Book Recommendation: I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston.
This is Casey McQuiston’s third book and their first young adult novel. You might remember their name from one of the best books ever written, Red, White, & Royal Blue.
I went into I Kissed Shara Wheeler with reasonable expectations — I figured it would be a good, hopefully above average YA contemporary queer romance. But wow did it exceed my expectations. I wish all YA contemporary was this good.
It includes:
- Rivals/enemies to lovers . . . my favorite romance trope
- (Basically) everyone is queer and figuring it out
- Beautiful lines that only the author of Red, White, & Royal Blue could drop. Hopefully, this is out of context enough to not be a spoiler but just look at this:
- “There was this one weekend, a million summers ago, when I sat on the shore drinking a frozen limeade, and I realized the only thing I wanted to look at was the way the sun hit the girls swimming in the lake. The problem has always been this: When I look at you, I taste lime, and I see light on water.”
- Side characters you’ll want to cheer for
- Everything you want to happen kind of happens but in a not predictable way? Brighter people than me could explain it but it was masterful.
- A pace that had me reading as fast as I could
The premise of this book, via Goodreads:
Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and a puritanical administration at Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny.
But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes.
On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair-and-square.
Thrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe—probably not, but maybe—more to Shara, too.
With Love,
Natalie