Book Review: A Match Made In High School by Kristin Walker

Title: A Match Made In High School

Author: Kristin Walker

Series: none

Publisher: Razorbill

Release Date: Febuary 4 2010

My Source: Library

My Rating: 3/5

When the principal announces that every senior must participate in a mandatory year-long Marriage Education program, Fiona Sheehan believes that her life can’t get any worse. Then she marries her “husband”: Jerky jock Todd, whose cheerleader girlfriend, Amanda, has had it in for Fiona since day one of second grade. Even worse? Amanda is paired with Fiona’s long-term crush, Gabe. At least Fiona is doing better than her best friend, Marcie, who is paired up with the very quiet, very mysterious Johnny Mercer. Pranks, fights, misunderstandings, and reconciliations ensue in an almost Shakespearean comedy of errors about mistaken first impressions, convoluted coupling, and hidden crushes.

The premise of this book is that the principal decides that all the seniors in East Columbus high school have to participate in marriage education, where they are randomly paired with another student and have to "pretend" they're married. They have to do a job together, and make real world money, then multiple it to be their household income. They choose what kind of house and luxuries they want and try to budget their money. As is obvious from the description, everyone gets paired up with the most unlikely people, and many results follower. I thought the marriage "match up" sounded creative and funny. When I heard of this book, I immeadietly thought about how awful and funny something like that would be at my own high school, and so I really wanted to read this book.

The main character, Fiona, I found to be annoying but at the same time I admired her a bit. She didn't care what anybody thought about her appearance or behavior. She was unpopular, but she got paired with a popular jock, Todd. Their "relationship" and feuding was very interesting and I enjoyed reading about it. Fiona was extremely obnoxious and loud, and some of her actions and thoughts drove me a bit crazy sometimes. I found it hard to relate to her. I didn't like her character too much. All the characters were all typical high school stereotypes. Fiona is the girl who doesn't care what others think, Todd is the popular jock, Amanda is his popular girlfriend, Johnny is this mysterious guy who turns out to be really cool, and Gabe is the hot guy who Fiona is obsessed with then realizes he's not that great in the first place. Not the most original characters, but at the same time they did develop (to some degree).

I did enjoy reading this, it was fun light entertainment, but I could recommend other books that I would describe that way that I liked a lot better. The characters in this book weren't that great, even though I loved the plot idea.

Overall, there were things I liked and things I didn't, but I would still recommend it if you like stories set in high school!