I liked revisiting her relationship with Tessa, which is still delightful. The way she relates to her family – her parents, loving but demanding, and especially her brother Wally – is perfectly pitched. She is relatable, thoroughly sympathetic, and I sense many Black/BIPOC teens will see themselves in her easily.
I loved the way Lenore looks at the world – her frankness, her uncerrainty, the way she’s trying to ford her way to a future she loves. It has a beautiful way of capturing life in a loving family that understands what it’s like to battle against pressures – self-made and societal – and to try to figure out who you are as a human being. Will she be inspired to pick a major? And is her relationship with Alex the real deal, or will it be consigned to the dustbin all of her high school relationships tumbled into. As they tour Europe together though, Lenore’s feelings begin to shift. Their parents become friendly, which means more hang-out time lies ahead of them. Alex has his future mapped out, his whole life planned – and Lenore is irritated by his composure, but she doesn’t learn that he’s trying to get over a heartbreak of his own until later. Under all of this pressure, Lenore finds herself roped into hanging out with Alex Lee, whom she is instantly annoyed by. Lenore’s friends are breaking away and becoming couples, leaving her alone on the outside, and her parents want her to declare a major by the time they arrive back home. They stand on the brink of college (Lenore is headed to NYU with an undeclared major, to the concern of her parents who demand she decide because Black students don’t have the luxury of dabbling about due to the prejudice of others ) and the edge of a family cruise to the Mediterranean adulthood and academia beckon but are held at bay by summer break.
She’s the opposite of her starry-eyed friend Tessa (The central character of Happily Ever Afters, the first book in the series), who thinks romance, real romance, is right around the corner for Lenore. The delightful Lenore Bennett is brilliant, talented and no romantic – though she wants to be in love, has tried to be in love, and has lost repeatedly along the way. One True Loves is sweet, honest and touching in its portrayal of that space between being a teenager and becoming an independent college student.
0 kommentar(er)
