Heartbreakers and Fakers

April 1, 2021
Grades 9-12 It's senior year, and Penny's social life is crumbling, thanks to a make-out session with her nemesis, Kai, aka her best friend Olivia's boyfriend. Worse, she'd finally started dating Jordan, her crush, and now their budding relationship has come to a halt. In this fresh rom-com, we meet Penny as she falls from picture-perfect grace and her ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend seek solace in each other. After Penny and Kai concoct a plan to win their lovers back--by fake dating--Penny begins to wonder if she really wants Jordan back. This mean-teen story utilizes plenty of tropes and expected twists, but Penny's character growth is clear and sympathetic, as she goes from self-obsessed popular girl to a young woman who explores her emotions and desires in the age of social-media romance, cyberbullying, and gossip chains. It can be painful to watch Penny wanting her old life back, with all its toxicity, but as she and Kai plot and plan, they develop an unexpected bond that might actually change their lives for the better.

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May 1, 2021
Enemies fake-date to get back into their friends' good graces. The morning after a party, Penny Harris wakes up on a lawn chair outside her boyfriend Jordan Parker's house. When she goes inside and confronts her friends, she is shocked to discover that they had caught her in a drunken make-out session with Kai Tanaka, her sworn enemy and best friend Olivia Anderson's boyfriend. Used to the benefits of her popularity, Penny feels lost as her friends express their disappointment. But since they are also gleeful that she and Kai are apparently together--as they all predicted would happen one day--the pair devise a plan to get their exes back and restore their reputations: They will pretend to be in love long enough to make Jordan and Olivia (who have actually started dating) jealous, and then stage a breakup during the senior class trip to Disneyland. But as Penny begrudgingly spends more time with Kai, she comes to better understand him and his identity as a transplant from Hawaii, and their dynamic shifts from a mutual arrangement of convenience to something more. As Penny reflects on the various complex relationships in her life--with Jordan, Olivia, her emotionally absent mother, and her former friend Sarah--she learns to recognize the unhealthy attachments she clings to and how they affect her self-esteem and personal growth. Main characters are White; Kai is Japanese American. A lighthearted and perceptive fauxmance. (Romance. 13-17)

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June 1, 2021

Gr 9 Up-Penny's last night of her junior year ends in disaster. Instead of losing her virginity with her boyfriend, Jordan, she wakes up on the beach with Kai Tanaka, her best friend Olivia's boyfriend and her lifelong enemy, to find out that they kissed at a party the night before. Penny and Kai come up with a plan to show that their feelings for each other had been real, intending to win back their partners, only to find out they have more in common than they realized. A book that abounds with tropes, including a one-note villain, fake relationships, and enemies-to-lovers romance, is told through alternating story lines that, while initially confusing, manage to show Penny finding an impetus to change and learning that there is a great deal to the world beyond her high school. Penny is white and Kai is Japanese American. VERDICT A recommended purchase for public and high school libraries, with a happily-ever-after incorporating angst and twists along the way.-Betsy Fraser, Calgary P.L., Canada

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