BOOK REVIEW: This Is All Your Fault

This Is All Your Fault by Aminah Mae Safi
Publication Date: October 13, 2020 (Tuesday!!)

Aminah Mae Safi is an author that we have followed for quite some time. We met her at Yallwest in 2018 (?) prior to the release of her debut, Not the Girls You’re Looking For and both adored her sophomore novel Tell Me How You Really Feel. Read my review here. We met her again at another panel and she is just the sweetest. I also adore her Instagram content.

This Is All Your Fault follows three very different teenage girls who have 24 hours to save the bookstore they work at from being shut down. It is heavily inspired by the film Empire Records, which I have never seen. This might be why I enjoyed this book so much since I did not know what to expect and their is some talk of it being a very close adaptation.

WHAT I LOVED:

• The messy and flawed characters
  • Aminah writes the best messy girls and I loved our characters a lot
  • I could see people not liking them, because they are A LOT at times, but they are teenagers who all have their own baggage plus they are very stressed during the course of the book, so I am willing to cut them some slack
    • I also just love messy characters
• Aminah’s writing is something special, this book feels a little slow because it takes place over such a short time period, but her writing is just so great. It’s descriptive & makes you think.
  • I wanted to write out a bunch of the quotes.
  • At times it’s a bit *too* descriptive for YA (in my opinion), but I really loved it
• I love books that take place over the course of a short time period, it might feel slow at some parts, but we get so much detail and character moments
  • Character driven books are my fave
• I also love the trope of throwing together a bunch of characters who do not like each other and forcing them to work towards a common goal which in turn makes them like each other or at least understand each other
• I love that Aminah is always writing biracial characters
• I liked that the prologue/epilogue had the same narrator who did not have a POV in the novel

WHAT I DID NOT LOVE:

• I thought the portrayal of Rinn being a Bookstagrammer or BookTuber or Book Internet creator was a little off. It is never clear if she is BookTuber or Bookstagrammer and as a result it just felt a little general and not realistic
• One of the characters is trying to figure out if they are depressed and there are a few jokes about depression that are a bit tasteless. But, I do think that some people are very dark about their own mental illnesses so this was within character, but that does not mean it is okay 
• The middle was a bit slow.

4.5/5 stars

TW: attempted assault & mentions of anxiety, suicide, and depression 

*Thank you to the Publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

xoxo, Tree