and I could not connect at all. The dynamic of a poor boy and a rich popular girl falling in love is such a draw for me but it was so poorly done that I hated both of them and any semblance of chemistry they might have had by the time I decided to stop reading.

The dialogue! Oh the dialogue. It was almost incoherent at times. People do not talk like this. I was lost most of the time because these characters don't speak like human beings but like riddles that are also intoxicated. It made me furious. And the prose could easily have been more engaging with some editing but I'm not sure this book was edited professionally at all.

I don't normally give such scathing DNFs but I haven't had a book make me this exhausted and grumpy in my life. I hope to never have to think about this book again for as long as I live.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley..

This was my first book by this author. It did sound like it would be a sweet easy to follow storyline. Unfortunately, it was a tad on the boring side for me.

In Between Days was a refreshing take on the “popular kid / loser kid” love trope. I use the term refreshing lightly however, as the book deals with some very serious, very dark themes (drugs guns and prostitutes just to name a few). I also loved the setting - classic 1980s high school, big hair and big sleeves and hanging out at the mall. Unlike a lot of teen books, name dropping pop culture references didn’t feel heavy handed, it lended itself perfectly to creating the rich environment of the book. It’s hard to analyze the plot too much without giving away some key points, but each of the four main characters was fleshed out so well they felt like friends (aside from the one, of course, who feels like a real enemy.)

This was a miss for me. I found myself sludging through it. The writing was unappealing and the incessant use of slang really turned me off. The story wasn't strong enough to make this worth it for me.

An enjoyable, relatable read. Consistencies with the late 80's pop culture are near spot on (although I did recognize one colloquialism early in the book that was used but had not been popularized yet (I know, right). I identified with much of the subplots as it brought back many memories of my youth. Jason's broodiness was well depicted and contrasted with Samantha's naive optimism, the resulting sexual tension was palpable.

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of IN BETWEEN DAYS by Anne Jamison in exchange for my honest review.***

When the blurb compares a book to The Breakfast Club, The Outsiders and Veronica Mars, it had better deliver. IN BETWEEN DAYS did not. DNF

I received In Between Days by Anne Jamison, free, from Net Gallery in exchange for an honest review.
This is a coming of age story involving teenagers which involve dark secrets and romance.
It takes place in the Suburbs of Chicago in 1985
It kind of reminded me of The Breakfast Club.
This book has everything. The proverbial bad boy. Lesbians, and class warfare
There is also some Homophobia and Misogyny thrown in.
This book brings you back to all the wild things that happened in High School
An enjoyable read

My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Very well written with lots of gritty, gun- and knife- toting teens (and older bad guys) to drive the action. (Hmmmm, I'm thinking to myself at the end: Samantha is all of 15 and is already such a badass and is "connected" to boot? So "Buffy the Vampire Killer" if you know what I mean? Whaaaaaat!?!?!

While I love a strong "saves herself and every one else" female character, this story was just too far out there for me. It has great movie potential, though: great visuals, almost non-stop drama and action, and lots and lots of witty, sharp-edged dialogue.

Alas, the blurb on NetGalley didn't prepare me for this much graphic violence. Others may like this rough and ready style of action story, with larger than life characters who, thankfully, get to live another day, but I suspect I wandered into the wrong room here - considering all the other 5 and 4 star reviews out there
So, maybe don't pay any attention to me and give it a shot?

Not for me. Gave up. Don't understand the strong reviews and ratings. Thought it was a waste of my time. Saw nothing of value. And there are so many other books in my to read stack that promise so much more.