The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo - ADVISABLE

The Way You Make Me Feel by Maurene Goo, 319 pages.  Farrar Straus Giroux (Macmillan), 2018.  $18.  

Content: Language: PG-13 (7 swears; 2 abbreviated “f”); Mature Content: PG-13; Violence: G.  

BUYING ADVISORY: MS, HS – ADVISABLE  

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE  

Clara is notorious for her pranks, but when she takes a prank at Prom too far the consequences affect her whole summer.  Clara’s punishment includes helping her father run his Korean/Brazilian food truck called the Ko-bra with her nemesis, the seemingly perfect, Rose Carter.  At first, Rose and Clara are at each other’s throats, but as they spend more time together, they see the good in each other and develop a friendship.  Clara also falls for a cute boy from a coffee stand making her summer interesting.  But the most surprising part of Clara’s summer is that she realizes being a prankster was a mask to hide her true self.  

The first 50-100 pages of this book I could not stand Clara because she is selfish and over-the-top.  But as the story developed and Clara started to change for the better, I loved reading the story.  Friendship and family are a main theme throughout as well as letting life change you for the better. The content is pretty clean, but the mature content is vague references to possibly sleeping together.  

Reviewer, C. Peterson