The stunning conclusion to the mega fame-busting 11-13 trilogy from the multi-million bestselling author of GEEK GIRL. Party girl actress Mercy Valentine is nobody’s hero and that’s how she wants it. She’s sarcastic, sharp and always defensive – so no one can hurt her ever again. Mercy’s starring in a major theatre show and hitting the gossip headlines, but her glamorous world is about to come crashing down. And when Mercy crashes there will be fireworks… LOVE ME NOT is an eye-opening, heart-warming, darkly funny exploration of what it really means to be famous, and how to heal a broken heart.
Holly is the Number One bestselling, multi-award winning author of the GEEK GIRL series.
She fell in love with writing at five years old, when she realised that books didn't grow on trees like apples. A passion for travel, adventure and wearing no shoes has since led her all over the world: she has visited 27 countries, spent two years working as an English teacher in Japan, volunteered in Nepal, been bartered for in Jamaica and had a number of ear-plugs stolen in Australia, Indonesia and India.
Holly has a BA in English Literature, an MA in Shakespeare, and currently lives in London or at @holsmale.
The GEEK GIRL series has been an internationally bestselling no1. smash-hit. It won the Waterstones Teen Prize of the Year and the Leeds book award, was shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize and the Branford Boase award, and was long-listed for the Carnegie.
I cannot express how much I loved this book. I read it in one sitting and loved it from start to finish. The plot was so engaging and well written that I found my self shouting at the characters and always wondering what was going to happen next. I would suggest this series to anyone and everyone. This has got to be one of my favourite book series ever! Thank you so much Holly I can't wait to see what you write next :)
This book made me smile, laugh out loud but also shed a few tears , much more than a lighthearted story of tinsel town folk, it has depth and much to say about grief and how it affects people differently. I desperately wanted to reach into the book and give main protagonist Mercy a huge hug and I finished the book in one sitting, I just needed to find out if this broken inside, feisty, passionate character got the happy ending she so deserved. The first love aspect of the story was touching and the family dynamics portrayed and the unconditional love shown (sometimes reluctantly) towards daughters, sons, siblings and parents was heartwarming and very true to life.
If you know me, you’ll know that I’ve been a fan of Holly’s basically forever, so it didn’t surprise me that I loved this, but oh my God, I really, really did. Mercy is the oldest Valentine sister, still reeling from a huge loss several years before the book begins, who warns us on the very first page that she isn’t likeable and doesn’t want to be. Despite this, I found her to be an inherently good person who has been through a lot, and needs to heal before she can try and move forward. It was fascinating to learn more about the Valentines and the tragedy that shattered their worldsNo offense to any of the series’s other love interests, but Finn is easily my favourite! He was so perfect for Mercy and I loved that meeting him wasn’t an automatic fix for her problems, but instead a reason to try and face up to them. Also, although the book tackles very serious issues like grief and mental illness, it’s also got plenty of laugh out loud moments and Mercy’s narrative voice is delightfully darkly comic a lot of the time. Overall, this is just an incredibly moving, fitting finale to a trilogy I’m hugely fond of, and although I’m sad to say goodbye to the Valentines, I’m sure I’ll love whatever Holly chooses to write next.
What a great end to the series. This is the first of this series I have listened to on audiobook and I thought that the narration was actually really great! Full review to come.
I loved this book. It was just as good as the first and second in the Valentine’s Series. I love this family and the growth that the family makes from the start of the series to the end of the series. But, Mercy is the one who transforms the most. After a loss like no other she closed herself off. You get to bear witness to her becoming vulnerable, healing and learning to move forward. It was heartbreaking and hopeful. The whole family (each and every one of them) are all imperfect and wonderful. You will learn to love them all. It is a delight to follow Mercy on her journey to discover what it feel like to let go of the heavy burden of loss and guilt. This series was brilliant and heartwarming! I adored it so much! I was so sad to see it end, but it was perfectly tied up! Brilliant!
Oh goodness. Holly Smale’s books just get progressively worse. As something that is classified as a YA novel, it really poses as quite an immature book. I read all the books in her bizarre series Geek Girl and then attempted the Valentines one. I read the first on and the protagonist Hope was absolutely annoying and childish. In this book I was hoping for a more mature protagonist as Mercy seemed like a more interesting character but Smale really had to prove me wrong.
This book follows Mercy Valentine’s story as she lets herself fall in love and navigates loss and teenage hood. However, Smale makes no effort to make her protagonist interesting, likeable or relatable. Mercy is a brat who blames her horrific behaviour on the death of her sister. Her behaviour throughout the book is beyond appalling. She shouts at her housekeeper, insults and abuses her family members and completely disregarded the people at her drama club. Her boyfriend is abused and he is stupid enough to forgive her twice after she behaves so ridiculously. Charity’s death did seem quite tragic but she did seem like a pretty terrible sister who played mean pranks to make herself happy and she ditched Mercy for her boyfriend.
