Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli - Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for today's stop on the tour for Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli! It is a pleasure to welcome you here, especially for Becky as I love her books and it feels like forever since we've had a new one to read! 

I read a lot of YA so I would invite you to click around my blog and see my other reviews. You can see my other reviews of Becky's books as follows: Yes No Maybe So (with Aisha Saeed) here, Leah on the Offbeat here, The Upside of Unrequited here, and Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda here. 

So, Kate in Waiting! Kate Garfield lives in Georgia and the prologue of the book sees her at theatre camp with her friend Anderson, saying goodbye to a boy they've met there, Matt. They both have a crush on him and ask for a selfie so that they can send it to their friends at home, Brandie and Raina. 

Back at home, their junior year of high school is about to start. And then it turns out that Matt has transferred to their school because his mother is from their town and wants to move back following her divorce! Andy and Kate are immediately agog, and have to have a conference in a bathroom about it.

Matt will be doing drama class, and Andy manages to get himself transferred into the same class. But Kate can't, so she's wildly jealous. Everyone then auditions for this year's musical, and both Kate and Anderson begin to make real friendships with Matt. 

They decide to set some ground rules. They have often had mutual crushes before. In fact, their friends think they're a little bit too codependent. But they'll be fine, right? They're Kate and Andy! But then Kate finds herself thinking there's chemistry between her and Matt, but she has to keep it from Andy, and then she feels awful about it. 

Meanwhile, there's fuckboys. Kate's brother Ryan is a little bit of a fuckboy, but she won't let her friends call him that. His friend Noah usually plays baseball, but he's broken his wrist so he's doing drama with Matt and Anderson, and he's in the musical. He and Kate have been friendly, but Kate hates fuckboys because of a mortifying experience when she was bulled in eighth grade. But Noah is just always around, and he is pretty cute... 

I loved this book! Not a lot actually happens in it, but it's a lovely slice of life, of being sixteen/seventeen, of families, of romance. Kate's family is Jewish and her parents are divorced, so she and Ryan split their time between their parents' homes. I loved how this was portrayed. Anderson is black, and gay, and the book touches on how difficult that is for him in a state like Georgia. Raina is trans, which was just a nice little extra in the book. I liked Kate a lot, and felt sorry for her in parts. I didn't warm to Anderson fully, but I liked Matt and even Noah even though he is obviously a fuckboy. I love how Becky writes characters with such depth. I love her easy way with dialogue. I love how her settings come alive. I would have read a novel the length of War & Peace about Kate and her friends! 

I'm giving this five out of five, and want to thank The Write Reads and Penguin for having me on the tour!