Admission: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

“An important part of growing up is letting yourself see the world as it truly is, even if you don’t like what you see or your own complicity in it.”

Chloe Wynn Berringer has always known she’d have a bright future. It’s one of the perks of being Chloe Wynn Berringer.

She’s been accepted to her dream college. She’s going to prom with the boy she’s had a crush on since middle school. She has the perfect best friend, Shola. Even her mom, a longtime B-list celebrity might be getting a long overdue comeback.

Then the FBI knocks on her front door with guns drawn and Chloe realizes that her carefully curated world isn’t as picture-perfect as she thought.

Now Chloe’s mom is under arrest as part of a huge college admissions bribery scandal. One that Chloe didn’t know about even if it apparently helped guarantee her college spot.

Facing possible charges herself, abandoned by her best friend and her boyfriend, Chloe is the face of a crime she barely understands. Chloe knew that her parents were being weird about her college application process. Of course she did. but does that means she knew what they were doing? Does it mean that she needed them to cheat for her? Or that she wanted them to do it?

After years of taking so much for granted, Chloe isn’t sure who she’ll be when all of the easy pieces of her life are stripped away but she’s going to find out. Whether she wants to or not in Admission (2020) by Julie Buxbaum.

Find it on Bookshop.

If the plot of Buxbaum’s latest standalone contemporary sounds familiar, that’s because it’s inspired by the actual college admissions scandal involving real life celebrities including Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman, and William H. Macy among others that broke in 2019. The story alternates between Chloe’s present–starting with her mom’s arrest–and flashbacks to the year leading up to the explosive fallout from the scandal. Chloe and her family are white and the story is set in the same world as Buxbaum’s other contemporary YAs.

Throughout Admission Chloe explores both her complicity in the events as well as the embarrassment she carries that her parents felt they needed to go to such lengths to get her into college. As Chloe learns, there are no easy answers–particularly once she begins to understand the harm her parents’ actions (and her own inaction) can have for students unable to bribe their way into a school. This aspect of privilege is carefully explored through the deterioration of Chloe’s relationship with Shola–her Black best friend waiting for scholarship and financial aid results before choosing a school. (Shola is waitlisted at the school where Chloe is “accepted” thanks to her bogus application.)

Admission delves beyond the salacious details and, often, absurdity of the actual college admissions scandal to offer a story with more nuance and complexity as the scandal is explored from the inside out. By the end of the novel, Chloe’s easy life is torn apart but it leaves room for something to grow in even stronger as she learns more about what it means to stand on her own merit for the first time.

Possible Pairings: Off the Record by Camryn Garrett, Kind of a Big Deal by Shannon Hale, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating by Adiba Jaigirdar, The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson, Charming As a Verb by Ben Philippe

What to Say Next: A Review

Kit doesn’t know why she decides to avoid her best friends Annie and Violet at lunch. Or maybe she does. Ever since her father died in a car accident, it feels like no one knows how to talk to Kit or what to say to make it better. No one seems comfortable with Kit’s grief and sadness–not even her own mother.

David is floored when Kit sits at his lunch table–the first time anyone has in the 622 days he has attended Mapleview High School. David doesn’t necessarily mind sitting alone. It’s nice to have some quiet in the middle of a too-noisy day and sometimes it’s too hard to figure out what to say to people without being able to check his notebook to see if they are someone he–and his older sister Mini–thinks David can trust.

Nothing about Kit and David’s friendship makes sense on the outside but Kit appreciates David’s bluntness and his honesty. David, meanwhile, finally feels like he’s found someone who might be okay with David being himself. As they grow closer, Kit asks for David’s help understanding the inevitability (or not) of her father’s death which leads to a truth that might end their friendship forever in What to Say Next (2017) by Julie Buxbaum.

Find it on Bookshop.

This standalone contemporary novel alternates first person perspective between David and Kit.

David is smart and self-aware despite his lack of emotional intelligence. He knows his limitations and strengths. He also knows how people are likely to perceive him because of his position on the autism spectrum and the coping mechanisms he has employed to continue to function in a sometimes overly stimulating school environment. Kit is still adjusting to life without her father–the parent who was always the one to nurture in the past–while also negotiating life in her small town as a girl who is biracial (Kit’s mother is Indian).

