Title: Don't Even Think About It
Author: Sarah Mylnowski
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Publication Date: March 11, 2014
Hardcover: 336 pages
Rating: 2/5

Synopsis (via Goodreads):

 Contemporary teen fiction with romance, secrets, scandals, and ESP from the author of Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn't Have).

We weren't always like this. We used to be average New York City high school sophomores. Until our homeroom went for flu shots. We were prepared for some side effects. Maybe a headache. Maybe a sore arm. We definitely didn't expect to get telepathic powers. But suddenly we could hear what everyone was thinking. Our friends. Our parents. Our crushes. Now we all know that Tess is in love with her best friend, Teddy. That Mackenzie cheated on Cooper. That, um, Nurse Carmichael used to be a stripper.

Since we've kept our freakish skill a secret, we can sit next to the class brainiac and ace our tests. We can dump our boyfriends right before they dump us. We know what our friends really think of our jeans, our breath, our new bangs. We always know what's coming. Some of us will thrive. Some of us will crack. None of us will ever be the same.

So stop obsessing about your ex. We're always listening.

This book has so much promise. The plot was unique and the writing was good but the way the story played out was, for me, unsatisfying. There are a lot of things that Mylnowski could have done with this story that would make me give it a 5-star rating. She could have made this a story that was so extraordinary and  utterly unforgettable but she didn't. I had such high expectations for this book but in the end, I was sorely disappointed.

I felt like this book didn't stand out among all of the books in this genre. Though the writing was good and the pacing was okay, the story wasn't able to draw me in and keep me in. They found out that they have telepathy and they don't even put it to good use. Instead, they use it to find out some utterly mundane things like whether or not someone liked them back. Also, thoughts are, well, they're thoughts. Not every thought is verbalized. When I think of something, that thought doesn't appear as words. It was simply unbelievable that they would find these thoughts in  people's minds in verbal form. I'm not sure if you can understand what I'm trying to say here. It's quite hard to explain. Another thing is how they were so adamant to keep this telepathy thing a secret. At first, I could understand why they wanted to keep the telepathy thing a secret. People would think that they were crazy or playing a prank. But even when they knew that the people from the place that did something about diseases (I don't know what it's called) knew about the telepathy and was looking for them and would believe them and would want to give them the cure, they still wouldn't tell. It frustrated me to no end. 

When I started this book, this was one of the first lines I saw:  

Maybe you think Olivia is telling the story. Or Mackenzie, or Cooper, or someone else in our homeroom you haven’t met yet.
It could be any of us.
But it’s not.
It’s all of us. We’re telling you this story together.

It sounded so cool. I thought that the book would be sort of sci-fi-ish with lots of science-y stuff involved but I was wrong. It turned out to be quite ordinary. Just a story of mostly ordinary teenagers with completely ordinary problems and issues that just happen to have telepathy. I was just hoping for something a little more out of the ordinary.

Also, they never really explained the science behind the telepathy and how they made the cure. They explained that it was in the flu shot but never said how it got there. They didn't even say what it was. They also didn't tell us how the cure worked. I was hoping that they would because that would make the story much more interesting and plausible.

But, on the other hand, I guess that this is a story that a lot of teenagers can relate to. All of their insecurities and problems, well, we've been through it too. Well, not the telepathy thing but the other problems. Worrying about saying the wrong things. Wondering what other people really think of you. The relatability (is this a word?) factor was one of the two stars I gave this book. The other star was because you could completely understand each character's motives. I didn't dislike any character in this book which is because I could understand them.

Have you read Don't Even Think About It by Sarah Mylnowski? What do you think about it? Leave a comment!