I wanted to like this book so bad, and it had so much potential...but...The little blurbs on the back of the book piqued my interest because if there is one thing I love about YA fiction it's the drama. So obviously I expected juicy drama but what I got was an old soap opera. The secret wasn't even that good! THE HELL? So what...he kissed someone else! If she would've just confronted him sooner or told her mom or done something instead of whining about unimportant things then she would have saved herself a ton of trouble.Because I'm black the main characters race spoke to me. I expected to see a real battle and a real struggle but all I saw, or read, was an immature girl who felt like blaming everyone else for her problems. She is mean to her mom like ALL THE TIME up until the end of the book and she's constantly judging others but doesn't want herself judged. And what's up with her always reminding people that she's mixed, that she's black, and then she's not black, and then she's white but she's not white enough and blah blah blah. Whatever ploy she tries to hold up in the story does not work because she is not a convincing black character. Jaz is like the main character Melanctha from Gertrude's book by the same name. It just doesn't work, she can't convince me that she's white.If I Tell had it's moments but it lacked life, memorable characters, a human like main character and a good plot.:sigh:(less) 3/10The biggest problem I had with this book is that I didn't like the main character all that much. To me she just seemed really annoying and that bugged me a lot.The way she reacted to a lot of things just got on my nerves, especially when it was something pretty small and she would overreact. I also didn't like how she treated her mom. To me it didn't make sense that she would act so horribly towards her mother, the one person she was supposedly trying to protect from this big secret. By trying to save her mom from the hurt of finding out about what Simon did, she ends up hurting her. I didn't like that at all.The other thing that I didn't really like was that a lot of the points in this book seemed really repetitive. I felt like the same stuff was being mentioned over and over again, and it got on my nerves, because it wasn't a hugely long book, so having so much time spent going over the same things, was annoying.There were things I did like about the book. I liked that it tackled issues like racism. I liked that the supporting characters all had lives outside of their friendship/relationship with the main character. In fact, it would have been good to explore those lives a little more.Overall, I wasn't a huge fan of this book. There were parts of it that I did enjoy, but overall there were a lot of things that I didn't like.
What do You think about If I Tell (2011)?
I read this book quite a while ago, but I remember not being able to put it down! I loved it.
—tuscanywolf3
3.5 stars! I like how her books are realistic!!
—dontever
