Young Fools by Liza Palmer

Young Fools by Liza Palmer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thank you to Lake Union Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!
----------
Helen Hicks may not have any friends, but she does have a plan: prove her doubting, elitist parents wrong and become a literary sensation before she turns thirty. When she’s finally accepted into the esteemed Hayward Writing Intensive at twenty-four, Helen believes she’s right on schedule.

At Hayward, Helen meets Cherry Stewart, a free-spirited, ambitious kid whose eclectic tastes skew far more pedestrian than Helen’s, but as Cherry’s champion and mentor, Helen decides they’ll set the publishing world on fire and go down as one of the literary world’s most iconic duos.

But as Helen turns thirty with no debut novel in sight and a breathtaking case of writer’s block, she is forced to put her dreams on hold. Thinking Cherry shares her sad fate, Helen is shocked to learn that her best friend has not only finished and sold a novel in secret, but even more devastating it’s...genre fiction.

As Helen and Cherry’s yearslong friendship comes crashing down, Helen finally has the clarity and inspiration to take her own art to the next level. It’s going to get personal.
----------
This book gets off to a slow start, and at first I was struck by how very unlikeable I found one of the main characters. I understood that it was kind of the point of the story, but I kept waiting for there to be some kind of redemptive arc. - and I kept waiting...and waiting...and waiting. What I was enjoying in the book was the coming of age story of two young women in a new city as the strove to realize their lifelong dreams. The book felt kind of compulsively readable. In fact, I read most of it in one afternoon because I really was eager to find out just where it was going.

And then suddenly...BAM. There it was. My sticking with it had paid off, and I raced through to the end, finding myself fully satisfied with where the author had taken me, as Helen and Cherry journeyed through young adulthood and into their 40s and we got to see where they ended up in the present day.

View all my reviews