The Exact Opposite of Okay (Izzy O'Neill #1)
by Laura StevenPublisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: June 11th 2019
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Feminism
Synopsis:
Bitingly funny and shockingly relevant, The Exact Opposite of Okay is a bold, brave, and necessary read for fans of Louise O'Neill and Jennifer Mathieu.
Eighteen-year-old Izzy O’Neill knows exactly who she is—a loyal friend, an aspiring comedian, and a person who believes that milk shakes and Reese’s peanut butter cups are major food groups. But after she’s caught in a compromising position with the son of a politician, it seems like everyone around her is eager to give her a new label: slut.
Izzy is certain that the whole thing will blow over and she can get back to worrying about how she doesn’t reciprocate her best friend Danny’s feelings for her and wondering how she is ever going to find a way out of their small town. Only it doesn’t.
And while she’s used to laughing her way out of any situation, as she finds herself first the center of high school gossip and then in the middle of a national scandal, it's hard even for her to find humor in the situation.
Izzy may be determined not to let anyone else define who she is, but that proves easier said than done when it seems like everyone has something to say about her.
Hello
Look, you probably bought this book because you heard about how I’m an impoverished orphan at the heart of a national slut-shaming scandal, and you thought, Oh, great, this is just the kind of heart-wrenching tale I need to feel better about my own life, but seriously, you have to relax. I am not some pitiful Oliver-Twist-meets-Kim-Kardashian type figure. If you’re seeking a nice cathartic cry, I’m not your girl. May I recommend binge-watching some sort of medical drama for the level of secondhand devastation you’re looking for.
Either that or you saw the nudes, which, y’know. Most people have. My lopsided boobs have received more press attention than your average international epidemic, which I bet the supervirus population is furious about. All that hard work attempting to destroy the human race gone unnoticed.
But here it is, the unvarnished account of everything that went down my senior year, taken straight from the journal entries on my blog. Which is a big win for me because putting this together for you was practically no work on my part. When in doubt, always do the least amount of work possible, in order to preserve energy for important things like laughing and sex.
Don’t look at me like that. This is a book about a sex scandal, did you really expect me to be a nun and/or the Virgin Mary?
Continue reading here.
Laura Steven is an author, journalist and screenwriter from the northernmost town in England. The Exact Opposite of Okay, her YA debut, was published by Egmont in March 2018. The sequel, A Girl Called Shameless, will follow in 2019.
As well as mentoring aspiring authors through schemes like Pitch Wars, Laura works for Mslexia, a non-profit organisation supporting women writers. She graduated with Distinction from her MA in Creative Writing in 2017, and her TV pilot Clickbait – a mockumentary about journalists at a viral news agency – was a finalist in British Comedy's 2016 Sitcom Mission.
