“I know intimately that the Bible Belt contains some of the best, warmest, weirdest, queerest kids you’ll ever meet, whether or not they even know that last part yet. If you’re one of those kids, I wanted this book to exist for you. I think if it had existed for me back then, a lot of things in my life would have been different. I wanted to write a book to show you that you’re not alone.” - Casey McQuiston
Trigger Warning: Religious Trauma, Homophobia.
It’s graduation season for seniors all across the country right now, and that brings big changes. I wanted to write about a book that tackles all the complicated feelings that come up when you’re on the brink of adulthood, and I think “I Kissed Shara Wheeler” does that very well. Taking place during the month between Prom Night and Graduation, Chloe Green, her high school’s only out queer person, can’t wait to get out of her small Alabama town, and especially her small, Catholic high school. But that was before Shara Wheeler, the principal’s daughter, her academic rival, and all around most popular girl in school, kisses her, and vanishes. Chloe is determined to find her, after all, if she wins valedictorian on a technicality because her biggest competition isn’t there, well, that just wouldn’t be satisfying. That’s all, no other reason. She soon discovers that Shara has also kissed quarterback Smith, and boy next door Rory, before she vanished. And all three of them now have pink envelopes containing clues as to where Shara might be. Thrown into an unlikely alliance to find Shara, Chloe starts to learn that there’s more to her small town, and the people in it, then she ever could’ve imagined. And maybe, just maybe, there might be more to Shara too.
This is a Casey McQuiston novel. You probably know her from her bestselling novel “Red, White, and Royal Blue”, which was adapted into a movie for Amazon Prime in 2023. “I Kissed Shara Wheeler” is her first YA novel (Yes, I know “Red, White and Royal Blue” is often categorized as YA, but I don’t count it, as the characters are in their early 20’s and in college. You can tell that with “I Kissed Shara Wheeler” she really wanted to explore teenage characters with teenage issues and mindsets.) and, perhaps not coincidentally, is probably my least favorite of the four books she’s published so far. But that in no way means that it’s bad. With this book she clearly wanted to delve into the psyche of teenagers, and teenagers aren’t always the best people. Which makes it hard to like some of the characters at times, but it does certainly make them interesting. I’ve read a lot of YA books in my days, but these characters might feel the most like real teenagers that I’ve ever read, and your enjoyment of the book will be influenced by how much of that teenage mindset you can handle.
The characters are very complex, they can be mean, condescending, immature, and manipulative, just like real teenagers are. Especially teenagers trying to navigate how to survive in small town Alabama, especially in a school like Willowgrove. You are either going to love or hate the characters of Chloe Green and Shara Wheeler. The first time I read this book, I wasn’t a fan of Shara. I thought she was just this manipulative popular girl who didn’t deserve Chloe. But reading it again for this review, I understood better just why she acts the way she does. Of course she’s manipulative, of course she’s a liar, she grew up as the daughter of a principal of a highly acclaimed catholic school. Everyone in their small town is watching her as an example of how to be a “good christian”, especially her parents, so she feels that she cannot make any mistakes, cannot be her true self around people because they won’t like it. Add on to that her being a closeted lesbian and it’s no wonder she lies and manipulates in order to get people to like her, it’s all she’s been taught how to do. And all of that ties into her reason for running away, which I won’t spoil here, but let’s just say that the reason she thought she ran away and the reason that she actually ran away are two very different reasons.
Chloe is very much the opposite. She moved to the small Alabama town four years ago when her grandmother got sick and ultimately passed away. She came from liberal California, from a family with two moms, and, as I stated earlier, is the only out queer person at her school, so she acts like she’s above this small, backwards town and this uptight christian private school. But she’s trying to protect herself too, just like Shara. If she acts like she’s above it all, if she acts like she doesn’t care, then this town, this school, can’t hurt her. But of course it still can, and it does. Her arc is all about learning to see the good in False Beach, Alabama, and even in Willowgrove High, amidst all the awful parts, and there are quite a lot of awful parts. There will always be people who want things to remain how they are, to stick to the status quo, but there are also those who want things to change, but don’t know how, or don’t even realize that they can. And, like it or not, there is a part of her that belongs to Alabama. Her family is from there too, and it left its mark on her, no matter how much she tried not to let it.
One thing I appreciated about this book is that, despite the small southern town setting, there are a variety of queer characters in this book, all with very different perspectives and opinions about False Beach. Chloe wants to get out of there asap and go to NYU for college, and assumes that her lesbian best friend, Georgia, wants the same thing. But later, Georgia drops the bomb that she can’t go to NYU with her, she can’t afford it. She’s going to stay in town and work at her parent’s bookstore, which baffles Chloe. She can’t understand why she would choose to stay, but Georgia responds that she’s not like Chloe, that she doesn’t hate everything about her hometown, and that if people like them don’t stay, then nobody’s going to be around to try and make it better. But on the other side of the coin, there’s Shara, who’s whole life has been about her trying to conform to what the people of False Beach think of her. So she feels that she has to get out of False Beach in order to figure out who she really is, to find new perspectives and ways of living that she never could’ve conceived of back in her hometown. And neither choice is seen as “right” or “wrong”, it’s just about what each character needs and what is best for them at this moment.
Overall, I would highly recommend “I Kissed Shara Wheeler”, especially if you are a teenager or was a teenager who grew up in the south. It’s a fun rivals to lovers mystery with a ton of complex characters (I didn’t even get to talk about Smith and Rory in this review, the other two who had received pink envelopes from Shara, but they’re both a lot of fun, and Chloe realizing that maybe she misjudged them helps her to realize that maybe there are others that she misjudged too.) And a strong message underneath the teenage shenanigans. That most people aren’t all good or all bad, and that you’re probably not as alone as you think. (And if you want a good vacation novel by the same author, check out “The Pairing”, which just came out last year. Casey McQuiston admits that one was more of a wish fulfillment novel, so it’s not as emotionally heavy.)
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