Earnest, swoony, and deeply romantic.
Seventeen-year-old Meera Rao-George has loved her neighbor Sushant for years.
Red-haired head cheerleader Lucy Hughson, Meera’s former best friend, is fully aware of this crush—still, she abruptly ended their friendship and started dating Sushant, leaving Meera heartbroken and confused. But Lucy has her own secret reason for ending their friendship and reinventing herself as the school’s queen bee. Now, with graduation approaching and Sushant planning to leave California to follow Lucy to New York, Meera hatches a Mean Girls–inspired plan to break them up. Meera’s scheme pulls Lucy back into her orbit via a teen book club at Café Kismat, the family business run by her fathers, Appa and Dad. Their renewed contact reopens old wounds and ignites long-buried feelings. Meera, who has dark brown skin and wavy black hair, begins questioning whether her obsession with Sushant was ever really about him. The dual-perspective narration alternates between Meera’s sarcastic voice and Lucy’s vulnerable one, skillfully peeling back layers of resentment, attraction, and regret. The writing is crisp and emotionally immediate, capturing the exhilaration and fear of wanting what you’ve sworn to hate. The cultural representation feels lived-in, from Appa’s South Indian roots (Dad is cued white) to Sushant’s home with its the North Indian influences, enriching the story’s cultural texture. Though the opening chapters rely heavily on interior monologue, the tender, unapologetically queer payoff lands with sincerity and warmth.
Earnest, swoony, and deeply romantic. (playlist) (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9798217028160
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Delacorte Romance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 26, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance.
A Connecticut girl and her best friend devise a series of plans in order to achieve their goals: following a dream and winning back an ex.
Eighteen-year-old Audrey Barbour has a Master Plan: attend Blue Ridge Glass School in North Carolina and someday turn her Etsy shop, Golightly Glass, into a thriving business. But her uber-wealthy parents insist that she instead follow in their footsteps and go to business school. So Audrey decides to go find the tuition money she needs with help from her best friend, Henry Chen. Henry needs a favor, too: He hopes that fake dating Audrey will help him win back his ex-girlfriend, and he points out to a reluctant Audrey that this could make her crush, Griffin, notice her. While Audrey’s parents vacation in France for three weeks, the pair rent out the Barbour mansion on the Long Island Sound. Soon romantic chemistry grows alongside their business partnership. Despite the pair’s great preparation and an abundance of secondary characters with connections and talents to help pull off their increasingly ambitious ideas, plans go awry, leaving Audrey and Henry scrambling and second-guessing their choices. The pacing is even, but the characters often take a back seat to the whirlwind of activity that drives the plot, with the emphasis falling on each person’s practical skills and their role in keeping the action moving over their emotional bonds. Audrey is white, and Henry’s surname cues him as Chinese American.
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593904794
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte Romance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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