Hello! I’ve been horrible at writing reviews lately, but I need to turn Tell Me Everything, by Sarah Enni, back into the library and I haven’t reviewed it yet! I liked this story and the pages flew by. I think the description doesn’t really do it justice.
Ivy and Harold are best friends. Ivy is shy and retreats into her art and photography; Harold is a high-achieving academic who wants to be involved in almost every club in school.
Things change when Harold goes to summer camp. He comes back stressed about getting into a selective college; Ivy spent the summer taking pictures and following the new anonymous art app, VEIL. VEIL allows people in your local area to post art anonymously, which gives people more freedom to be themselves. Once school returns, Ivy starts figuring out who some of these VEIL posters are, and starts to give gifts to them anonymously.
The Issues
I didn’t expect Tell Me Everything to be a book that explored important issues. Nothing in the description indicates that. But then, someone posts an anti-homosexual rant on VEIL. The site goes from being a fun place for teens to express themselves to one that has gathered the attention of unhappy parents. The book explores the issues of anonymity, free speech, and how sometimes anonymity causes people to behave in ways they wouldn’t do if they had to have their name attache to it–and not always in a good way.
When Ivy starts figuring out who these people are and starts giving them gifts, I start to see how this might not end well. Because not everybody wants other people to find out their secrets. And even if you do figure out someone’s secret, sometimes it’s better that they don’t know you know. I don’t want to give the ending away, but Ivy ends up learning that her good intentions don’t always work out so well.
Plot Twist!
Tell Me Everything has an interesting plot twist at the end that I didn’t see coming. In a good way though. I thought the end was going to go one way, but it went in a different direction. It was a believable end though, so I wasn’t left disappointed or confused. I was very happy with the end.
Conclusion
I liked Tell Me Everything, and was glad I ended up reading it. It’s a book that I didn’t really hear much about when it came out (I heard about it through someone’s book recommendation) but I hope more people hear about it. The voice is great, the issues it discusses are relevant to what teens (and adults) are going through today, and it’s got a storyline that makes you want to keep reading. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you give it a chance.
I kind of love when things happen so that you manage to tackle bigger social issues in a book when it was unexpected. And it sounds like Izzy develops and learns about good intentions and consequences of actions. Yay for a great plot twist in the mix as well 🙂
Olivia Roach recently posted…Black Lives Matter [Let’s Have a Chit-Chat]
The blurb for this book is so awfully generic, I can’t even with it — especially as your review highlights just how much the book is actually about. Sighs. Blurb writer fail in this case.