Title: Love, Life, and the List
Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance
Author: Kasie West
Publisher: HarperTeen
Publication: December 26th 2017
Cover Rating: 5/5
Reading format: Owned Hardback
Love, Life, and the List by Kasie West is the first book in her new companion romance series. This first book we are introduced to Abby and Cooper. These guys have been best friends for a very long time and this book is about their relationship and how it could possibly turn into a love story.
Abby is our protagonist. She is an artist and we get to watch her progress in her artistic abilities throughout this book. Her art is actually the reason for the "List" portion of the title. She attempts to get her art in a gallery exhibit in order to apply for this special school but she is turned down because her art lacks heart. So Abby comes up with this list in order to better experience life and that is pretty much what drives this story. Oh, and her more than friends feelings she has for her best friend Cooper.
Cooper is the other half of this duo, technically is a quad but 2 of their friends are off doing things for the summer. He is a pretty standard guy, is described as having a surfer boy look and his main hobby consists of riding a deathtrap in races. It seems like Cooper really values his friendship with Abby, even sort of considers her his good luck charm during his races, yet he keeps looking for love in other places.
Abby tries to accept that Cooper doesn't share her feelings but it gets harder and harder until the point where Abby needs to tell him flat out how she feels but that will only complicate her already difficult life more.
I really like how Kasie West seems to be able to add these deeper levels to her books. At first, it seems like her books are just going to be these light, fluffy romances but she always adds these really relatable/realistic situations that make her books so much more than a romance. I cannot recommend her books enough.
This book really had me feeling a lot of different ways. But when Cooper did THE THING HE DID and pretty much broke Abby's heart and then that lead to this huge spiral downward for a lot of things, oh man, I wanted to beat that boys butt so badly. All because he couldn't see that a girl was trying to ruin his friendship. Cooper.... You infuriated me.
In the end, Kasie West scared me with this book! I didn't think things were going to turn out so great and that would have been a big change considering how all of her other books have ended but luckily things turned out to be pretty good and this book even made me flipping cry. IT MADE ME CRY. Actual tears came out of my eye holes. Best friend love stories always get me. Always.
Overall, I gave the book 5/5 stars.
Side note: As I was editing this review and making sure it made sense I noticed something that is kind of conspiracy theoryish. This is not spoilers, BTW. But the book centers around Abby art and the fact that she is trying to get her art shown at a gallery exhibit. But her art lacks HEART. I find it kind of funny that if you take away art from heart you end up with HE. She is missing Cooper from her life and without him, her ART will never have HEART. I just thought that was so interesting. I know that probably isn't how the author thought of it but hey, you have to have fun when reading, right?
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