Review: This May End Badly – Samantha Markum

Posted April 7, 2022 by Andi in Books, Review / 1 Comment

Review: This May End Badly – Samantha MarkumThis May End Badly by Samantha Markum
Published by Wednesday Books
Published: April 12, 2022
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“The bitingly hilarious, heartfelt This May End Badly takes your favorite fake dating trope and adds plenty of downright delightful shenanigans that’ll have readers tearing through the pages.” - Emma Lord, New York Times bestselling author of You Have a Match

Pranking mastermind Doe and her motley band of Weston girls are determined to win the century-long war against Winfield Academy before the clock ticks down on their senior year. But when their headmistress announces that The Weston School will merge with its rival the following year, their longtime feud spirals into chaos.

To protect the school that has been her safe haven since her parents’ divorce, Doe puts together a plan to prove once and for all that Winfield boys and Weston girls just don’t mix, starting with a direct hit at Three, Winfield’s boy king and her nemesis. In a desperate move to win, Doe strikes a bargain with Three’s cousin, Wells: If he fake dates her to get under Three’s skin, she’ll help him get back his rightful family heirloom from Three.

As the pranks escalate, so do her feelings for her fake boyfriend, and Doe spins lie after lie to keep up her end of the deal. But when a teacher long suspected of inappropriate behavior messes with a younger Weston girl, Doe has to decide what’s more important: winning a rivalry, or joining forces to protect something far more critical than a prank war legacy.

This May End Badly is a story about friendship, falling in love, and crossing pretty much every line presented to you―and how to atone when you do.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.



Do you ever read a book and it stays in your head for months after? So much in fact that you already want to read it again? That is what happen to me with Samantha Markum’s debut book, This May End Badly. It was exactly the kind of YA contemporary book I love to read. Simply put the book was a joy and I loved every minute of it.

This May End Badly is the story of Doe, a proud student of The Weston School, an all girl school she has been attending. She wears her school like a badge of honor and takes all things tradition very seriously, including the prank war with the all boys school, Winfield Academy. Doe is ready to make senior year the best this rivalry has every seen. That is until it is announced that Weston and Winfield will merge at the end of the school year. Now Doe has to prove that Weston and Winfield are not what dreams are made of and she starts by trying to take down the king at Winston, her nemesis, Three. What Doe never saw coming was Three’s cousin Wells. And when Doe finds herself fake dating Wells, she has to start looking at what is really important to her.

Full disclosure, Doe drove me nuts about 75% of This May End Badly. But not because I didn’t like her or want her to find her happy ending, but because she was her own worst enemy and could not/would not get out of her own way. But if I’m honest she really was pretty great. And her relationship with Wells, fake or real, was really the star of the show for me. There was not one second of their story that I didn’t love. They played off one anther so well that I was swooning from start to finish. And even more than the relationship between these two was the friendship with Doe and her Weston girls. Even when she was single minded she always thought she had the best interest of the girls in her mind, misguided or not. That was a true highlight of the book.

It really is hard for me to accurately describe how much I loved This May End Badly. I know as soon as I finished I told so many people to have this book on their radar. It is one of those books you wish you could read for the first time all over again and I’m sad I can’t do that, but so happy so many of you will be able to. Do yourself a favor and add this to your TBR ASAP!!!

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One response to “Review: This May End Badly – Samantha Markum

  1. Danielle Hammelef

    This is on my TBR and now I really want to read it. I love when books stick with me long after I finish them.

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