I Kissed Shara Wheeler
by Casey McQuiston
Narrated by Natalie Naudus
Pub Date – 5/3/22
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“I’m in love with a monster turducken.” omg I just love one liners. 

I don’t know what I was expecting when I started this audiobook but it wasn’t this. Clearly I didn’t read the synopsis. I had an idea there might be a kiss but that was it. I loved RWRB so I just jumped in.

Completely different from that book was the setting but what was similar was the self-discovery and enemies to lovers which I love. The competition and constant one upmanship which was a mask for the tension of the burgeoning feelings (ok I just wanted to fit burgeoning into a sentence).

The bible belt might not be the most friendly and open place to find your self-identity and your sexuality but this Christian Academy in a small town in Alabama was very restrictive. From the outside this seems the perception but I could be mistaken.

Shara kissed Chloe, her neighbor and her boyfriend then disappeared a month before graduation. But she left behind clues to notes and Chloe needed to find out where they led. I just loved how this progressed and where it went, how this graduating class found themselves and became more than their school was telling them they could be.

There was so much happening and so many relationships that just happened that I didn’t see coming. But Shara did. 

The narrator did amazing as she moved through each of the characters who were very different personalities.

Read if you like:
✨ Enemies to lovers
✨ Love notes
✨ Self discovery

❓ Do you have anything planned for this holiday weekend?

Thank you macmillanaudio and netgalley for the e-ARC for my honest and voluntary review.

Synopsis:

From the New York Times bestselling author of One Last Stop and Red, White & Royal Blue comes a debut YA romantic comedy about chasing down what you want, only to find what you need…

Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and a puritanical administration at Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny.

But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes.

On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair-and-square.

Thrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe—probably not, but maybe—more to Shara, too.

Fierce, funny, and frank, Casey McQuiston’s I Kissed Shara Wheeler is about breaking the rules, getting messy, and finding love in unexpected places.