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A review by lesleymay
Most Likely by Sarah Watson
1.0
This book absolutely did not live up to its very intriguing premise.
First, the book is framed horribly. The first 4 pages are the first female president talking to her husband, who has a unique last name. Then the next 98% of the book is standard senior year of high school YA, but the future husband with the interesting last name is also a main character. So the book essentially becomes "who gets the guy?" There is a small twist at the end that changes that up, literally in the last 5 or so pages, and it doesn't matter anymore, because the book is, ya know, over.
All the characters are hard to keep track of (I could follow their storylines, but not which character was which. Was Ava the artist/orphan or the poor movie theater worker?) I wished there was more actual lead up to the becoming of president - it could be literally any of the girls, again, until the last 5-10 pages. And then when you figure it out (because of last names), it jumps back ahead to when she is president, getting sworn in, for a couple pages.
ALSO, is nobody going to talk about how creepy the journalist storyline is? It is completely glazed over in the book. 17 year old Jordan is a high school newspaper journalist, and pretends to be a college graduate-aged journalist so a city council employee will "take her seriously." He's a college graduate, so it's safe to assume 22-25 years old. They go out once that is essentially a date, and again that is a full-fledged date. She likes him because he's an adult and makes her feel like an adult. When she finally admits to him that she will be 18 in a few hours, he ditches (good for him), but then that's it. That's the end of that storyline. Nothing to be like "hey that was gross and she was wrong for thinking that dating older men made her interesting/mature/adult/whatever. Here's why it was gross." Just nothing. Ugh.
First, the book is framed horribly. The first 4 pages are the first female president talking to her husband, who has a unique last name. Then the next 98% of the book is standard senior year of high school YA, but the future husband with the interesting last name is also a main character. So the book essentially becomes "who gets the guy?" There is a small twist at the end that changes that up, literally in the last 5 or so pages, and it doesn't matter anymore, because the book is, ya know, over.
All the characters are hard to keep track of (I could follow their storylines, but not which character was which. Was Ava the artist/orphan or the poor movie theater worker?) I wished there was more actual lead up to the becoming of president - it could be literally any of the girls, again, until the last 5-10 pages. And then when you figure it out (because of last names), it jumps back ahead to when she is president, getting sworn in, for a couple pages.
ALSO, is nobody going to talk about how creepy the journalist storyline is? It is completely glazed over in the book. 17 year old Jordan is a high school newspaper journalist, and pretends to be a college graduate-aged journalist so a city council employee will "take her seriously." He's a college graduate, so it's safe to assume 22-25 years old. They go out once that is essentially a date, and again that is a full-fledged date. She likes him because he's an adult and makes her feel like an adult. When she finally admits to him that she will be 18 in a few hours, he ditches (good for him), but then that's it. That's the end of that storyline. Nothing to be like "hey that was gross and she was wrong for thinking that dating older men made her interesting/mature/adult/whatever. Here's why it was gross." Just nothing. Ugh.