Smash It! (by Francina Simone)

 A cute contemporary YA about a Black girl who decides she needs to come out of her shell. She makes a "Fuck It" list (I guess they couldn't name the book that) and starts crossing things off. Needless to say, she makes mistakes, her relationships change, and she learns valuable lessons about herself.

I almost gave up at the first page - one of the plotlines is that the school is doing a Hamilton-esque rap musical version of Othello, and the "songs" they put in are embarrassingly hokey.  This ends up being very brief though so I moved on. I loved Liv finding female friends and learning about sex positivity and female empowerment.  I loved the body positivity as well; she has a larger frame that her mother disapproves of, and she learns to own it by the end of the novel.

Goodreads is really mad about a few throwaway jokes; for example, Liv's friend Janice makes a tasteless joke about a Palestinian-Israeli character. I think they're really not making enough of a distinction between the author and the character: the character is written to be inappropriate and it seems pretty clear the joke is not okay! Some people refused to read or gave up reading at that point, which, I mean, seems extreme? There's also pearl clutching about the stereotypical depiction of a Hawaiian character (one of my favorite characters, honestly) and making Othello African instead of a Moor? I mean Alexander Hamilton wasn't Puerto Rican, either.  Anyway, don't bother with the Goodreads crowd this time around. They are really conflating the author with the narrator and the characters and that road never leads anywhere good.

Moving on, my favorite thing about the book is that the tertiary characters are really well drawn. They have strong motivations within themselves, complex lives and character arcs. It's really noteworthy considering how rare this is in YA. I actually didn't think the love story was that strong - I found some of the love interest's actions rather unforgiveable, but the messiness seemed earned. I dunno, I guess just overall, I liked it!