almost dnf’d this, but didnt and im glad i read it! loved Smith, my favorite character easily. also as someone who has grown up in the bible belt, the setting was very familiar to me. definitely would recommend this book if you want a silly but hopeful YA romcom (and i almost never read romcoms! always thought that i wouldn’t like them, but I Kissed Shara Wheeler may have started a new era for my reading tastes)

if you’re looking for historical fiction similar to 
•anything by Taylor Jenkins Reid (but particularly Daisy Jones and the Six)
•The Final Revival of Opal and Nev by Dawnie Walton
•Groupies by Sarah Priscus

i don’t particularly think this book may be for you. it feels much calmer than the novels i listed above, it’s much more centered on Willy May and her daughters rather than ‘70s glamour.

unfortunately i did go into this expecting something more similar to the books i listed, which definitely  affected how much i enjoyed it. 

over all, this was a sweet romance :) loved the setting of, essentially, an astronaut town. Cal was pretty annoying throughout this book, felt bad for Deb the whole time, but he eventually improved (and i dont entirely mind an annoying MC in most cases, so i really wasn’t bothered by him personally).

though, when StarWatch was talking to congresswoman Ali and she brought up her points about other systems being underfunded, yet NASA and Orpheus V was getting so much funding? i hardcore agree with her. we need to help people on Earth before going to the stars.

i quite enjoyed this book :) Kip was an interesting character to follow, i wish this had more of him and less of his novel but oh well. there was just one sentence within it specifically that i made a note of to address in this review (not spoiler-tagging it because it is a singular sentence that reveals nothing about the book or its plot):

“it is no less mysterious than a child with autism flawlessly playing a Bach fugue on the piano after hearing it once”. (about page 204 or so, first few lines on the page)

that would not be autism, that would be savant syndrome. savant syndrome is quite rare and occurs alongside various developmental disorders (including autism), but there is a surprisingly large stereotype that many/all autistic people are savants, which is absolutely untrue. 

i know this is a very small detail in this novel, but i wasn’t expecting that stereotype to come up as an analogy for something else (i may not have my terminology correct, but i think this sentence was used as an analogy). i also just really wanted to mention that this is in the book, for anyone who may not be autistic/doesn’t have enough knowledge about autism and other developmental disorders to know that the savant stereotype is largely untrue. thank you, if anyone reads this. :)