Amber
A Match Made in High School is a book that has been on my TBR for the longest time. I went through a slight phase of buying all the cute contemporary books that I could, because they're perfect for summer and binge-reading. I've been in a contemporary mood this month (the weather is starting to pick up so that's the probable cause) and so I went for AMMIHS first of all.
A Match Made in High School is an all right book. It's nothing mind blowing or amazing, and I did have some issues with it. Aside from those issues, which I will go into in a minute, I enjoyed the book as I was reading it, as long as I didn't analyse it too much.
Fiona was a flawed character, both in terms of personality and in terms of character building. I don't know what it was about her, but I didn't think she was the best developed main character I've ever come across. She is shallow, but so are all of the characters in this book, so I can't really fault her for that. And she does realise this and tries to make amends. She's just not a very nice person, really, and as one of the other characters tells her, she doesn't have to try very hard to be "perfect".
I got incredibly annoyed in the beginning because I wasn't a fan of Todd at all. He was an absolute arse, and no amount of banter could have made me like him or ship him with Fiona. In fact, I still want to slap him around the head. But, eventually I saw where the book was going in terms of the ship, and it didn't take the usual predictable path.
To be honest, I found the entire concept a bit far-fetched. Apparently the school board or ministers of eduction or whatever ruled that the seniors have to be paired up and "married" for the year due to rising divorce rates. It was fairly ridiculous. It would have made more sense if the students had been paired up for a class experiment or something. Over here in the UK we have a class once a week called PSCHE, which basically covers all the sex ed and health stuff and real life education young teens would need (and ignores things like taxes and mortgages and insurance and that good stuff). So if Walker had used something similar to drive the plot forward, it would have made more sense to me.
So, what did I like? Some of the banter between Todd and Fiona, even though it made me want to kill the guy and roll my eyes at her. Some of the lines were funny, okay? I'm a complex person. I also liked how easy it was to read. But, ultimately, it was lacking, so I can't give this one a very high rating.
