P.S. I Like You
P.S. I Like You by Kasie West is a YA Contemporary Romance novel following Lily Abbott, a junior in high school. Lily is a budding song writer and self-taught guitarist who plans to enter in a song writing contest with a grand prize of $5,000. The only problem, she has yet to finish writing a song, much less one worth submitting in a competition. In the midst of this personal dilemma, Lily is the second oldest of four children in a family that she personally considers odd and eccentric, but they are all highly creative as her father is a skilled carpenter and her mother makes jewelry that she sells at craft fairs. Her oldest sister lives at home and attends college, her younger brothers - ages 7 and 9 are full of energy and life.
Lily’s best friend Isabel is dating Gabriel, who attends another high school, and is intent on setting Lily up. Chemistry is Lily’s most difficult class and in addition to trouble with academics, her nemesis Cade, former boyfriend of Isabel, is ever present with snarky comments towards Lily. Daydreaming during Chemistry, Lily writes the lyric to a song from an obscure band on her desk. The next day, she notices the next line written. Soon, a pen pal relationship begins. At first, Lily thinks her pen pal is another girl in their grade, but based on a few clues, she quickly realizes that it is a boy. The class she dreads most becomes the class she quickly seeks getting to in order to find the secret notes that are passed daily.
Lily prefers to keep her pen pal anonymous, but soon changes her mind. Any perceptive reader will figure it out long before she does, but less astute teen readers will probably be shocked to find out that Cade, her nemesis, is her secret pen pal. When she learns the truth, she is shocked and horrified. She tries to hide her identity, but it becomes increasingly difficult when Cade ends up being her brother’s baseball coach. He is invited to her house for Thanksgiving, it is all she can do to be nice and yet not reveal anything. When she does finally reveal herself, readers learn that Cade knew before she did when he started coaching her brother Wyatt. The details started to add up, but he thought she hated him and vice versa.
In the midst of the saga of the notes and discovering the secret pen pal, Lily is still trying to enter the music contest until she comes home and finds her guitar has been irreparably broken by one of her brothers. Isabel and Lily get in a small fight over Cade, as Isabel used to date Cade. Lily also gets set up with David which results in a few awkward encounters. She gets the courage due to anger to finally ask Lucas, a senior, out. He willingly accepts, but later in another excursion she admits that she asked him out because of her anger with another person.
Teen readers looking for a romance story will find this a clean and fairly mild story. As expected, Lily and Cade do come together at the end and there are a few romantic kisses between them, but nothing further than that and the details are not graphic or overly sensual.
Lastly, Sasha, a classmate who had a crush on Cade, does exact revenge on the both of them in front of the whole school, but what she meant to be embarrassment ultimately turned to build Lily’s confidence in her song writing skills; though both of them were embarrassed and had to work through the situation. In the end, Lily ends up entering the song writing contest with the song she wrote about Cade’s life and his absent father.
Noteworthy Quotes/ Mentions:
Lily jokes a lot about how socially awkward she is. She makes a joke with her friend Isabel that she puts up with her because she isn’t trying to date or kiss her. “‘I’m totally awkward with you but you’re not under pressure to eventually kiss me, so you put up with it’”(8).
Lily is actually a very kind character, despite her frustration and snarky comments towards Cade. When she perceives Cade is picking on a freshman at school, she attempts to step in, but the boy doesn’t run when given the opportunity with her distraction. Additionally, Lily cares for her family and keeps her family obligations. Her family comes before her friends and there is a scene where Isabel tells Lily that while she is disappointed when their plans have to be cancelled, she knows Lily is a good daughter and sister, so she understands. Furthermore, when Lily is upset with her family members and others and doesn’t respond in a kind and loving way, she is eaten up with guilt about it and eventually makes amends.
Isabel wants Lily and her to have a cute tradition like another group of high school girls. Lily tries to fight it a bit, but then they decide their tradition will be to share first thing in the morning whatever was their last thought before bed.
On page 50, Lily worries that if her secret pen pal finds out who she is, then [she] won’t want to be friends with her because she is so weird. This is in the part of the story when she thinks her pen pal is a girl and her sister has been on to her about making more friends, since Isabel is her only friend. In chapter 9, she discovers that her pen pal is a guy.
On page 76 and at other times, Lily is willing to take criticism and consider if what is said about her is true. This often comes from Isabel or Cade. Nevertheless, this is a great quality for character growth in the story, but also for readers that it is important to be introspective at times and to be willing to change things about ourselves that may not be positive traits.
There are a couple mentions of how Isabel “made out” or kissed Cade in the past when they had dated - p. 142,
On page 255, Cade takes Lily to a hotel. She isn’t sure why she is there yet and she makes a comment that she’s “not that kind of girl.” However, the hotel backs up to a golf course and he is taking her there to show her one of his favorite places to go when he needs time to think.
In contrast to Lily’s lively family, Cade’s family life is sad and lonely. He is an only child of divorced parents. His father left and lives in another state. His father barely can remember to call him on his birthday. Cade does make an attempt to reach out to him, but his dad’s response isn’t necessarily the best. Meanwhile, out of anger towards his dad, he did take his step-father’s last name, but he does not like his step-father and feels that no matter what he does, he cannot please him. His mother is mentioned little and is seen as uninvolved.
One of the key misunderstandings between Cade and Lily when they finally talk to one another is that what Cade thinks is helpful to people is not exactly what Lily defines as helpful. His tone and comments come across as sarcastic and mean. “And it was becoming obvious to me that he cared about everybody. He liked to help people, which was the real reason he was sitting in front of me right now” (259).
They are hiding from being found at the hotel in a small storage closet. Lily’s hands are on Cade’s chest. She makes a comment about willing her hands to stay still and not “explore like they were dying to” (262).
When Lily finally is confronted by Isabel and her true feelings for Cade, Isabel tells Lily that it is essentially okay for her to date him. “‘I’ve been selfish, I never had him. Never all the way. I tried to blame that on you, but it wasn’t you. It was us’” (271). She never says what “all the way” is supposed to mean. On page 293, Isabel tells Lily not to ever think about the fact that she had also kissed Cade in the past when they had dated.
On page 289, Lily and Cade kiss for the first time in a moment when all is revealed between them. On page 295 there is also another somewhat passionate kiss between them. On page 319 there is a comment about them making out, but they share a simple kiss.
Overall, this is a clean YA Romance. There isn’t any profanity and nothing sensual in the descriptions. While there are two instances towards the end where Cade is in Lily’s room, the door is open and there aren’t instances where they are trying to sneak away or hide. Not my genre, but of what I have read in this genre, I appreciate Kasie West providing options for YA readers who do what this genre without being overly sexualized or explicit. Lastly, while it is technically recommended for ages 12+ due to the YA genre, I would put it more at 15/16+ just to align more with the age of the characters who are juniors and seniors in high school.
As an extra side note, this one review for this one book by Kasie West is not an endorsement for all other books by this author. A year ago, I began to listen to her novel Places We’ve Never Been and couldn’t get too far before I decided to stop due to the details about an LGBTQ side character that is presented from the very beginning, which wasn’t something I wanted my own daughter to read.
