Review: Please Send Help by Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin

Please Send Help is a follow up to I Hate Everyone But You, an epistolary novel following best friends Ava and Gen as they went to seperate colleges. In the second book, which I have seen many people state they read without having read book one and were totally fine, we continue to follow the two women as they embark in their first post-college jobs. Ava lives in NYC and works at a late night show hosted by a terrifying woman, and Gen works for a local newspaper in a small conservative town in Florida. We follow their friendship, romantic exploits, and work issues throughout the novel.

Disclaimer: I love Gaby Dunn and Allison Raskin, I love Just Between Us, the YouTube channel and the podcast, I really enjoyed I Hate Everyone But You, their first book, I listened to Gossip and Bad With Money, their podcasts separate from each other, and I do plan on reading Bad With Money, Gaby's book. 

That being said I liked this book fine! I wish I had connected with it more, but I just didn't care very much through the first half of the book. I love these two so much I wish I had LOVED this book. But I did like it fine.

This book was funnier than I Hate Everyone But You, which was also funny, which I did enjoy but the emotional core of the story was not as strong for me. But I think the time jump paired with trying to figure out what information from that book was important made the first 20% ish feel like I was playing catch up. 

I also have a theory that if you don't know Gaby and Allison is probably hard to keep them straight in your head. Especially the text messaging sections. I always think it is an unfair criticism to say characters are too like their creator because you only know that when the creator is a public figure. But I think playing so close to their lived experience made me less interested because I could pretty accurately guess where the book was going. So if you know them, it might be predictable, and if you don't, it might be confusing. It's just a theory, feel free to disagree with me!

I also felt SUPER icky about the catfishing subplot. I was very disappointed that that didn't really break bad, yes a character got fired, but the catfishing was more of a 'straw that broke the camel's back' in that situation than the catalyst. I think that kind of emotional manipulation is despicable and I really wanted the book to take a stance that this is super not okay. And instead, it was just 'it's somewhat rude, but in the end, maybe everyone can be friends.' I didn't like that at all. 

I did like that this book shows you how an abusive relationship works. Hot and cold, gas lighting, not giving you the necessary information. That plot was interesting and handled well. I also enjoyed the journalism and career climbing parts of this book. It was delightful. 

I am not super sure precisely who the audience for this book is, maybe college kids and young professionals? It falls into that category that makes you think YA needs to expand what it means or NA needs to encompass more than older YA + sex. Which isn't a fault of this book just a flaw with marketing and book categorization in general. 

I gave this book three stars on Goodreads. This book was enjoyable, and if you liked I Hate Everyone But You you will probably be interested in what happens in the sequel. 

This book is published July 16th, 2019.

ARC provided by NetGalley- all opinions are mine!