Book Review: Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by Joya Goffney

Publisher’s description

Excuse Me While I Ugly Cry by debut author Joya Goffney is an own voices story of an overly enthusiastic list maker who is blackmailed into completing a to-do list of all her worst fears. It’s a heartfelt, tortured, contemporary YA high school romance. Fans of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and Kristina Forest’s I Wanna Be Where You Are will love the juicy secrets and leap-off-the-page sexual tension.

Quinn keeps lists of everything—from the days she’s ugly cried, to “Things That I Would Never Admit Out Loud” and all the boys she’d like to kiss. Her lists keep her sane. By writing her fears on paper, she never has to face them in real life. That is, until her journal goes missing . . .

Then an anonymous account posts one of her lists on Instagram for the whole school to see and blackmails her into facing seven of her greatest fears, or else her entire journal will go public. Quinn doesn’t know who to trust. Desperate, she teams up with Carter Bennett—the last known person to have her journal—in a race against time to track down the blackmailer.

Together, they journey through everything Quinn’s been too afraid to face, and along the way, Quinn finds the courage to be honest, to live in the moment, and to fall in love.

Amanda’s thoughts

I totally and completely loved this book. This is one of my top reads of the year so far!

Quinn’s notebook is full of everything—to-do lists, how-to lists, random thoughts, secrets, lies, and so many things she wouldn’t dream of sharing with anyone. When her classmate Carter grabs it instead of his own notebook and takes it home, everything starts to fall apart. The notebook goes missing, someone is blackmailing Quinn into doing things on her various lists, and they’re sharing her personal secrets with the whole school. Even though Quinn still sort of suspects that Carter is behind this whole thing, she teams up with him to do some things on the list and try to track down who has her notebook.

There is just so much to love about this book. The narrative voice is excellent. I was immediately drawn into Quinn’s world and found her so interesting. She’s a complicated character who has built so much of her identity on her lists and her lies. She has a lot going on in her life, beyond just a lost notebook. Her grandma is in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s and Quinn has really complex feelings about that. Her parents are constantly fighting and Quinn is worried what will happen to her small family once she goes to college. She’s one of only a few Black students at her private school and is surrounded by white kids who are racist, throw around the n-word, and repeatedly say that they see Quinn as basically white. And there’s actually a LOT going on in this book about race, including internalized racism, colorism, and dealing with stereotypes and being the exception to stereotypes. She’s lost her best friend of the past decade but is also making new friends.

Carter sees her losing the notebook as a chance to free herself from who Quinn thinks she has to be. And that becomes true because it turns out when your personal secrets get exposed for all to see, it’s hard to hide behind the lies. Quinn experiences real growth over the course of the story, grappling with loyalty, friendship, identity, connection, privacy, and trust. She learns to let herself feel her true feelings, be her true self, because when you’re forced to come clean, you have to stop lying to everyone, including yourself. A fantastic read. I can’t wait to see what else Goffney writes!

Review copy (ARC) courtesy of the publisher

ISBN-13: 9780063024793
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 05/04/2021
Age Range: 13 – 17 Years

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