Although this book is enjoyable at times, I wouldn’t recommend it for people who roll their eyes at every cliche and trope…. there’s a lot of them. Imagine every possible classic trope centered around a tomboy, because they’re all in this book.
Synopsis:
“For sixteen-year-old Charlotte Reynolds, aka Charlie, being raised by a single dad and three older brothers has its perks. She can outrun, outscore, and outwit every boy she knows—including her longtime neighbor and honorary fourth brother, Braden. But when it comes to being a girl, Charlie doesn’t know the first thing about anything. So when she starts working at chichi boutique to pay off a speeding ticket, she finds herself in a strange new world of makeup, lacy skirts, and BeDazzlers. Even stranger, she’s spending time with a boy who has never seen her tear it up in a pickup game.
To cope with the stress of faking her way through this new reality, Charlie seeks late-night refuge in her backyard, talking out her problems with Braden by the fence that separates them. But their Fence Chats can’t solve Charlie’s biggest problem: she’s falling for Braden. Hard. She knows what it means to go for the win, but if spilling her secret means losing him for good, the stakes just got too high.”
Charlie embodies EVERY SINGLE possible trope you could imagine. She has older sporty brothers, she hates makeup, she loves sports, etc. Her “character development” is her being introduced into all the more girly tropes. It’s really disappointing since most of the book is split between her learning how to do makeup and her living in a love triangle.
There were maybe two things I actually really enjoyed in this book. The first was Charlie’s relationship with her brothers. She’s close with them and the humor that came from their banter was enough to get my through the book. The other being that I thought Charlie and Braden had a pretty cute relationship! It took me a long time to ever care about their relationship but after a while I jumped on board.
On the other hand, all the characters felt flat. They aren’t three dimensional AT ALL. Charlie was as deep as the term “tomboy” besides for her dormant backstory that wasn’t very fleshed out. Although it was established that Braden had a rough home life that isn’t very fleshed out either and his personality didn’t really feel like, how do I say this nicely? Didn’t feel like it really existed. Her three brothers never got definite traits other than that they flirt and play sports. None of them felt real or like they had words of their own outside of what Charlie told us. The dad isn’t around much of the book so, shocker, he wasn’t very fleshed out either. Big sigh here, none of the characters felt like people.
The love triangle in this book was a big eye roll in itself and felt thrown in there at an attempt to have a few different plot lines. It was unnecessary and those awkward scenes and conversations caused by it could have been filled with more brotherly bonding or… anything else.
My final complaint is what the book is titled for. Charlie and Braden’s fence chats weren’t great. At the beginning they were kinda cute but closer to the end is was the same formula everytime:
Braden’s opionon + Charlie disagreeing = Charlie storming into back into her house
The book wasn’t BAD but it was very different from all of Kasie West’s past books and seemed to lack something most of the others have. It was enjoyable enough and would be perfect for someone reading for pure enjoyment or someone who is trying to escape the grips of a reading slump.
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