This YA romance is a great way to start discussions around the topics of race, gender, and stereotypes! The story weaves these into the plot in a great way, and I really enjoyed it!

We meet Amoris, a senior in high school, as she reignites a childhood friendship with Jamison. Jamison just moved back to town, and as they become friends, and their relationship evolves, Amoris has the chance to see racism in ways she never noticed before.

I liked the two characters in this story. Amoris provides the opportunity for the reader to view race through a White lens, while Jamison provides it through a Black one. I really enjoyed the racial discussion, as I think the more we open up and talk about these issues, the more we can learn and do better.

I would have liked to see the Amoris gain a little more awareness of others around her. I do feel like she continued to be self-centered throughout the story. I enjoyed her growth about racial issues, but I think there was more that could have been explored for her.

Overall, I thought this was a good book with a solid romance plot. It is one that YA readers will enjoy!

Where to Find This Book:

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A love story about breaking painful legacies.

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.

Just the Facts:

Only the Pretty Lies by Rebekah Crane
Genre: YA Romance
Page Count: 272 
Publisher: Skyscape 
Pub Date: May 1, 2021

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.

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I was provided a gifted copy of this book for free. I am leaving my review voluntarily.

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