Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills

Summary from Goodreads:

A contemporary novel about a girl whose high school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream leads her to new friends—and maybe even new love.

The day of the last party of the summer, Claudia overhears a conversation she wasn't supposed to. Now on the wrong side of one of the meanest girls in school, Claudia doesn't know what to expect when the two are paired up to write a paper—let alone when they're both forced to try out for the school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

But mandatory participation has its upsides—namely, an unexpected friendship, a boy band obsession, and a guy with the best dimpled smile Claudia's ever seen. As Claudia's world starts to expand, she finds that maybe there are some things worth sticking her neck out for.

Review:

As I recently said on Goodreads, Emma Mills Is magic. Like if Sarah Dessen and Stephanie Perkins had a YA love child, it would be her. My heart melts just remembering what I put down. I loved this book.

The funny thing is it always takes me a little while to sink into these books. But once, I sink, I can’t manage to ever really escape out of them. I was on the first few chapters for a few days. But, today, on my day off, I just sat and read practically the whole thing –chores be damned. I could not put this book down.

The characters and the dialog just feel so real. They are all flawed in realistic and believable ways. I know and love someone who reminds me so much of Iris. And I saw myself so much in Claudia. To this day, I’m always underselling myself. Because of a few bad experiences, it’s always been super hard for me to believe that I deserve all the good things that I have. I understand not wanting to try something new because a part of you feels like you’re not worth it and it will eventually end because you’re not worth it.

There’s a lot of times in YA books where I get super annoyed with the angsty feelings of the main character. And I can see other readers maybe feeling this way here, but I don’t. I feel like I am Claudia in so many ways –in less brave ways. I wish I had an Iris to point me in the right direction when I was younger.

I also love Claudia’s family and small group of friends. I love that they all play an online game together. I love the sibling relationships. It’s weird saying this, but it’s always so refreshing to see nice, healthy families in YA books. Surprise surprise, a girl can have a lot to figure out and grow up about, while having a nice family supporting her.

I was also an English major. Aka: I love all things Shakespeare. So, having A Midsummer’s Night Dream in the background was pretty amazing. I especially loved how Claudia was able to break down the language for her fellow teens to understand. She ended up becoming a Shakespeare coach, and I loved it. I loved her interpretations of the play. And I loved the juxtoposition of the play with all the drama/romances of reality. That in itself is a lot like A Midsummer’s Night Dream, which had a play within the play –all to do with love, in various forms.

On top of that, one of my favorite tropes is the one where hatred (or a strong dislike) ends in love, or in this case, strong friendship. Iris and Claudia had such a great friendship that started in hate. They were kind of forced together in an assignment, which led to the play, which led to them becoming friends. I loved that Claudia introduced her online game to Iris. And Iris introduced her boy band obsession to Claudia. And neither girl judged the other too strongly for their respective obsessions.

What Mills probably excels at, above all else is her dialog. The snarky commentary and sass to her characters never came off as too much or too cheesy (as tends to happen a lot in YA). It came off as just right. And no two characters sounded the same. Iris’s sassiness was not the same as Claudia’s or Zoe’s. And Gideon is so charismatic and interesting, but not too much that he’s unbelievable. I guess what I’m getting at is that everything felt authentic. And I genuinely felt like I knew these characters like people.

All in all, I loved this. I read most of it in a few hours. I loved the play inside the story. I loved the characters. I loved the romances. I loved the banter and dialog. I loved the family relationships. And basically Emma Mills has proved herself to be a force in the YA contemporary world. I give this a 10/10.