A Match Made in High School Review

A Match Made in High School by Kristin Walker

Publisher: Razorbill

Release date: February 4, 2010

Source: Around the World Tours

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.

Review:

A Match Made in High School turned out a little differently than I expected. It was a fun, enjoyable read, but there were a lot of sub plots going on that were very important. A lot of my feelings on the characters changed throughout the book. You never knew who was suddenly going to turn nice or who was going to turn around and stab you in the back. I really enjoyed Fiona and Todd’s pranks and it was fun trying to guess what they were going to cook up next. At first, when Todd did his first prank on Fiona, I wondered what she would do. I didn’t know how she would react at all. I was pleasantly surprised to see Fiona’s personality was a lot different than I originally suspected. She could totally stand up for herself! There were so many characters in the book I liked- Todd, Johnny, Sam, and even a bunch of the cheerleaders. On thing that disappointed me was that some of the characters kind of faded into the background- Sam, Fiona’s parents, and even Gabe. The ending with Gabe was such a surprise! I’m really glad everything didn’t turn out as I expected.

* Highlight to read, contains spoilers for those who haven’t read the book*

The ending was really good, and I really liked that Gabe got his comeuppance. I hated how he turned out, such a jerk! It wouldn’t have been as cool if Johnny punched him in the face. Fiona really needed to do it to let go off all her anger at him and everyone else.

* End of spoiler*

In addition to the characters I also really liked the plot. It was original and something that got me thinking about how kids at my school would react if we suddenly had to do this course. Probably about the same way Fiona’s did. I don’t think I could deal with being fake-married to someone for an entire year. The course seems like it almost consumes your whole life. Fiona was a super cool main character. Her narration was fresh, fun, and humorous. Her pranks and jokes were fun to read about and her descriptions of everything were really fun. Kristin Walker created a fabulous main character who I would love to read more books about.

Finally, every high schooler should read this book. It shows that anything is possible and not to judge someone from the outside. Also, how what a different a year makes. So much of Fiona’s life changed in such short amount of time. She faced losing friends, protesting parents, angry guidance counselors, cute boys, mean boys, surprising girls, and everything in between.

Overall: 4 out of 5 stars