She's a tomboy. He's the boy next door. With three older brothers, Charlotte Reynolds, aka Charlie, has always been more comfortable calling the shots on a basketball court than flirting with the opposite sex. So when her police officer dad demands she get a summer job to pay for the latest in a long line of speeding tickets, she's more than a little surprised to find herself working at a chichi boutique and going out with a boy who has never seen her tear it up in a pickup game. Charlie seeks late-night refuge in her backyard, talking out her problems with her neighbor and honorary fourth brother, Braden, sitting back-to-back against the fence that separates them. Braden may know her better than anyone. But there's a secret Charlie's keeping that even he hasn't figured out-she's fallen for him. 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. On the Fence is a sweet and satisfying read about finding yourself and finding love where you least expect it.
Kasie West always writes really cute stories, and this one is no exception. It wasn't my favorite of her books, but her books are a little like [a:Sarah Addison Allen|566874|Sarah Addison Allen|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1372537232p2/566874.jpg] in that even the things that aren't my favorite are still better than a lot of other books and fun to read.
I think part of the reason I liked some of her other novels better is that I didn't relate to Charlie as much. But all the guys around her were great. I loved her relationships with her brothers. They were funny and sweet and overprotective and I really liked that family dynamic. They were also just good guys so they were fun to read.
I also liked her relationship with Braden, the way they were friends first and how that relationship changed through the story; how Charlie grew as a character through that relationship. I also really liked Charlie's overall evolution - the way she learned to be more dimensional and that it was ok to have a variety of seemingly conflicting characteristics. I think teenage girls get a lot of messages about being one thing or another - intellectual or girlie or a tomboy or athletic - and I liked that this books says you can be several of those things all at once.
I wasn't especially fond of the Evan subplot. I see the role he played in the story and I totally understood why she was interested in him. But he was kind of obviously not as good of a guy as Braden or her brothers.
