Hello and happy Friday. Last week I finished not one but two books written by Kasie West, which had been sitting on my Kindle bookshelf, collecting digital dust for years. I read them as part of the experiment I started a few months ago, which you can read more about by clicking here.

Basically, I wanted to see if the books from authors I used to read in my early to mid twenties still held up. The short answer regarding Kasie West is yes, they do. All of the books I’ve read from her feature teenagers, and as far as I remember, straight white teenagers. The stakes in her novels are nonexistent, and I don’t think anyone would read something by her to get something other than entertainment out of the story. They’re your typical summer/vacation reads, and I’m fine with that.

Since I haven’t been a teenager in a little over a decade, I am well aware that these books aren’t for me, but I’m now reading them as the middle school English teacher I am, and asking myself whether I would recommend these books to my students. The answer, again, is yes.

I read Love, Life, and the List and P.S I Like You. Both are romance novels featuring teenagers in high school, and both are told from the POV of the main character, who is a white girl. The former is about Abby, who’s been in love with Cooper, her best friend, for years, and who has to navigate spending a summer alone with him. The latter is about Lily, who loves music and fashion and who ends up striking a pen-pal kind of relationship with Cade, with whom she doesn’t get along. We all know how these stories end up, but we still read them, not because we want to know what happens but because we want to know how it happens.