review: if you don't have anything nice to say by leila sales

Before we go any further, I want you to understand this: I am not a good person.

We all want to be seen. We all want to be heard. But what happens when we’re seen and heard saying or doing the wrong things? What then?

When Winter Halperin—former spelling bee champion, aspiring writer, and daughter of a parenting expert—gets caught saying the wrong thing online, her life explodes. All across the world, people knows what she’s done, and none of them will forgive her.

With her friends gone, her future plans cut short, and her identity in shambles, Winter is just trying to pick up the pieces without hurting anyone else. She knows she messed up, but does that mean it’s okay for people to send her hate mail and death threats? Does she deserve to lose all that she’s lost? And is “I’m sorry” ever good enough?

First and foremost a novel about public shaming in the internet age, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say is also an exploration of the power of words, the cumulative destructiveness of microaggressions, and the pressing need for empathy. ~ Goodreads

Source: e-arc provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Review:
I’m completely baffled on how to review this book. It’s a complicated subject matter and the author approached it in a very uneven manor. I have lots of thinky thoughts. Plus, my criticisms might reveal spoilers. I guess I’ll just dive in and mark the spoilers if you care to know more.

Winter, a former spelling bee champion, loses her latest competition to a black girl and posts, what she feels, is a joke about the winner to her 100-ish Twitter followers and goes to bed. When she wakes up her notifications have exploded and her life starts unraveling.

She gets death and rape threats, loses her best friend and crush, Jason, who is black, loses her early acceptance to college and has her former spelling bee title taken away.

Winter apologizes, gets called out again, mainly because she makes the apology about herself.

We’ve all seen this and we’re all one tweet, one post away from it happening. And when you’re in the thick of it – there is no explanation, apology that will stop the onslaught of negativity.

This is an incredibly relevant topic and interesting to see from the perspective of the person on the receiving end of the call-out culture but…

Winter is a pretty unlikeable character and she tells you that up front.

“Before we go any further, I want you to understand this: I am not a good person.”

Ok, she's not likable, for sure, but not a serial killer either. She’s really just a self absorbed teenager with no self awareness and is slightly narcissistic.

The problem is that she did hurt people around her, intentionally or not, and her goal is not to understand how what she said might be hurtful but to go after the person who RT’d her and to blame Jason for being hurt and not apologizing to her.

Early on, If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, brings up a lot of issues that could have been explored with nuance and empathy.

To what extent should a person be punished for one tweet? What about threats/lies posted on the internet? Especially when that person is underage. When does a call out become bullying? What about the people hurt by your *joke*? Why do people who say horrible things all the time get to judge you for one mistake because it’s been made public but get to go on with their life without judgement? What about the people who initiate the frenzy with a RT without a second thought of what they've done or how they've changed someones life?

That would have been interesting and the book does touch (briefly) on all those things but takes a bizarre detour.

Winter enters a Malibu rehab facility called Revibe, where you basically eat granola, do yoga and try to break you internet addiction. You also have to write letters of repentance to those you’ve hurt.

This is the wackiest place y'all!

First off – the people there are supposedly all *victims* of SM shunning but they vary from a boy who killed a cat for no reason, a man who killed an escaped zoo lion that almost attacked his toddler daughter, a former Disneyesque type star with bad press, a musician that slept her way to joining a band and then was slut-shamed, a conservative politician who was caught having a gay affair, and a boy, Abe, whose father was an Enron type executive that bilked millions out of old people’s retirement accounts. The son is hated by association and tried to kill himself and is now paralyzed.

Which one(s) of these is not like the others??

They are all in the same facility. Given the same treatment with a a quick – don’t have personal relationships with each other rule tossed out. Welp, ok. A 15 year old psychopath that’s killing cats, next to a 50-ish year old man mixed with rebellious teens, next to people with real issues who may need counseling. The book didn't take the time to look into each patient/story so conflated them all into a horror story of social media shaming and that's where the book derailed for me.

The goal of Revibe is to write those damn repentance letters – even if you aren’t actually sorry – and even if you didn't  actually do anything wrong. It doesn’t matter. Just lie and write them so people will move on.

A few spoilers about what goes down in Revibe:

Highlight –> First off – Winter is an aspiring writer. Everyone finds out and has her write their repentance letters. They are all forgiven by whoever they offended because Winter is an awesome writer– the truth never comes out. So - great lesson learned there!

Second – Winter has a panic attack. Like pass out on the floor panic and the facility owners are like…whatever…get up Winter.

Third: Winter, under pressure to write her own letter of repentance, rattles off what is clearly a sarcastic stream of conscious to Kevin - the owner of Revibe – who then types it out and sends it against Winter’s will/knowledge to the person who originally RT'd her - her local town reporter. Setting off a ridiculous subplot to try to sneak access to a phone to ask the reporter not to read the email. Oh okay...

As far as I can tell, only two people even work at Revibe – the owners Kevin and Valerie. How are they in charge of such a varied group of people and treating them with yoga, granola and volunteer work?

Meanwhile the teens find ways to drink, leave the facility, smoke and steal. But oh! Winter finds a boyfriend (who is a wonderful guy) and rediscovers her passion for writing so it's all good. Am I right??? *stabby* <- Highlight

So what does Winter learn from the experience? Not much. She chose the place herself to “become a better person” but she never really listens to what people are telling her about what she said – despite several people taking the time to talk to her about it. She only cares about getting her writing career back on track and making Jason forgive her (& have him apologize back to her).

Once people start liking her writing again (an article she shares in the local paper about her own redemption) then she’s all good. She becomes the poster child for people shunned on the internet.

She’s thrilled that a group of cheerleaders who blocked out letters on their uniforms to make racist words about Asians have found solace in her comeback. She combs the internet for scandals and writes letters to let people on the receiving end of a call out that she supports them – regardless of what they did because call out culture is bad. Yes…

But here’s the thing with that.

Sales is conflating a poorly worded tweet and truly vile acts. Like the cat killer, or people who go undercover to entrap and out gay men. They are not the same. And shouldn't be treated with the same broad stroke. No one should be threatened with death or rape but does someone who kills a cat and basically lies his way through rehab with no remorse deserve forgiveness in the same way as someone who said something dumb?

The author also inexplicably throws in a few more plot threads - Winter's mom is a popular mommy blogger who has written several child rearing books. It is relevant, in the sense that Winter's problems make her mom's parenting look bad & lose business - another consequence of the tweet going viral - but it's all brushed under the rug. Much like her mom would like to do with the problem. Her sister is unhappy at school but so?? There's more than enough going on without it.

The beginning of this book was thought provoking but then it veered off into too many directions, trying to address everyone’s side but not giving the plot the space to dig deep into issues of racism,  bullying, shaming.

Part of me thinks that's the way Sales intended this book to be consumed. As a starting point to a discussion. Throw all the opposing views out there and let people hash it out. And if that was the goal - then it is successful. I just think if the story focused more on Winter's family and friends trying to cope with this but in different ways (good and bad), and add more from the POV of the adult who made a teenage girls tweet go viral (a power imbalance) not understanding the impact - you could have touched on everything and dug deeper making this a truly uncomfortable book instead of a detour into the silliness of Revibe.