Mercy is supposed to work at the theatre. She spends majority of the time bossing around other people, missing rehearsals and bragging about her superiority as a Valentine. She is rude and unprofessional and her friends Dee, Mee and Vee are all horrific and total brats. They are so entitled and Mercy’s party girl attitude is so irritating. The ending was just the worst. I hate when they try to give a redemption arc but the protagonist has gone so far that you can’t even find a piece of you that likes them. It was just irritating how the whole family just came back together and Mercy became a wonderful, caring sister and daughter after sleeping for a week (absolute sleeping beauty story) and how her mother just snapped out of her daze and her father stuck his head out of the sand and they realised that they had betrayed poor Mercy and that they needed to help her to heal. It was just so awful and didn’t give me all the good feelings.
Smale never fails to disappoint me with her immature writing and unlikeable and overly quirky protagonists. For once the love interest was bordering on decent but Smale can’t just make me like the protagonist in the last 70 pages after the protagonist acted like an entitled brat. Really, the covers of the novels are superb but the overall stories are just nothing new or interesting. Maybe next time I might think twice before purchasing Smale’s latest novel. Sorry, just not my thing.
I'm gutted that I have come to the end of this book, as it means I have to say goodbye to the Valentines family, and I have to say I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know each an everyone one of them,
Including Mercy, the featured sibling in this latest book, who goes out of her way to be insulting to everyone and try to destroy them that you can't help but laugh and feel sorry for her.
Of course there are good reasons for her behaviour, and she like all the members of the family have a great deal of development over the course of this book and the series generally and I was intrigued to see how things transpire.
I loved rolling my eyes at the trio of birdbrains, I was amused by the flashbacks of antics from Charity, and I really loved the way Finn interacted with Mercy.
Another fabulous book from my favourite MG author!
Thank you to HarperCollins and Netgalley for this copy which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.
Definitely my favourite in the series- this book had everything, it was funny, compelling and heartbreaking. Holly Smale writes characters so well and I rooted for Mercy throughout the whole book and finished it in one sitting. The dialogue flowed off the pages and felt really real and raw which made this such a good read. I also loved seeing the dynamics between Hope, Faith and Mercy and thought that Holly Smale succeeded in creating unique characters that aren't a cliche!
Between 3.5 and 4 stars. Found Mercy’s character very complex and the ending was great but found the path there repetitive at times with her and Finn getting together and then her backing off/getting angry again and again. I did love that there was mention of Faith and Scarlett getting together too.
I am aware that I did read book 1 and 3 of the Valentines series while missing Faith’s story. I do however, feel as if it wasn’t completely a waste of time to skip that book because it sounds just as messy as this one.
I did change my rating only because the more I thought about it, the more I realised how insufferable this book was.
Mercy is the grumpy sister. She doesn’t need you to like her. After her sister Charity dies, she refuses to let anyone in. The only thing keeping her sane is acting because it allows her to feel as if she is a different person. Will she get what she wants?
Mercy is absolutely insufferable. She is a complete drama queen and virtually just spends her life hurting people and shouting. She is an incredibly bad sister, friend and girlfriend. Amongst that, she also doesn’t seem to be a very convincing actress at all. She is irritable, short tempered and just an overall diva.
She has these incredibly annoying friends: Dior, Amethyst and Nova And they call each other (respectively): Dee, Mee and Vee Mercy is known as Cee and Charity was known as Tee That is the kind of annoying middle grade content that was shoved into this book. They all squeal and talk with a million exclamation marks after their sentences. Mercy is their best friend but she calls them the birdbrains and hates them. Spoiler alert: she breaks up with them in the ens. I’ve never read YA where the sentences look like this for at least 10% of the book (please don’t take these as direct quotes as these are just examples): OMG DEE! HOW COOL IS THIS!!! or I DON’T CARE A ROLLING FUDGE NUGGET ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK! Okay, onto my next criticism, why does everyone think Mercy is cool? She usually doesn’t care a rolling fudge nugget, furry cat bum and fluffy rat bum about a lot of stuff. She also doesn’t swear but then she uses the weirdest insults and somehow people cower at the most ridiculous things she says. She screams at them and they just take it, I find it hard to believe that literally no one in the book even tried to stand up to her (other than Verity)
Lets’s talk about Charity. I understand the trauma Mercy went through but so did her sisters and Max, yet she takes it out on the rest of her siblings. She snaps at Hope and accuses her without any evidence and hurts Max quite often. She then makes it up to them in twenty seconds (after causing huge explosions) and they forgive her. I do find it peculiar that somehow Faith is immune to this bad behaviour and gets away unscathed. Also, Faith has a girlfriend now? That was unexpected.
Finn seemed kind of sweet. Mercy, however, takes advantage of him. I also felt like it was kind of a love at first sight (text) situation. She keeps kissing him and then hurting him. If I were him I would have walked away because that girl was ✨TOXIC ✨ and then he had this whole tragic backstory which kind of annoyed me.
