[Blog Tour] The Year I Stopped Trying – Katie Heaney

Thank you TBR and Beyond Tours for this Tour.

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Booksmart meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower in this novel of overachieving, existential crises, growing up, and coming out, from the author of Girl Crushed and Never Have I Ever.

Mary is having an existential crisis. She’s a good student, she never gets in trouble, and she is searching for the meaning of life. She always thought she’d find it in a perfect score on the SATs. But by junior year, Mary isn’t so sure anymore.

The first time, it’s an accident. She forgets to do a history assignment. She even crosses history essay off in her pristine planner. And then: Nothing happens. She doesn’t burst into flames, the world doesn’t end, the teacher doesn’t even pull her aside after class.

So she asks herself: Why am I trying so hard? What if I stop?

With her signature wit and heaps of dark humor, Katie Heaney delivers a stunning YA novel the sprints full-force into the big questions our teen years beg–and adeptly unravels their web.

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Mary’s life take a massive turn when she forgets to give an assignment back. It’s the very first time, she’s very stressed about what the teacher will say to her … but nothing happens. For years she’s been extra careful and this one time she forgets her assignment and nothing happens to her. Why should she keep working that hard then?

I really enjoyed this novel, I’m not a big fan of novel where it’s mostly narrative and not much dialogue so at first it was a bit hard for me to get into it but once the story started I was caught up into it and really enjoyed the story, the plot, the characters and the twists.

Mary is a very interesting character, and I felt so close to her because I was basically Mary. I would never ever ever miss an assignment because I was too scared to get in trouble with school. And I’ve never missed one, unlike Mary which then it was super interesting to read and discover what happens to her in school, with her family, etc.

The character goes from just wanting to succeed in school to just live her teenage life. Assignments? Who cares? She wants a boyfriend, she wants to go out. No more school worries.

I’ve finished reading it not so long ago and it’s now that I’m writing the review that I realise how much I truly enjoyed the story. It’s crazy, right? Just thinking back about it makes me realise how much I felt interested in the story. I could relate for some things and that’s what’s nice sometimes to just being able to relate to the character or the story.

A book about teen life, friendship, school, work, love, finding yourself.

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Katie Heaney is a freelance writer and was most recently a senior editor at BuzzFeed. Her writing has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Vulture, The Hairpin, The Awl, and Pacific Standard, among other places. She is the author of a memoir, Never Have I Ever, and the novel, Dear Emma. She lives in Brooklyn.

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3/5 ⭐️

You need to read this book. You might not know, but you might connect with Mary.

Morgane. x