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anyaemilie 's review for:
Last Chance Books
by Kelsey Rodkey
Thank you to HarperTeen (via NetGalley) for the ARC!
Content warnings:
4.5 stars
All Madeline wants to do is run her family’s bookstore, Books & Moore. She’s only going to college because her aunt Astrid, who basically raised Madeline and her younger brother Benny, insists that Madeline get a degree “just in case.” Madeline knows she’s just going to come back in four years and run the store, so it’s just a waste of time.
Across the street, a new bookstore, Prologue (a franchise, yuck) has recently opened up. Madeline is convinced they want nothing more than to run Books & Moore out of business, and she’s sure Jasper Hamada, who works for the enemy, is intent on ruining not only her life, but her family’s business. The fact that he’s really cute is just an unfortunate detail.
Madeline just wanted to enjoy her last summer before college working at Books & Moore, but instead has set out to destroy the competition across the street, cute boy be damned. She will do whatever it takes to save her family’s livelihood. But things get even more complicated when she finds out that Dahlia, Madeline and Benny’s mom, who has been absent most of the last eighteen years, is coming back. For good.
………..
I have been having a string of good luck with my ARCs this year, and it continues here! This was a strong debut from Kelsey Rodkey, and tackled several different topics: we get a prank war between rival bookstores, enemies to lovers romance (my FAVE!), a heroic effort to save a dying bookstore, and also some pretty heavy family issues. It seems like a complicated thing to balance and still end up with an overall lighthearted/happy book, but Rodkey achieves this quite well.
This is definitely a book for older YA readers, for a few reasons. Madeline is a recent high school grad and on her way to college by the end of the book. There is a mild sex scene about three quarters of the way through, and that is honestly the only reason I probably won’t buy this book for my middle school library (which is a bummer). I thought the family issues were really interesting because I haven’t seen that a lot in my travels of YA contemporary novels. Madeline and her mother have a pretty bad relationship throughout most of the book (when they have one at all) because Dahlia abandoned Madeline and Benny (who have different fathers) and left them with her sister Astrid. Benny’s dad is still around, but Madeline doesn’t know hers. It’s a really complicated family dynamic that you don’t often get to see in YA novels, so I’m glad that it’s explored here, in all its messy glory. It’s not easy, and Rodkey doesn’t sugarcoat how hard it is to have an absent parent who all of a sudden wants their job back. I can’t speak on this from personal experience, but I think the way Madeline and Dahlia interact throughout the book seems authentic to how a teenager would feel when an absent mother showed up promising to stay after eighteen years of inconsistency.
The romance is cute, but I do think the description of the book is a little misleading because it is definitely not the main plot of this story. It's one of many plots happening all at the same time. And the fact that it really isn't defined until literally almost the last pages of the book makes me wonder why all the other aspects of the plot were entirely absent from the description. Jasper Hamada is a fun, intriguing love interest, but I did want to know a bit more about him. But honestly, with so much else going on in the book, I see why there wasn't any time!
Again, definitely a really solid debut, and I really enjoyed it! I can’t wait to see what else Rodkey writes, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for her next book.
Content warnings:
Spoiler
car accident (car vs. pedestrian), parental abandonment, minor body image issues, underage drinking (one instance enabled by a parental figure)4.5 stars
All Madeline wants to do is run her family’s bookstore, Books & Moore. She’s only going to college because her aunt Astrid, who basically raised Madeline and her younger brother Benny, insists that Madeline get a degree “just in case.” Madeline knows she’s just going to come back in four years and run the store, so it’s just a waste of time.
Across the street, a new bookstore, Prologue (a franchise, yuck) has recently opened up. Madeline is convinced they want nothing more than to run Books & Moore out of business, and she’s sure Jasper Hamada, who works for the enemy, is intent on ruining not only her life, but her family’s business. The fact that he’s really cute is just an unfortunate detail.
Madeline just wanted to enjoy her last summer before college working at Books & Moore, but instead has set out to destroy the competition across the street, cute boy be damned. She will do whatever it takes to save her family’s livelihood. But things get even more complicated when she finds out that Dahlia, Madeline and Benny’s mom, who has been absent most of the last eighteen years, is coming back. For good.
………..
I have been having a string of good luck with my ARCs this year, and it continues here! This was a strong debut from Kelsey Rodkey, and tackled several different topics: we get a prank war between rival bookstores, enemies to lovers romance (my FAVE!), a heroic effort to save a dying bookstore, and also some pretty heavy family issues. It seems like a complicated thing to balance and still end up with an overall lighthearted/happy book, but Rodkey achieves this quite well.
This is definitely a book for older YA readers, for a few reasons. Madeline is a recent high school grad and on her way to college by the end of the book. There is a mild sex scene about three quarters of the way through, and that is honestly the only reason I probably won’t buy this book for my middle school library (which is a bummer). I thought the family issues were really interesting because I haven’t seen that a lot in my travels of YA contemporary novels. Madeline and her mother have a pretty bad relationship throughout most of the book (when they have one at all) because Dahlia abandoned Madeline and Benny (who have different fathers) and left them with her sister Astrid. Benny’s dad is still around, but Madeline doesn’t know hers. It’s a really complicated family dynamic that you don’t often get to see in YA novels, so I’m glad that it’s explored here, in all its messy glory. It’s not easy, and Rodkey doesn’t sugarcoat how hard it is to have an absent parent who all of a sudden wants their job back. I can’t speak on this from personal experience, but I think the way Madeline and Dahlia interact throughout the book seems authentic to how a teenager would feel when an absent mother showed up promising to stay after eighteen years of inconsistency.
The romance is cute, but I do think the description of the book is a little misleading because it is definitely not the main plot of this story. It's one of many plots happening all at the same time. And the fact that it really isn't defined until literally almost the last pages of the book makes me wonder why all the other aspects of the plot were entirely absent from the description. Jasper Hamada is a fun, intriguing love interest, but I did want to know a bit more about him. But honestly, with so much else going on in the book, I see why there wasn't any time!
Again, definitely a really solid debut, and I really enjoyed it! I can’t wait to see what else Rodkey writes, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for her next book.