Teaser Tuesday: Listen to Your Heart by Kasie West

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Ambrosia of The Purple Booker.
To play along just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Listen to Your Heart by Kasie West.

Listen to Your Heart – Point

If she called me Kat one more time, there would be no mystery as to what my fist would do to her face. Okay, fine, there would be because I’d never punched anyone in my life. My thoughts talked a big game.
— Chapter 7

“I just never thought of him as a guy who held grudges.”
“When pride is involved, people can hold on to a lot of things.”
— Chapter 35

Show of hands who has either serious summer vacation longing and/or a certain song by Roxette stuck in their head right now. My hand is practically tied to the ceiling.
Kasie West has delivered solid and cute YA contemporary high school love stories before, but this one got me in a way I didn’t expect. Not because the others before weren’t entertaining and relatable, but because this one was all of that and then a little more. Kate has a very clear view of what she wants to do with her life, whom she likes and dislikes, what her strengths and weaknesses are, and so on. Until she finds herself almost literally out of her element and has to re-evaluate her perceptions and ideals. Of course, there is a boy involved. But I immensely appreciated how he is so not the centre of attention. Kate is, and her relationship to her home, her people, and her best friend. Even though she is the focal character we actually get to see why she is such a great girl whom someone might want to be friends with … or fall for. She also has flaws, not too few of them, and you’ll possibly end up wanting to shake her for several short-sightedness reasons. It’s all worth it in my opinion for the cuteness and realistic-factor. No romantic solution without a little frustration – in literature. A fun and summery read with all the right ingredients for friendship, family, and love. With the added bonus of character-depth and surprise-emotional-insight. I wish all contemporary love-story-writers took so much care to construct well-rounded and complete character casts.

Summer is officially upon us (apologies for my northern-hemisphere-centric worldview, happy winter to you?). Are you reading more or less during this time of year? Share your reading habits and teasers in the comments!