Casey McQuiston

Da mesma autora de Vermelho, branco e sangue azul, uma história cheia de reviravoltas sobre o que acontece quando você se apaixona pela pessoa que menos espera. Chloe Green está a um passo de terminar o ensino médio e deixar False Beach, a cidadezinha ultraconservadora onde vive, para trás. Mas, antes disso, ela tem um último objetivo a cumprir: ser eleita a melhor aluna do colégio e a oradora da turma. Seu único obstáculo? Shara Wheeler, a garota mais popular da cidade, que arranca suspiros por onde passa. Só que, faltando pouco mais de um mês para a formatura, Shara simplesmente desaparece. Todos são pegos de surpresa, mas Chloe tem um motivo a mais para ficar chocada: um dia antes, Shara a tinha beijado na boca sem maiores explicações. Decidida a encontrá-la para tirar a história a limpo, Chloe logo se vê em uma busca bastante inusitada: Shara espalhou vários cartões pela cidade, dando pistas sobre o seu paradeiro e revelando uma personalidade até então desconhecida — e que pode mudar completamente os planos de Chloe.

Eu beijei Shara Wheeler

From the New York Times bestselling author of One Last Stop and Red, White & Royal Blue comes a 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 the puritanical administration of 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.

I Kissed Shara Wheeler

Mey-Thip Mortensen

I learned that a lot of us—a lot more than I thought—are doing whatever it takes to survive in a place that doesn't feel like it wants us. I learned that survival is heavy on so many of us. And on a personal level, I realized I'd gotten so used to that weight, I stopped noticing how much of myself Id dedicated to carrying it.

It's a prom night they never had, and she's found the only person like her in a small town the size of the world, and they're alone in a quiet room kissing in front of God and everybody.

Shara doesn't throw things away because they mean nothing to her. She throws things away because they mean too much. 

In front of the mirrors in the girls' bathroom, Chloe leans over the sink to fix the tip of her eyeliner wing while Shara perches on the next one.

"What brand of eyeliner do you use?" Shara asks. 

"Why?" Chloe says, turning to her. "Do you want to try it?" 

"I can put it on for you," Chloe says. "Come here." 

"Im good, actually," Shara says, jumping down. She tries to make a haughty exit. 

I went to a party witha bunch of people I didn't know, and someone put stars around my eyes, and I noticed stuff about my face I never noticed before. I saw myself in the rearview mirror of a person I've loved since I was thirteen, and I felt endless. Like, Holy Spirt endless. Maybe that’s what it means to feel like myself.

he’s like, hold up🤨🖐️ what do you mean by that?

"Okay, but I feel like that too, and I’m not nonbinary." 

There's the slightest change in Ash's face. "What do you mean?”

How can that tbe possible, to feel estranged from a place where everyone loves you? To owe your life to a place and still want to run? I've been trying and trying to figure out what it is about me that makes me feel this way and why it feels so deep and so big that it must be most of me, the skin stretching between my knuckles and across my shoulders and then the bones under them too. 

they are so fucking funny 😭 i’m not even over exaggerating, they make me laugh so goddamn hard

"You're always in my shit! Every time I go to Shara's house, there's Rory in his window like a fucking Elf on a Shelf. You're always just—just there.”

 "I live there! I'm allowed to be at my house!"

they are like SO gonna end up together, gay bitches smh

He crosses back toward Ace, his hip brushing Rory's knees as he passes. Rory absently reaches you tried down to touch his own knee as he watches.

she's cycled through a half dozen different lesbian aesthetics trying to figure out which one was her.

Lindsay

I learned that a lot of us— a lot more than I thought— are doing whatever it takes to survive in a place that doesn’t feel like it wants us. I learned that survival is heavy on so many of us. And on a personal level, I realized I’d gotten so used to that weight, I stopped noticing how much of myself I’d dedicated to carrying it.

