Contemporary YA | Holiday House | Published : 02/08/2022
17-year-old Kat Sanchez is a photographer and free spirit. She loves herself and her plus-sized body but can’t help but to obsess over the low engagement her photography gets on Instagram. On a whim, she uses photos of her beautiful blonde co-worker and creates “Max”– a fake social media influencer who becomes an instant success.
I know it’s old hat to say this– but this book is a solid read-a-like for Sarah Dessen fans. It has a strong sense of place (Bakersfield, California) and a warm eclectic group of friends who balance out the protagonist’s complicated familial relationships. These are things I find to be staples in Dessen’s books.
This book gets messy and Maldonado rose to the challenge of making me both sympathetic and ambivalent towards Kat as she falls deeper and deeper into this fake personality. There is a lot going on and Maldonado nailed the ending.
Kat’s parents had her when she was a teenager. This made me realize we are now getting to the point where we will see more millennial parents in YA books. Guys ? We’re kind of cringe.
Lol, Kat’s millennial parents (who I guess are near my age 🙄) have a three-bedroom single-family two-story house and I was like HOW ??!
1/2 of the blogging duo at Books and Sensibility, I have been blogging about and reviewing books since 2011. I read any and every genre, here on the blog I mostly review Fantasy, Adult Fiction, and Young Adult with a focus on audiobooks.