Review - "Valley Girls"

Valley Girls
by Sarah Nicole Lemon
rating: ☆☆☆ 1/2
published: 3rd May 2018
spoilers? some

Goodreads

Galley provided by publisher

On the basis of Done Dirt Cheap, I kind of expected more of this book. That's not to say it wasn't good, or that my current fantasy/historical kick isn't behind why I didn't enjoy it as much, but it definitely contributed.

Valley Girls tells the story of Rilla Skidmore, who's sent by her mother to live with her half-sister Thea in Yosemite, after a big fight with her boyfriend. There, she falls in with a group of climbers, including Walker, the apparently gorgeous (seriously, every time Walker's name gets mentioned, you get a sentence, minimum, about how gorgeous he is) Search and Rescue worker. Most of the story revolves around the fact that Rilla wants to reinvent herself to all these new people she's met, and plans on doing so through climbing, specifically through climbing El Capitan, a 3000ft vertical rock formation.

One of my favourite things about Sarah Nicole Lemon's debut was the friendship between the two girls. While this book did have some great girl friendships, it never quite reached the level that Done Dirt Cheap did. And while the sibling conflict occasionally verged on coming to a head and being fully resolved, it never entirely managed it. Instead, it felt somewhat sidelined compared to the romance particularly, and was one of two plotpoints that seemed like it was left hanging. Similarly, there was conflict between Thea and another Ranger in competition for the same job that appeared to also go unresolved.

In contrast, Sarah Nicole Lemon's romances are one of my least favourite things about her books. They're well-written and for the most part well-developed, but they're always between an 18 or so aged girl (17 to start off with in this book) and a 20 something year old boy (20 in this book, so I'll grant you it's better than the 18 and 28 I dealt with in her other book). I mean, what's authors' problems with romances between people of the same age, especially when one of them isn't even legally an adult yet? It just makes me uncomfortable, no matter how much I like how the characters are individually written, and however well the romance is written, because the fact still remains the relationship is imbalanced. At least in this book they didn't stay together.

I think most of what made me not like this so much was the fact that all I want to read right now is fantasy or historical books, so I almost had to force myself through this one. It was one of those where once I got into it it was fine, but finding the motivation to pick it up and get into it was another matter.