I think a lot about the movie Tremors, starring Kevin Bacon. It’s about a bunch of rednecks fighting giant sandworms in the desert. In the first twenty minutes, Kevin Bacon finds some guy’s hard hat on the ground full of brains, because the director needs the viewer to see the brains, and Kevin Bacon has to be the one who sees it because he’s the star of the movie. But in the real world, if you happened to see somebody’s brains by accident, it would mess you up. The whole movie would be about the fact that you saw somebody’s brains.

 the time the average Willowgrove student is my age, that feeling you felt when you saw or heard something really bad might not be such a big deal anymore. It’s just finding the brains. It’s the bad thing that had to happen to move the plot forward. You’re so busy shooting sandworms with an elephant gun that you’re not even thinking about the brains, even though they’re what scared you enough to go get an elephant gun in the first place. But when you’re in high school— when you’re only twenty minutes into the movie— the brains are everything.

Whenever I think about God’s plan for my life, I think it’s to keep some kids from seeing the brains. Or at least showing them something in the desert that isn’t brains. A cool cactus, maybe. I don’t know. Metaphors are hard. I’m not the literature teacher.

The way Willowgrove has always worked, from what Chloe has seen and heard, is that there are enough students comfortable with the way things are to create the feeling that you’re the only one who doesn’t belong. It can be hard, when all the rules claim to be good and moral and godly, to feel like you can challenge them without admitting something bad and wrong about yourself. And if you can get past that, it’s a free- fall into small- town gossip, and you never come out the other side with all your best intentions intact.

“If the girl’s going to end up with a dude who’s a monster,” Chloe says, “it needs to be—”

“Phantom,” Georgia finishes for her as they head outside, because she’s heard it five hundred thousand times.

“Monster on the outside, but on the inside, he cares about her career goals!” Chloe says. “Call me old- fashioned, but a man’s place is in the basement, preparing vocal exercises for his more talented wife.”

While she does like boys, she generally finds the traits of a compelling villain— arrogance, malice, an angsty backstory— tedious in a man. Like, what do hot guys with long dark hair even have to be that upset about? Get a clarifying shampoo and suck it up, Kylo Ren. So your rich parents sent you to magic camp and you didn’t make any friends. Big deal.

Gloria 💖

“Shara slips the necklace under the neckline of her dress and straightens her shoulders, and Chloe realizes this is Shara when nobody's looking. Born so smart and so curious and so fucking proud that not even Jesus could convince her she was wrong. Saved by God first and her God complex second Going through hell and painting pink nail polish over it.”

Emma Wolfe

What does it mean??? Shara Wheeler is the most tragic heterosexual to ever cram herself into a Brandy Melville crop top. 

Julie Wagner

Julia Rutgers

Rachael Bahr

Emily Klo

Cute and cheesy sapphic love story. I found it very predictable in some ways but there are some parts that even brought me into tears when realizing the similarities between some of the characters and I. Would recommend if you are looking for a cute romance 

mari

Malia

LOOK okay, i WANT to love it. you have NO idea how much i want to love it. its academic rival to lovers YA that 1) sets in a small town and has religious trauma as a theme, 2) written by an author who everyone sings praises for, and 3) its sapphic. its hard enough to find sapphic medias, let alone the one thats has all the reason for me to like it?

but it turns out... the academic rival slash enemies-to-lovers just dont make me feel connected as much? like it misses something, a stage where they at least become friends for a bit. and i cant seem to like the main character that much... too bad :/ rory and smith are cute and ash is such a great nonbinary representation though.

akynn 

I tore through this and almost cried multiple times. I wish I had this book when I was a little younger!! 5 fucking stars

(Actually, I wish we'd gotten a little more of the Christian Feelings but that might also have punched me too hard)

Julie Rubens

The message behind this was really beautiful and I loved the ending a lot! It’s such an important story to tell. 
I did however find the storyline a bit boring and I honestly wasn’t that invested in it.
Would definitely recommend it though, because it was still a nice book!

Kendall McClain

Gay academic rivals<3 so adorable, definitely Casey McQuistons best!

Tatiana

destiny

this was insanely dramatic but i had so much fun 

also do people talk like that off the internet…

oh wow being gay and having religious trauma

rita

GOODREADS DELETED MY REVIEW NO!! 