Seeing a neurologically diverse male lead alongside a heroine who is described as curvy and having brown skin is fantastic and makes this an obvious book to highlight and promote. That said, Buxbaum tackles a lot in this novel with varying levels of success.

David and Kit have distinct voices but the way other characters engage with David is often frustrating and demonstrates a fundamental lack of both empathy and understanding a person on the autism spectrum may engage with the world. The fact that David’s behavior is used as a plot point for one of the main conflicts between himself and Kit makes this treatment even more frustrating.

What to Say Next is an entertaining novel with unique characters, an engaging plot, and a cute romance. Readers looking for a quick but substantive diversion will enjoy this story that blends themes of connection with grief and family. Recommended for readers seeking a romance that will broaden their horizons.

Possible Pairings: Starry Eyes by Jenn Bennett, Words in Deep Blue by Cath Crowley, The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen, Royals by Rachel Hawkins, Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer, Everything All at Once by Katrina Leno, The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord, This Adventure Ends by Emma Mills, Birthday by Meredith Russo, Lucky in Love by Kasie West, Instructions For Dancing by Nicola Yoon

Tell Me Three Things: A Chick Lit Wednesday Review

“Over email and text, though, I am given those few additional beats I need to be the better, edited version of myself.”

Jessie doesn’t want to live in California. She doesn’t want a new stepmother when her mother’s death two years earlier is still painfully fresh. She can definitely do without her snobby new stepbrother. She hates leaving her best friend behind in Chicago and wishes her dad would try to understand why she’s so upset.

Her new super fancy prep school in Los Angeles is filled with pretentious students, confusion, and very few potential friends. When she receives an email from someone, Somebody/Nobody to be more specific, offering to help her make sense of her perplexing new life Jessie isn’t sure what to think. Is his offer a genuine chance to get some help? Could it be an elaborate prank?

The potential of a new friend and some much-needed information win out. The more Jessie and SN email and text, the more she wants to meet him in person. But as she gets closer to discovering SN’s identity, Jessie also wonders if some mysteries should remain unsolved in Tell Me Three Things (2016) by Julie Buxbaum.

Find it on Bookshop.

Jessie feels like a stranger in a very strange land when she is thrust into a higher income bracket at her predominantly white private school. This relative privilege is addressed and handled well over the course of the novel while Jessie tries to reconcile her middle class sensibilities with the new luxuries she is starting to enjoy. Jessie’s online friendship with SN and her real life struggles to befriend her classmates serve as another contrast in this story where perception can change everything.

This novel also ruminates on the nature of grief and moving on as Jessie struggles to hold onto memories of her mother while watching her father start a shiny new life. The awkward and often frustrating dynamics of becoming a (reluctantly) blended family add depth to this already absorbing story.

Tell Me Three Things is filled with humor and wit as a sweet romance unfolds. Jessie’s narration features a singular voice with a unique perspective on her surroundings and her new classmates. She is self-aware enough to acknowledge her shortcomings in struggling to reconcile herself to her new step-family and home while also harboring a healthy dose of naiveté about other aspects of her life.

Buxbaum breathes new life into a familiar premise in Tell Me Three Things. Readers may be quicker to guess SN’s identity than Jessie but that journey, like the rest of Jessie’s story, is all the more satisfying for the serendipity and potential near-misses along the way. Highly recommended.

Possible Pairings: The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things by Ann Aguirre; The Best Night of Your (Pathetic) Life by Tara Altebrando; Bookishly Ever After by Isabel Bandeira; Alex, Approximately by Jenn Bennett; Suffer Love by Ashley Herring Blake; A Week of Mondays by Jessica Brody; Vinyl Moon by Mahogany L. Browne; To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han; Life by Committee by Corey Ann Haydu; Suffer Love by Ashley Herring Blake; Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo; The Revolution of Birdie Randolph by Brandy Colbert; The Museum of Heartbreak by Meg Leder; The Art of Holding On and Letting Go by Kristin Bartley Lenz; Tweet Cute by Emma Lord; In Real Life by Jessica Love; An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi; Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills; I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson; Kissing in America by Margo Rabb; Tonight the Streets Are Ours by Leila Sales; Windfall by Jennifer E. Smith; Girl Against the Universe by Paula Stokes; P. S. I Like You by Kasie West; Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia