I received a free eARC copy from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
Real Rating: 4.5 stars! Check out my video review as well 🙂
Content Warnings: bullying (on page), anxiety (we see a few anxiety attacks on page), sexual assault (we witness a near miss), animal abuse (you don’t see the abuse, but you see the aftermath briefly)
I want this to be a spoiler-free review so I won’t talk more in-depth about those trigger warnings here, but if you feel like you need more details to know whether you should read this book, please feel free to reach out, I’d be more than happy to discuss it further.
The Anti-Virginity Pact comes out June 16th (2020). I don’t preorder books for my own reasons, but I will absolutely be buying this book the second it’s available.
The story centers on a girl named Meredith, a preacher’s daughter and a relative nobody at her high school. She’s dealing with some inner conflict because she doesn’t believe in god and doesn’t really want to, which makes dealing with her family more difficult. As a joke with a friend, Mare signs a pact to lose her virginity by the end of senior year. This would be just fine, except that the local mean girl finds out and spreads the details all around the school. Now Mare is infamous and becomes the focus of a lot of bullying and sexual harassment. Also threatened by the Pact, is her budding romance and her family dynamic. And as if all that weren’t enough to deal with, Mare is really worried about one of the dogs at the animal shelter she works for.
Don’t worry, this book isn’t all doom and gloom, though. Mare’s struggles only serve to highlight what a kind-hearted, passionate, brave person our main character is. There are a lot of funny and adorable parts to this book that offset the hard parts nicely. And we all know that can be a hard balance to strike. The difference between “logical conflict” and “everything that can go wrong, does go wrong” is a finer line than one would think.
I connected to this story really well, which is rare for me within the YA Contemporary genre. Usually I find it too difficult to get into the POV character’s mind and even harder to care about their life, but this book drew me in immediately. I identified with Mare’s inner life and cared quite strongly about her highs and lows. I believe this is because it was so well written.
One of my favorite parts about this book is how realistic the relationships are. From the budding romance to the sibling relationship, it all just seems so real. I felt like I had experienced something identical or very similar to every relationship Mare had and I deeply appreciate that in a book.
I also really loved the writing style. Katie Wismer has a really excellent, and potentially distinctive, writing voice. (Which happens to be one of my favorite things in a writer.) I look forward to seeing future books from her so I can compare.
My favorite part was the end, but don’t take that the wrong way. I don’t mean like “oh I’m so glad it ended” I just mean that the way she wrapped things up felt so good. Like not everything was perfect or tied up with a little bow, but it was a satisfying ending. The kind of ending where you put down the book and just breathe a deep sigh because you feel so good, you know?
Overall, my thoughts on this book are very positive. I do a favorite and least favorite for every book I read, and I couldn’t even think of a least favorite for this book, that’s how much I liked it.
I definitely recommend this if you like YA Fiction, but even if you aren’t a YA reader, I think you could enjoy this book, it was that good.
Darkestwings Reads