The Me I Meant to Be

October 15, 2018
Texan best friends Willa and Flor both break "girl code" as they deal with personal crises, heartache, and love. Sweet, loyal Willa Evans knows how to pretend. She has secretly loved her football-player neighbor Zach Tucker for so long even her bestie, popular, athletic beauty Flor Hidalgo, has no clue. Zach and Flor broke up nine days earlier, and Willa doesn't want her relief to show. Instead, Willa, Flor, and their rebellious friend Jenna decide to start an "official girl-code manual." Almost immediately, Willa breaks rule No. 1, "never date a friend's ex," when she ends up in a dark closet with Zach, while Flor keeps secrets about her increasingly chaotic home life (her mother abandoned the family, and her single father has started dating someone barely older than she) and her developing feelings for her smart and sexy new math tutor, Grayson O'Malley. While the book will please fans of "friends to more" and "opposites attract" romances, it barely passes the Bechdel test. Willa, who's white and middle class, and Flor, who's half-white, half-Mexican and conspicuously rich, talk more about boys and dating than anything substantive. Both love interests are white. The dual perspective may be necessary, but Flor's narrative is more nuanced and the chemistry in her banter-filled romance more exciting; Willa's gets steamy too quickly to offer much tension.Two love stories for the price of one fun, but predictable, story. (Fiction.14-18)

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November 1, 2018

Gr 9 Up-Coming up with girl code is an easy task, but following it isn't quite so simple. Willa and Flor have been best friends since elementary school. It's Flor's recent breakup with Zach, Willa's next-door neighbor, star of the Madison football team, and all-around charmer and nice guy, that prompts writing the Girl Code. Flor doesn't think any of her friends, even if they're not particularly close, should even be flirting with Zach. What Flor doesn't know, of course, is that Willa has been in love with Zach for as long as she can remember. Things get really complicated when Zach and Willa share a very intense kiss at a party, and Willa realizes that Zach has feelings for her, too. Any of these things alone could be manageable, but the rest of life makes it all a little harder to deal with. Flor especially feels this since her mom has left, and her dad's new girlfriend, half his age, seems to be competing with Flor for his attention. A story about friendship and high school love, this novel moves quickly and is told from alternating perspectives. Some minimal strong language punctuates their complicated situations. Some intense make-out scenes expressly capture their teen romances. This novel is a positive story about friendship, respect, love, and adolescence with smart, strong female characters. VERDICT A great choice for most YA collections.-Sara Jurek, Children's English Library, Stuttgart, Germany

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