Arc courtesy of netgalley

The Holloway Girls is the punch in the gut I didn’t know I needed. The moral of the story is don’t kiss someone if you don’t mean it or it could have dire consequences. Who hasn’t kissed someone and didn’t mean it? Who hasn’t at some point suffered from or caused someone harm because of meaningless kissing? Throw in some magic and some family drama and you have a wonderful book that you can truly get lost in. 

Remy is a Holloway and about to enter her kissing season. Her family has a book of luck, their magic Bible, that documents their family experiences. Kisses from Holloway girls bring luck, but break the rules of the season and it can bring curses. 

Remy kisses a long time crush and it goes badly. He gets injured, his dad moves away, and he has to repeat a class for the summer. 

Remy and her sister Maggie gets new neighbors, Tobin and Juliet, that is where everything starts to change.

I don’t know why but as I read this book I kept being reminded of Louise Rennison and the Angus Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging books. Hannah, the mean girlfriend/ex of Isaac, the guy Remy kisses, is a lot like Lindsey who is such a bully to Georgia Nicholson. Tobin reminds me of Dave the laugh but with the edge of Robbie the musical heartthrob. Rom-com heaven is how I would describe this book. 

One of my favorite aspects of the book is Remy herself who is a wonderful narrator and her inner voice is one I have been needing for ages. She is in an identity crisis and much like Georgia, must do weird things to try to figure out who she or who she is not. I also enjoy Maggie, her sister and their dynamic. I am pleased that they had a realistic and complicated relationship. Maggie, being bisexual offers readers diversity and representation in the story. These aspects made the story more enjoyable and were not thrown in just to be inclusive. 

Overall I would rate it a solid 9/10. This would be great for high school book clubs. You can buy this book June 7th!! Pre-order now!! 

This was very suspenseful. I was a little thrown off by some of the pacing. The inciting incident didn’t happen until Chapter 11 and once this occurred the pace picked up. There were some twists and turns that were unexpected but my main criticism is that there were so many unlikable characters. I didn’t want to root for anyone at times. The mean girls were super mean, the nice girls weren’t really actually nice. The one person I ended up liking I didn’t really get to know as well because we spend the majority of the book with characters who are mean or getting fooled by kind of nice characters who aren’t actually nice. Sometimes, I just really wanted to scream at Lia to call her mom. Why suffer at Draycott? Why deal with these fake rich people? (just being honest)

I felt like I needed one character that seemed more stable and wasn’t going to pull the rug out from under me… (We need a Ron Weasley). I personally needed an anchor in the tumultuous sea…anything really…even a Neville will do. I felt Lia’s pain and suffering. She had a lot of depth as a character but many times seemed to be an anti-hero. Bad decisions were had by all. Very bad decisions. Yes, teens make mistakes but these mistakes were ruin your whole future sort of mistakes. I’m glad this wasn’t one of those books that put me on a rollercoaster just drop me off at fairytale land and be happily ever after. The ending was realistic. I didn’t like it, but I’m also grateful for it. Overall, I’m conflicted. It was good, but I’m not sure I enjoyed it.

For any teachers out there, there are curse words, drugs/drug dealing, and major bullying in this book.