Genre 📚: YA Contemporary, Coming-of-age, Romance
Tropes 💁♀️: Family drama, First love, First experiences
Rep ✔️: Palestinian-Canadian main character, autism
CW ⚠️: Teen pregnancy, slut shaming, alcoholism, emotional abuse, depression, ED
Rating ⭐️: 4.5/5
Coming-of-age stories like this really get me. The MC Lennon has always been the perfect daughter in her dad’s eyes, and she wants to keep it that way. Especially after her older sister gets pregnant and her family dynamics completely change. Then, she HAS to be perfect. She HAS to be the well-mannered pure girl. But as she starts high school, and she starts getting strong feelings for a boy, she gets conflicted with who she really wants to be. And with her autism, and her constant masking, that gets confusing real quick.
We follow Lennon throughout her four years of high school, through new friendships and new loves. There were a lot of characters in the mix, and it was interesting to see how Lennon was with all of them — her dad, her sister, her friend Andie, her crush John. But what I enjoyed the most was how Lennon was with us, as the readers. I love Jackie Khalilieh’s voice so much, and here, I just felt it was so easy to fall into her heroine’s inner monologues. It brought me back to my high school years and all the complicated urges and feelings I had to wrestle with.
**Much thanks to NetGalley and Tundra Books for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Sara Bechtol 