Don't Even Think About It (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
What I liked: I liked the premise. It was a great deal like being dumped into a deep pool of high school angst since the thoughts of the entire class are up for grabs. The students seem very immature at the beginning, but they have to grow when they learn things that they didn’t know. Then they have to deal with the overwhelming reality of hearing every thought 24/7.What I didn’t: One of the girls cheated on her boyfriend and dwells on it until the others all know bringing out the seedy side of high school.The bottom line: The premise is good, the dialogue is appropriate, and I can see lots of my students loving this book.Status in my library: It is on order.Rating Breakdown: Overall: 4/5 Creativity: 5/5 Characters: 5/5 Engrossing: 4/5 Writing: 4/5 Appeal to teens: 5/5 Appropriate length to tell the story: 5/5Content: Language: typical teen profanity Sexuality: one girl has a one night stand Violence: none Drugs/ Alcohol: referenceI received an ARC from NetGalley. Going into this one I figured a book about telepathic high school students could go either way. On the one hand, telepathy could be kind of cool and science fictiony, but on the other, you've got the potential for some highly immature thoughts. Don't Even Think About it unfortunately veered towards the latter. A group of high school students gets the flu shot at school and one of the unexpected side effects is telepathy. They can overhear each other, friends, family, cheat on tests. Of course, they decide to keep it a secret because who would believe them anyways? I love the premise of the book. It had the potential to be a sort of contemporary sci-fi mash up, at least in my mind, but something about it ended up rubbing me the wrong way. My first gripe is that it was written entirely with the we; it was as if they had a collective conscious and no individual thoughts. I suppose I understand why; they could overhear everything every other person in their direct vicinity was thinking, but it kind of got on my nerves. Just because you can hear everybody's thoughts, does that necessarily mean that individual thought is entirely gone? Doesn't one person still have to have the thought before it can be heard? It also seemed fairly immature. The telepathy was used only to get gossip and cheat on tests. There was no wondering why or how they got it. It might have been mentioned briefly, but then quickly glossed over. How could a government conspiracy or botched science experiment top who was cheating on who. I wouldn't have minded that so much had every chapter not been high school gossip, but it was. Maybe other reasons, perhaps the target audience actually, would understand these teenagers more than I do, but it certainly wasn't the book for me. I have to admit I ended up putting this book down for awhile before picking it back up. Reading every single thought, fully formed, as a sentence got to me after awhile and I just didn't think the premise was used to its full potential. I'm not saying that Don't Even Think About it doesn't have an audience, but I was definitely not among it.
What do You think about Don't Even Think About It (2014)?
I loved this book. I read it in less than a day. :)
—kathryn
