05.17.2021 ONLY THE PRETTY LIES BY Rebekah Crane @Tlcbooktours

Publisher : Skyscape (May 1, 2021)
Language : English
Paperback : 271 pages
ISBN-10 : 1542019664

A young love story about breaking painful legacies by the author of The Upside of Falling Down.


Convention doesn’t carry much weight in Alder Creek. It doesn’t in Amoris Westmore’s family either. Daughter of a massage therapist and a pothead artist, inheritor of her grandmother’s vinyl collection, and blissfully entering her senior year in high school, Amoris never wants to leave her progressive hometown. Why should she?

Everything changes when Jamison Rush moves in next door. Jamison was Amoris’s first crush, and their last goodbye still stings. But Jamison stirs more than bittersweet memories. One of the few Black students in Alder Creek, Jamison sees Amoris’s idyllic town through different eyes. He encourages Amoris to look a little closer, too. When Jamison discovers a racist mural at Alder Creek High, Amoris’s worldview is turned upside down.

Now Amoris must decide where she stands and whom she stands by, threatening her love for the boy who stole her heart years ago. Maybe Alder Creek isn’t the town Amoris thinks it is. She’s certainly no longer the girl she used to be.

“Inspired by a true event, Crane (The Infinite Pieces of Us, 2018) earnestly explores how silence perpetuates racism and what it means to be antiracist…With countless quotable lines like ‘Love is a human right, not a reward for good behavior,’ and timely antiracism discussion, this is a YA novel with love and substance.” ―Booklist (starred review)

“A naïve girl is forced to reconcile truths she thought she knew with the reality of the boy she loves. A romance that tackles serious issues…” ―Kirkus Reviews


MY REVIEW:

I had been a fan of Rebekah Crane's writing, and this current installment explores timely themes about racism and how it is to be an antiracist.

Crane was able to tackle sensitive issues about racism and privilege in an idyllic small town setting and what was buried just beneath the surface. I found the writing timely and thought provoking. The character arc and growth was one that I enjoyed reading about in this story.

The writing was an easy read, fast paced and very hopeful despite the heavy themes, all the while remaining uplifting and positive.




AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT:

Rebekah Crane is the author of The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland and other young-adult novels. She found a passion for this genre while studying secondary English education at Ohio University. She is a former high school English teacher, a yoga instructor, and the mother of two girls. After living and teaching in six different cities, Rebekah finally settled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to write novels and work on screenplays. She now spends her days tucked behind a laptop at seventy-five hundred feet, where the altitude only enhances the writing experience.