Listen to Your Heart Review

Listen to Your Heart – Published 2018

“Talking to other people isn’t Kate Bailey’s favorite activity. She’d much rather be out on the lake, soaking up the solitude and sunshine. So when her best friend, Alana, convinces Kate to join their high school’s podcast, Kate is not expecting to be chosen as the host. Now she’ll have to answer calls and give advice on the air? Impossible.

But to Kate’s surprise, she turns out to be pretty good at the hosting gig. Then the podcast gets in a call from an anonymous guy, asking for advice about his unnamed crush. Kate is pretty sure that the caller is gorgeous Diego Martinez, and even surer that the girl in question is Alana. Kate is excited for her friend … until Kate herself starts to develop feelings for Diego. Suddenly, Kate finds that while doling out wisdom to others may be easy, asking for help is tougher than it looks, and following your own advice is even harder.

Kasie West’s adorable story of secrets, love, and friendship is sure to win over hearts everywhere.” – Goodreads

WHAT I LIKED

So last summer I went on a Kasie West binger. I had read P.S. I Like You after it was featured in one of my Owlcrate boxes, and when I read another, I decided to order the rest on Amazon and read them in one week because they’re just so cute! They’re what I call “Low Stress Reads” and I know I can always recommend them to students because their content is not too intense, they’re fast reads, there’s very limited swearing, and there’s always a happy ending. They’re certainly not edgy books, which my students love, but they’re still devoured because the stories are so darn adorable!

Anyhow, I was very excited to read another Kasie West book, and this one just came out a few weeks ago. Like all Kasie West books, it was well-written and the characters were likable. Kate, or Kat, becomes the co-host of a podcast that is listened to by the entire school body and finds herself crushing on someone she should not be crushing on. Or should she? I liked the podcast element for a YA book because I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts lately myself. Kat is sarcastic, witty and really kind to everyone in her life, excluding her enemy, Frank.

The family dynamic in this book is really interesting because Kate lives basically in a commune with her family as well as her aunts, uncles and cousins. All of Wests books have strong family involvement, it seems.

The boys. If anyone finishes this book, let me know. I really want to talk about the boys and who I was rooting for/predicted Kate would end up with, but I don’t want to spoil anything. So, if you finish this book, or if you’ve read it already, please let me know so we can talk about the boys!

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE

There’s not much to complain about with Kasie West’s books. She’s one of my favorite YA authors, and when I saw in her author’s note that her goal was to get to 10 books (this is #10) I had a slight panic attack thinking she was going to hang up the towel. She is not going to, so I need to find out how to get more involved in the blogging world so I can get an ARC of one of her books someday…

The ending was really, really cheesy. Like really cheesy.

OVERALL RATING

I’m giving it a 5/5 because it’s cute and I enjoyed it.