The Big F by Maggie Ann Martin // Very fun and uplifting summer read! + Giveaway

Oh, hi there! Guess who’s back with another blog tour? *points at self* THIS GIRRRLLL.

Welcome to my stop of the The Big F blog tour hosted by Xpresso Book Tours! Today, I’ll be sharing my review and the tour-wide giveaway with you!

Coincidentally, I seem to have been a part of many blog tours which promoted books from Swoon Reads (such as this one hehe) and I’ve always had luck with their books thus far! They always have such fun and relatable contemporaries that I find very easy to read—and The Big F was no different!

Keep on reading if you’d like to know why I loved reading this book!

PS. You can follow the rest of the tour here!

The Big F by Maggie Ann Martin

“Danielle effed up. Big time.

Danielle’s plans for the future were pretty easy to figure out… until she failed senior English and her single college application was denied. Suddenly she’s in hot water with very few options, because honestly who applies to a safety school when their mom is a semi-famous “college psychic”?!

Determined to get her life back on track, Danielle enrolls in her hometown community college with a plan: pass her English class and get back into Ohio State and her mother’s good graces. Romance isn’t on her radar… until she reconnects with her childhood crush and golden-boy-next-door, Luke.

Between family drama, first love and finding her own way, Danielle can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed. Thankfully she has her friendship with the snarky and frustratingly attractive Porter, her coworker at the campus bookstore, to push her to experience new things and help keep her afloat.

One thing’s for sure: This time, failure’s not an option.”

// August 29th 2017 by Swoon Reads //

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

The Big F is about Danielle who was supposed to go to Ohio’s university after graduation—but she got her acceptance revoked because she failed her English class. She has failed her mother’s expectations but instead of letting that bring her down, she turns her whole life upside down and proves to everybody that she is still able to have fun and be happy with what she’s doing (even if it wasn’t her first choice).

This book was such a quick and easy read (it’s so easy to binge-read, guys!) and I enjoyed it a lot! I really like when books have an intriguing opening line that immediately draws you in or when the first scene of a book leaves you wanting more—and that was definitely the case with The Big F!

It was pretty clear what the focus of the story was going to be and I was very intrigued to find out what would happen in Danielle’s life! I really liked her character arc because what happened to her felt very realistic and I could actually relate to her. College can be such a scary thing when you first start out and it’s hard if you want to live up to your parents’ expectations (and sometimes failing to do so).

I definitely remember feeling super anxious when it came to choosing a major and the not-so-happy look on my mum’s face when I told her I’d be studying English but I didn’t know what I was going to do with that degree afterwards! It’s this big, scary, new thing in your life and I can only imagine how terrifying it must be to tell your parents you didn’t get accepted??? That being said, it’s totally not a bad thing at all (!!!) if you don’t get accepted or you don’t plan to go to uni at all—Danielle definitely proves that in this novel. It was very inspiring and encouraging to read about her experiences and how she still manages to find her own way to become truly happy with what she does in the future.

Danielle is the baby and I’m a proud mumma ❤

And I actually enjoyed Porter as a character a lot! He is Danielle’s co-worker at the bookstore she works at and he was so interesting! He was mysterious and closed off at first and I initially thought he was going to be one of those typical douchebag characters but he actually turned out to be totally nice and funny, and very intriguing to me! He had this thing where he kept a lot of notebooks everywhere and he noted down anything that he found interesting or just his thoughts and observations of the day. I thought it was very unique and quirky and he himself said it was therapeutic to him—I actually considered doing the same thing myself! :p

If you remember my ARC August TBR, I mentioned that I was excited to read this book because of the “until she reconnects with her childhood crush” line from the synopsis! There’s something about the childhood sweethearts trope that I really love. But the romance actually turned out to be quite insta-lovey (to me). The beginning was promising when Luke didn’t immediately recognise Danielle (they haven’t seen each other for 6 years) but then they go to a party together and drunkenly decide to become BF and GF????? Now that’s just not realistic.

I mean, they only had about 3 fairly short encounters beforehand, and I don’t think that you suddenly fall for someone you haven’t seen in years??? Even if he was your childhood crush WHEN YOU WERE 12. COME ONNNNN.

So, the thing that I was most excited for turned out to be the one thing I didn’t like about this novel.

Overall, The Big F is a very easy-to-read summer contemporary about college and trying to figure out your future. It shows you that looking at things from a different angle and trying out stuff you’ve never done before might not be so bad after all—and you’ll still be able to find your own way. *inseart aww’s here*

⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4 OUT OF 5 STARS)

Maggie Ann Martin hails from Des Moines, Iowa but moonlights as a New Yorker. She has a shiny new BA in English and Journalism from the University of Iowa, the most welcoming literary community in the world. When she is not writing, you can find

her binge watching TV shows or passionately fangirling over fictional characters on the Internet. The Big F is her debut novel.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter

Tour-wide giveaway (US/CAN)

• Print copy of The Big F
• ends September 7th

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Whew, I’m actually quite proud of this review! It’s “only” about 700 words long which is quite short as far as I’m concerned.

It didn’t take me as long to write as most of my reviews do and I made some last minute changes while formatting this post—and I really like how it turned out! I don’t really know what it is exactly that I like so much but WHO CARES. I LIKE IT AND THAT’S ALL THAT MATTERS. GO ME *claps*

As always, thank you for reading!

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What do you think of this book? Have you heard of it before? What experiences have you made with college/university? Good? Bad? None at all? Let’s chat in the comments!