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A review by zinelib
How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
In this girl-gets-loses-gets back girl new adult novel, the lead characters are Nerds. The meet cute is actually a meet hostile, in that Shani and her mom hit May with their car. May isn't injured, but she's very not cool about the incident.
Shani is spending the winter break of her freshman year at Binghamton in Washington, DC in a fish fossil lab. She's fresh off a breakup with her first girlfriend. She's not out to her mom yet, so is mean to her because she can't talk about what she needs to share. May is staying with her dad, a TV weatherperson and being mean to him because he neglects her.
The two meet up when Shani takes a roommate's dog-walking job over Christmas. Shani and May are both Jewish--and both love Christmas music, which, ugh. Their love story is cute, and unlike in a lot of teen/new adult romances, both of them are flawed.
Shani is spending the winter break of her freshman year at Binghamton in Washington, DC in a fish fossil lab. She's fresh off a breakup with her first girlfriend. She's not out to her mom yet, so is mean to her because she can't talk about what she needs to share. May is staying with her dad, a TV weatherperson and being mean to him because he neglects her.
The two meet up when Shani takes a roommate's dog-walking job over Christmas. Shani and May are both Jewish--and both love Christmas music, which, ugh. Their love story is cute, and unlike in a lot of teen/new adult romances, both of them are flawed.
May turns on a cooking show where children sabotage each other to win college scholarships, because we live in a broken country where our kids need to compete to afford higher education. We get extremely sucked in, booing when a kid we don't like steals aged cheddar from a kid we do.