4.5 stars, my one critique is that i couldn’t keep track of all the characters because some were 1d and messy and there were so many. the book was super well written, at one point i wanted to stop reading bc i hated shara sm. cried a few times through it, especially the acknowledgements (not really the book though) and the part about shara letting go. the second half of this book is perfection!! the beginning was eh and i didn’t really care about / sort of lost interest ? in actually finding shara during the middle of the book. rory and smith were written so well, i didn’t see them coming but they’re perfect!! the burn pile notes was a nice addition but it made me sad that they weren’t really … looked at? like idk i wouldn’t burn my mom’s first day of school note or a random essay my teacher accidentally gave me. i would probably take it home and show my brother or something ! i don’t know! anyway. chloe please teach me how to study! loved this book queerness is so beautiful! i need to buy this book so i can annotate every thought i have and reread it whenever and bookmark every single page. 

i expected it to be more of a romance (which the 2nd half definitely was) which might be why i didn’t like the first half as much? i should stop going into books with expectations about anything tbh it makes it a lot more enjoyable. anyway!!! loved this book so so much i need to reread it now that i’ve read it once so i can understand everything in context! love love love 

reading queer books makes me never want to read a straight book again LMAO regardless we move
pg 269,282, 305-306 (shara ur so real), 311, 332, (or 311-332? instructions unclear), 347-351

Hershelle Villanueva

the tension build-up was done undeniably great and i was just rooting for them to confess to each other the whole time!! the supporting characters were very endearing too but i just hoped chloe and shara had more moments together... i have to say i still love 'one last stop' more but nevertheless i still liked this

Kristin Boren

There was a point in this book where I was so furious with both Chloe and Shara I didn't think I'd recover. It got better. Being a teen is hard. Maybe I need a break from YA

Ivy 

3.5 stars 
A bit too many Disney Channel Original vibes even for a ya novel... but cute overall.

i’m sorry but i couldn’t stand the main character. she was insufferable, the book literally starts with breaking into someone elses house for a very poor reason. i hate the way how she thinks and i also hated the “rivalry” between her and Shara. only great characters were Ash, Smith and Rory.

Nikola

I kissed Shara Wheeler

Teeeeeesha

This book has everything. A raging bisexual with an enemies to lovers arc with her academic rival and two other really dumb boys who together with the said bisexual go try to find the girl with clues.

Julia

Was mentally checked out for the entirety of this but I guess good for the kids for having books like these nowadays.

So cute. So gay 🤩. 1/2 star lost because some parts drug on imo. overall great book would recommend. 🫶🫶🫶

Raigan Correll

From the New York Times bestselling author of One Last Stop and Red, White & Royal Blue comes a fierce, funny, and frank young adult novel about breaking the rules, getting messy, and finding love in unexpected places.

Cloudface

I think this is my favorite of Casey McQuiston’s books so far. I was skeptical when I saw it was YA, but I could not put this book down and had such a good time reading it. All the side characters were full of life and charm, and I loved seeing everyone in this book grow as people. Chloe was a great protagonist; even though she was extremely self absorbed for most of the book, you could see why she got that way and she had some good development by the end. Overall, a great YA debut and I can’t wait to read Casey McQuiston’s next book.

Victoria

That was a wild, weird ride. Absolutely enjoyed!

Anna Oeltjenbruns

Anja Hansen

Couldn’t help but compare this to Paper Towns while reading and felt weird about it being acknowledged in the story. I didn’t really vibe with this, the whole mystery aspect with the clues and such were a bit too convenient and unbelievable. And the relationship was way too toxic and obsessive for me to root for it.
I was holding out hope for the ending to redeem the book, but it fell flat and left me disappointed. It felt very rushed, and I would have liked to see it more developed.
This review is definitely too harsh, but I really didn’t care for the characters or the story. Also, I’m not super in the mood for ya contemporaries atm, so that’s on me for picking this up at a bad time. McQuiston’s other books are great though, and I’ll read anything they write in the future.

Eu beijei Shara Wheeler

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