I read Listen to Your Heart

This week's novel is Listen to Your Heart by Kasie West.

Kate's whole goal in life is to take over her parents' marina on the lake.  She thinks of school as the time between lake trips, and she's not excited about how her best friend, Alana, has talked her into taking a podcasting class with her.  She's even less excited when she ends up the host of their podcast, and the topic for the year is "advice," and her co-host keeps calling her "Kat."  Alana is crushing on a guy named Diego, and Kate is helping her gather information and low level stalk him.  So when he starts calling into the podcast for advice about "a girl he likes" it seems like Diego and Alana are going to ride of into the sunset.  Highjinks ensue.

This is a cute book.  There are several points where I, the reader, said, "Oh no.  That's going to be misunderstood."  And sure enough.  But the cool thing was that even though the book is a series of misunderstandings, the characters all handle their disappointments and confusion really well.  You get the impression pretty early on that Diego might be into Kate, but he's friendly enough with Alana that it is kind of hard to tell.  He takes what he assumes is Kate turning him down like a champ and doesn't get openly upset about it. 

In general, I appreciate how friendly everyone is to each other in this book.  Alana and Kate and Diego and Other Guy all hang out and are friendly, even when maybe they all like each other.  There's no petty bickering over guys.  There's no hard feelings when who really likes who is revealed.  They're all friends first and kissy-friends second, and it felt more real to how I remember high school than anything I've read in a while.

Also, what kind of school has a podcasting class?  Is this a thing the kids are doing these days?  I feel like I missed out.  I also like how bad Kate was at podcasting at the beginning, and how she got better and how she took every bit of faint praise as a sign she was horrible.  That felt real too.

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Next week: Crooked Kingdom, the sequel to Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo.