Kiss Crush Collide

High school junior Leah comes from a quintessentially perfect family: her parents are high school sweethearts, her older sisters are both gorgeous valedictorians, and their family is well-off and well connected. With Leah’s oldest sister, Yorke, recently engaged, and middle sister, Freddie, celebrating her graduation, Leah has had enough of the many expectations that weigh on her. When Leah meets Porter, the handsome bad boy who parks cars at her family’s country club, she sees the perfect opportunity to break away from her family and her tried and true boyfriend, Shane. Writing from Leah’s first-person perspective, debut author Meredith spends an inordinate amount of time on the details of the charmed life Leah chafes against and her romantic yearnings, which are sometimes described in queasy terms (“But what my boyfriend spent more than twelve months achieving inch by inch in my bedroom, Porter had plundered in a few sweaty minutes”). The romance and intrigue will draw readers, but the underdeveloped characters and their flattened emotions drain the story of intensity and sizzle. Ages 13–up. Agent: The Chudney Agency. (Jan.)