#i read I Kissed Shara Wheeler and Y’ALL

[bereaving]

the thing with good YAs is that it is capable of making me stay up until 4 am, pulling my hair out and going “why are you like this?” with tears in my eyes

[fahye]

the thing I am most sad about your podcasting hiatus is not getting any new random book/fic/media recommendations from y’all!! I mean I’m still working through what you’ve already recommended. but it’s not the same

anon, this is ALSO a thing I dearly miss about the podcast! okay, let's do some recs from the absolutely enormous amount of books I've read recently. gonna keep this list to the first ones that come to mind from the last few months or we'd be here for hours:

nightbitch by rachel yolen - this is uhhhh semi-horror litfic about a new mother who believes she's turning into a dog. it's furious and brilliant and bloody and deeply weird and I fucking loved it. (though I WILL say: content warning for the violent death of a pet.)

the half life of valery k by natasha pulley - a soviet nuclear physicist in the 1960s is sent to work in a strange town that is also a radiation experiment. unlike her other books this one isn't speculative, but it's emotionally and character-wise one of the best (THE ROMANCE!! ugh) and the historical detail is fascinating.

heartburn by nora ephron - a short & hilarious novel about a food writer who discovers her husband is having an affair when she is seven months pregnant. did you know nora ephron is a genius?? I feel like I'm the last person to discover this fact. this would make a fantastic double feature with nightbitch, actually.

starling house by alix e. harrow - I KNOW I KNOW it's not out until halloween 2023 but listen: this book changed my life. an absolutely superb contemporary southern gothic horror romance (just go with it) about poverty and hidden sins and a girl going to work in a creepy house. preorder it now, and while you wait, read summer sons by lee mandelo.

the spare man by mary robinette kowal - a smart and slick sci-fi take on the noir detective novel, starring a wonderful heiress engineer with chronic back pain who has to solve a murder on a spaceship after someone frames her new husband. also has SO many cocktail recipes in it, which I feel more books should adopt.

cuckoo song by frances hardinge - nobody can write creepy fantasy like hardinge, and I think this is her creepiest. it has some amazing magical worldbuilding on the grim side of whimsical, and very fraught siblings, and it will turn your mind subtly inside out. technically...middle grade, I guess? whatever. read it.

I kissed shara wheeler by casey mcquiston - yes! finally! I had been putting this one off because I'm just Not A YA Reader generally, but had a great time with it. both very scathing and very kind about a specific christian high school experience in the american south, and full of queer defiance and joy.

and finally, I've also been slowly rereading the vorkosigan saga by lois mcmaster bujold, which is tied with the discworld for my favourite series of all time. nobody can combine adventure and devastating character like bujold.

[unravelingthepages]

I Kissed Shara Wheeler- Petition to turn this book into a movie

Hi! This is my official petition to adapt I Kissed Shara Wheeler into a movie. Have y’all seen Moxie? This book reminds me of it, especially towards the end. And I loved this just as much as I loved Moxie. (I recommend both reading I Kissed Shara Wheeler and seeing Moxie so much! Both made me cry, the endings were amazing.) But back to my original point. This book would translate to a movie SO SO well! Even as I was reading the scenes, I could just see it in a movie format. Especially the speech at graduation, and the last chapter. Honestly, just make this book a movie!!

I Kissed Shara Wheeler is a young adult romcom that reminds me of the Taylor Swift song ‘Mastermind’. It embodies that song SO well. It is funny, frank, heartbreaking and heartwarming and so worth reading. I give it 5 stars.

The Plot

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.

Why you should read this book

Let’s start with the writing. It’s great. I laughed out loud and I cried. The book starts off a bit slow but it picks up around the 2/5th mark and I promise the slow beginning is worth pushing through.

The characters!!! They’re it. I loved them and I can relate to all of them. How some struggle with being seen, some with accepting themselves because of religious trauma, and so much more. I think the author says it well in the acknowledgments-

I wrote this book for the Chloes of the world, but also the Smiths and Rorys and Georgias and Benjys and, yes, even the Sharas. I know intimately that the Bible Belt contains some of the best, warmest, weirdest, queerest kids you’ll ever meet, whether or not they even know that last part yet. If you’re one of those kids, I wanted this book to exist for you. I think if it had existed for me back then, a lot of things in my life would have been different. I wanted to write a book to show you that you’re not alone.

(And also that you deserve ridiculous, over-the-top high school rom-coms about teenagers like you, just like the straight kids have! Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise!)

I liked that this had only one POV. It was really great seeing Chloe (the protagonist) grow but also see the struggles and personalities of the other characters through her eyes. It’s especially refreshing to not have to keep up with the mindset changes of different characters like you have to do in books that have multiple POVs. Her character evolved and I loved seeing her fall in love.

More about the characters: I really loved all of them. I liked how it was a book set in highschool and the characters weren’t made to seem older that highschool kids. They were messy, imperfect and still undecided who they were as people. The camaraderie between them was realistic.

I really hoped I succeeded in convincing you to read I Kissed Shara Wheeler. This book feels like someplace you can be accepted and I loved that.

If you’re planning on purchasing this read, please consider using the following amazon affiliate link to purchase it. It would be at no extra cost to you and would really help me, thank you!

purchase this read: https://amzn.to/3L05abQ

[casbeeminestiel]

About to read I Kissed Shara Wheeler, see y’all in a day