She is really entitled, like in the sense that her father buys her a car and then she refuses to drive it, even though her siblings were not afforded the luxury of just getting a car. She then gives it to a guy in exchange for a dumb painting (to please Hope) but still, a car costs a hell of a lot of money and you would exchange that car for a PAINTING. No. Way. Clearly she didn’t earn that money.
Mercy is so rude to her cast-mates. She doesn’t make an effort to learn their names, she is so nasty to Daisy and she doesn’t even go to their cast parties. She is obnoxious and such a diva towards all of them. The director even has to fire her and then she goes online (knowing the play is good) and trashes it and drags its name in the dirt and then wonders why the director is mad at her when she sneaks in backstage. I know Mercy is supposed to be grumpy girl who lost her twin who gets a redemption arc but she just comes across as entitled and obnoxious. The amount of times she says: “Do you know who I am?” Just makes her a really difficult to relate to character.
Charity also talks to Mercy in her head which makes the dialogue really weird and then there are these flashbacks that make Charity seem more insufferable than Mercy. Charity literally misses filming for a big show to be with a guy she likes and then pretty much manipulates Mercy to take her place. What can I say, these Valentines twins seem ✨TOXIC✨.
The ending was okay. It was about learning to deal with grief and her parents came back and helped her and stuff but this book was just not doing it for me. So yeah, I think I’m done with the Valentines and all their dramatics. 🩷📽️🎭✨🎬
When I first started reading this, I really couldn’t stand how vile Mercy’s attitude was towards everyone, but as I got further into the book and saw why she acted the way she did, it completely changed my views. My heart completely breaks for her Mercy, the main character. She felt grief in such a raw and unimaginable way. This book pulled me in and honestly grabbed my emotions in a way I wasn’t expecting. There’s some strong topics throughout the book, including death of a loved one, grief, and mental illness, and it was beautifully written. This was the third book in The Valentine’s trilogy, but I had no problem following along. I hadn’t read anything by Holly Smale before, but I will be reading other works by her. This book is geared towards middle grade readers, but I really enjoyed it. Thank you to Harper360, Holly Smale and Sophia Wilhelm for the opportunity to read and review this book. I highly recommend picking up a copy of this gem! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Oohhh, I never expected this to happen, but this totally is a new 2021 fave! This was sent to me for review and thus I ended up reading a book that, based on its cover and pretty generic plot, would never have picked for myself, but I loved the writing and characters so much, I've promptly ordered part 1 and 2 to read the rest.
Mercy Valentine is NOT very likable but I loved her nonetheless. Her character is written so well and, even though she really does do terrible things and had me intensely annoyed with her bratty behaviour that crossed line after line after line, I *still* empathised with her HARD. I loved her story and her romance, I loved all the sister stuff and I can't wait to read the rest of this series. Suffice to say, you can totally read this out of order!
Oh! The dialogue! One of the strongest points of this book. And the love for Shakespeare... Yes.
I have finally finished reading Love Me Not by Holly Smale! @holsmale
When I started reading this I wasn’t sure where we were going with Mercy Valentine and at times I got really annoyed and angry with her. But the more I read, the more I understood what was going on. The more I felt for her and the more I just wanted to give her a hug. The isolation her character must have felt is heartbreaking. Losing a sibling is hard, I lost my sister when I was 16. But losing a twin who is basically your best friend, must be awful. (I know this is just a book, but still!)
I loved how it ended and how we leave the valentines family. I love Hollys writing and how she deals with issues with her characters! I am looking forward to seeing/reading what’s next!
The third (possibly final) book of the Valentines series, a series about three sisters growing up with fame and fortune. This particular book was about eldest sister Mercy Valentine, the strong female lead. She was ruthless, sarcastic and bad-tempered and was by far the most interesting sister. 😈
It included a cute yet sarcastic love interest. I'd compare them to Beck & Jade from Victorious. 🤭
I started this series a few years ago so when the third book was released my younger self was screaming at me to buy it. I would suggest that anyone over 15 would probably find it quite young, depending on how adult the books are you enjoy. 😊
I loved this book the storyline and everything. The only reason that I rated it 4 not 5 stars is because of Mercy.
It could be just me but I kept on getting annoyed throughout this whole book when she kept on pulling Fin in and then rejecting him. Personally I don’t really think that he should have forgiven her that easily ( of course I want him to forgive her just not straight away). At the same time though the loss of her twin really got to me as I have a twin myself but I would probably become more depressed than angry. Which brings me to another point. She’s always mad and rude to everyone including the love of her life.
This did save the series for me, and as much as I loved Hope, her book was sad, and this one was happy. If you do plan to read this series, note that you need all 3 books for all questions to be answered and all ends to be tied up, despite it being contemporary and about 3 different sisters.
A. Ma. Zinnnggggg this was an emotional awakening showing how grief can affect people in different was and the rollercoaster of emotions people go through.
It showed what grief can really look like, Mercys story was truly a rollercoaster but I'm extremely glad i finished the series as my heart feels a little empty without it