I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

 

Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of One Last Stop and Red, White & Royal Blue comes a debut YA romantic comedy about chasing down what you want, only to find what you need...

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.

Fierce, funny, and frank, Casey McQuiston's I Kissed Shara Wheeler is about breaking the rules, getting messy, and finding love in unexpected places.

REVIEW

⭐⭐⭐⭐

What do you do when the most popular girl in school kisses you then disappears at prom?

Well, you sneak into her bedroom to confront her, of course. Only when you get there, she’s not there. You know who ends up showing up? The school’s skater bad boy, Rory who just happens to live next door.

This is Chloe Green’s reality.

And guess what? Shara kissed Rory before she disappeared, too. And here in her room where they both snuck into, she left him a note, one of many more to come, with clues as to where she is and how to get to her.

The note also suggests Chloe, Rory and Shara’s boyfriend, Smith find her.

So, here we have Chloe, the queer girl from California who turned into Shara’s academic rival. Smith, Shara’s picture perfect boyfriend and star of the football team, and the boy next door, Rory.

Together, they have to real up and keep finding those notes that Shara has left for all of them to figure out where she is.

Let me just say this book is good. It got better the more I got into it. That being said, I don’t think it was too good and it wasn’t my favorite.

I found Shara to be a little annoying. Like who does this girl think she is? I can’t believe these 3 kids spent the last month of their senior year chasing her on this wild goose hunt.

Don’t get me wrong, it aaa a good story and I enjoyed each time the trio found a new note. I loved how these 3 kids who really didn’t associate with each other during high school came together and actually started forming a friendship.

The side characters of their friends were great. All 3 of them had their own groups of friends who were very well written for high school kids. I enjoyed getting to know them and I feel like Georgia, Chloe’s BFF, could have her own book for her new relationship after high school.

As for their school, Willowgrove Christian Academy….WOW. Talk about living in the dark ages. I mean, I get it. It takes place ok a small Alabama town. Most (not all) Christian school come off as judgmental and conservative, but the way they treated the students who were trying to find theirselves was not right. And the corruption with the administration was something I was not expecting.

The ending does wind up working out in that feel good kind of way. As always in a Casey McQuiston book, the LGBTQ+ representation was terrific. The rivals to lover trope was a “missing persons” chase was fun and made the entire store more intriguing and mysterious.

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