Book Review – ‘Listen to Your Heart’ by Kasie West

Worrying West fare….

Genre: Y/A, Contemporary, Romance

No. of pages: 336

From Goodreads:

Talking to other people isn’t Kate Bailey’s favorite activity. She’d much rather be out on the lake, soaking up the solitude and sunshine. So when her best friend, Alana, convinces Kate to join their high school’s podcast, Kate is not expecting to be chosen as the host. Now she’ll have to answer calls and give advice on the air? Impossible.

But to Kate’s surprise, she turns out to be pretty good at the hosting gig. Then the podcast gets in a call from an anonymous guy, asking for advice about his unnamed crush. Kate is pretty sure that the caller is gorgeous Diego Martinez, and even surer that the girl in question is Alana. Kate is excited for her friend … until Kate herself starts to develop feelings for Diego. Suddenly, Kate finds that while doling out wisdom to others may be easy, asking for help is tougher than it looks, and following your own advice is even harder.

Another cute tome from Kasie West. While I like light romance-centric contemporaries which I can digest in a day, I feel like West’s writing is suffering as the last number of her novels have had my excitement wanning. The witty comical banter, the quirky characters, the angst; all these elements seem to be dialled down or completely absent. Now her books read like a direct to tv film for the Hallmark Channel. Predictable, cute, but overall, forgettable.

I’m hoping West starts to stretch her story-telling skills, because the first few novels of hers that I had read started on a trajectory that was headed for greatness. Rom-coms with style and kitsch. Those were the stories I indulged in and could see on the big screen of theatres.

Kate as the protagonist for ‘Listen to Your Heart’ is an adorable clueless teen. A bit too vanilla. No streak of rebelliousness or daring, no style, just an obedient workhorse teen from a big family. And there’s nothing wrong with that… just that there’s nothing particularly interesting about that either. To be honest, I had to flip through the book again to refresh my memory of her name after completing it the day before… that’s how memorable she was. Her character arc consisted of uncovering some misunderstandings and obtaining some courage to explore the world outside of her Lakeside community.

Her best friend Alana, had a bit of sass to her, and was the most interesting character from the novel. She was competitive, manipulative, and daring – now there’s a character I want to read more about. But even her execution by West was somewhat lacklustre.

Love interests Diego and Frank were on the same scale as Kate and Alana. Where Diego was fairly vanilla and uninteresting and Frank gave attitude and a stuck-up rebellious streak, I found myself wishing for more tension or some event to add something more to the plot.

One of the redeeming features of ‘Listen to Your Heart’ is the slow burn, understated narrative style. It’s as relaxed as the summer locale of the Lake. It really made me feel like I was on holiday – but again, I wanted more substance. The role of family – that of Kate’s extended family, Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins – is integrated well into the storyline. It had that feeling akin to Jenny Han’s writing with a sense of love, duty, and safety all rolled up into the home-life that is hard to replicate. Though it still needs a bit of work to have that resounding utz of Han’s writing.

I think I’d only recommend this to West fans – there are better quaint contemporaries that pack a punch out there.

Overall feeling: A quick easy read that is saccharine sweet, but ultimately lacking substance.

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