Because of my work on the Stonewall Book Award committee, I cannot comment on any books with LGBT content. I will post reviews to books I have read for this award after it is given in February 2016.

A good reminder that everyone's got a story we cannot see. I was disappointed that you never hear from any characters again except in passing, but it fits in well with the overall structure of the book.

The book starts with Nate breaking his finger. (You'll never guess which one). Then each chapter introduces a character and how everyone links to each other during a 24 hour period

Loved the title, lived the interweaving of characters, at the end I expected more!

I rated it 2 out of 5 stars, because when you hover over it, they give you a definition of what that would mean. (Go Goodreads!) Two stars is “it was ok”. Definitely how I feel about this book, so I’m going to have to go with a three out of ten. Honestly, my favorite part about the book was that I started to feel for some of the characters. But… it really lost me aside from that. Least favorite would be how unorganized and character-based it was. Having finished this two weeks ago and still feeling it was “meh”, I don’t feel that I can properly rant, but I can tell you why it was “just” okay. Alright, so you first have to realize the whole “read between the lines” thing is not a deep metaphorical whatever whatever. It is essentially that the cover is flipping you off. The next thing you have to realize is that the book is throughout the course of one day (except for the very end), so you really don’t see long-term effects of everything that happens to the people in the story. What ends up happening is that you get a glimpse into each of the characters’ (the ones described in the blurb) days. The book starts off in the morning with one guy, goes until something major happens to him, and then backtracks a bit (but not all the way) to earlier, from another person’s point of view. And so on throughout the whole thing. What I WANTED to happen (and expected to) was that there would be three, five characters tops and then we would go through them all again. This I got from The Candymakers by Wendy Mass, because I liked the way it tied up all the loose ends. Next, there either was no plot, or it was threadbare, because all the story really consisted of was getting to know the character (for 3/4 of their part of the story), something tragic/upsetting happening to them/their friends, and people giving/getting the finger. To sum up this whole paragraph, (Yeah, you could’ve skipped the whole thing. But you didn’t, did you? DID YOU???) I felt that there was no point to the story. We got to know a bunch of random people, the finger was (excessively) used… That’s pretty much it. Hence three out of ten. I won’t be reading it again, but I hope that if you’ve read it or plan to (just be prepared), that you enjoy/ed it a lot more than I did. :-)
Read it on my blog here: https://abookwormsperfectapple.wordpress.com/2016/01/16/recently-finished-fri-saturday/#more-2750

Review copy from publisher.

it's tricky to tell a story from many voices, but Jo Knowles pulled it off. The voices and situations were distinct and intriguing. They were also connected. Knowles wove many stories together and slowly readers can see the many connections.

Many of the stories involved someone flipping others off. There was also another connecting thread running through the stories. We see people, but so often we are not paying attention or we are missing who they really are or what struggles they may be facing. We don't take the time to read between those lines.

Knowles had multiple things playing out through the many characters. It was like a picture slowly coming into focus.

(I do not do star ratings anymore, as I don't think they are a fair assessment to literature.)

This book is a collection of short stories with subtle connections to one another, all taking place within the same day. The story plays with perspectives, showing how a situation or person may be read differently by different characters. I liked how all the teen perspectives were in first person while the teacher was in third.

For the 2015 PopSugar Reading Challenge, this was my "Book You Can Finish in a Day."

This is the story about an ordinary day at an ordinary town, told by the viewpoint of ordinary students, only with each chapter, you realize nothing is as it seems. The girl who seems to have it all knows she's putting on an act and is ready for it to be over, only she doesn't know how to be anything else. The former high school bully is living a temporary life, or so he tells himself. The wimpy kid everyone picks on may have finally found a way to stand out in a good way.

This book is deeper than I thought it would be and while no one's story ends in a nice and neat way, there's still closure as some storylines intersect and cross in a way you don't realize until the last chapter.

Impressive writing and compelling characters. You never know what's going through a person's mind. Be kind to each other. Everyone is battling something.

the strength of this book is definitely in the concept and the underlying message that you never really know what someone is going through, whether it be a horrible home life, struggling with self image or sexuality, or even just wanting more from life. Knowles paints some really good snapshots of the variety of people's lives "behind the curtain" of what they project to other people.

However, I think there were a few things that didn't work as well as they could have. The vignettes were a bit uneven...they started of strong, but then Knowles didn't quite capture the same strength in others (for example Nate and Dewey's chapters vs. Keith's). And since the reader doesn't get to know any one character that well, at times they almost start to read as stock stereotypes. The format also left some issues understandably, however uncomfortably unaddressed (the incident on the bus). Plus, while I see the point of the Ms. Lindsay chapter, pulling the main message of the book together, it was such a jarring shift (first person teen narrations to 3rd person teacher narration) that it made for an awkward ending.

The overall message is a good one though, and teens will possibly pick it up just for the striking cover and title, but it probably wouldn't be their favorite read.

Quick YA read. It's a "day in the life" book about all different people and how they cross each other's paths. I found myself skimming a lot of it though because I didn't feel the need to closely read everything. Maybe that was a mistake on my part but I finished and enjoyed myself well enough.