Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli

I absolutely adored this book! Kate In Wating is a sweet, tender and emotional story about friendship, crushes and high school musicals. I binge-read this cutie, so smitten by the wonderful characters and fun and charming story.

The story follows best friends Kate and Anderson, who do just about everything together; drive to school, audition for the school musicals, even crush on the same guys... But they’d never let anything get between them. At least not until Matt, their mutual summer crush, suddenly starts in their school and stars the musical. The problem is that the crush turns into something much more, for both of them, and that it might end up destroying Kate and Andy’s apparently not-so-indestructible-anymore friendship.

This book is one of Becky Albertalli’s absolute best! It’s up on my top together with Simon vs. It was so cute and fun, and I loved the musical theatre references and all the representation, but most of all the wonderful, fleshed out characters. I loved that the main focus was on the friendship between Kate and Anderson, and not on the romance. I also loved the wonderful group of friends, and the sibling relationship between Kate and her brother Ryan.

I do have two minor complaints though. The first one is the repetitive use of the word, and the perfunctory labeling of characters, as ‘fuckboys’. I don’t mind the word as such, but the excessive use of the word was quite annoying, and it’s not like Becky Albertalli to put labels on people simply based on who they hang out with, so I was quite disappointed by that aspect of the book. My second complaint was that Matt felt a bit flat and one-dimensional as the object for both Kate’s and Anderson’s crushes. He was really sweet, but his character wasn’t explored enough for us readers to really get to know him.

But those minor complaints set aside, this book was such a delightful and entertaining YA rom com with so many other amazing characters to root for! Anderson was such a sweetheart who immediately stole my heart, and Kate was so relatable in her doubts and anxiety and felt so fleshed out and authentic in the way she alternated between being selfish and jealous and being supportive and wanting to put Anderson’s happiness before her own. And her bantering with Noah was so sweet and hilarious! Honestly, I just wanted her to see Noah instead of Matt the whole time… Next to Kate and Anderson he was my favorite character!

All in all, this was such a delightful, sweet, adorkable and wonderful YA story about first love, friendship and stage fright. It was full of humor, witty conversations, hilarious situations and relatable characters with so many flaws, over-the-top feelings and vulnerability, showing the problems to navigate through high school while being true to who you are. Highly recommended!

Rating:
4.5 dazzling stars rounding up to 5

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​Author info:
Becky Albertalli