A book about radio? Sign me up!

Okay I have always found Kasie West's book in the middle. She writes nicely, her characters are not over the top, but the romance almost always falls flat for me. What I do appreciate about her is that she always does something new with her book. They make me feel giddy. Once you put her books down, you can see she wrote it with heart.

LTYH follows a story of Kate whose family owns a boating business at a lake and she is always at odds with this rival family son Frank. She gets roped into the school's broadcast club auditions by her best friend Alana. Eventually Kate becomes the main co host and slowly starts enjoying this, despite her earlier reluctance. Kate starts to receive these calls from Deigo who asks her for relationship advice. Initially she think he likes Alana but things are a little different that that. Without spoilers, lets dive into the things I liked and what not.

Likes:

1. The friendship between Alana and Kate is realistic. They have their ups and downs, but at the end of the day, they are here for each other. I enjoyed their dynamics a LOT. More focus on fictional friendships please.

2. The family feud dynamic between Kate and Frank. This is super fresh and their progress is endearing. Frank's sarcastic comebacks gave me life. This subplot made the book VERY interesting to read. I was low key shipping these two characters and despite my unhappiness for the ending, I still love their scenes a lot.

3. Focus on radio. Not many YA books are doing this. Okay, let me explain why I liked this aspect a lot. When I was young, I used to listen to radio A LOT. I would often plug in a late night show and sleep. So yes, radio is a sentimental value to me, and holds a lot of sweet nostalgia. More radio inspired YA books this way please!

I wasn't the biggest fan of romance. Unlike the secondary relationships, the main romance felt super flat to me. In fact I think we could have done without a romantic arc at all, the platonic relationships were sweet enough to feed the book. Overall, this was a solid read, the writing is super good and Katie West knows how to write real teenage characters. If you like simple, sweet YA high school romances, then this is your cup of tea.