Review: You Should See Me In A Crown

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*sighs contentedly* See, the advantage of working from home is being able to just sit down and read through a book like this!

Sometimes you come across a book that just makes you happy, and this is one of those books. It's one of those books where just for a moment, everything is right with the world and it makes you believe that stories like this can happen outside of the pages of a book, too.

Liz Lighty has a dream, a dream she's held tight to her chest ever since she was a little girl. She's going to go to the school of her dreams and then go to med school, and be the person that it seems society expects her not to be.

That dream shatters when she finds out that she hasn't won the scholarship that she was counting on. Now she has to come up with a plan... And what a plan it is!

With her friends by her side, she ignores that she is dead last in the race for prom queen and decides to take her school by storm. Along the way she meets Mack, the cute new girl who distracts her more than she should - and also runs into Jordan, former friend turned into someone she actually resents. It's a story of a queer black girl finding her voice and growing into who she is.

This book has all of the drama and hijinks that you would expect from a story about a bunch of teenagers on the cusp of going off into the world, and with that comes conflict and more than a few clashes between Liz - who she really is - and what those around her expect. There are also a few turns that may surprise you!

I enjoyed the fact that the people in this book were allowed to be real - fully rounded with faults and fears, not just fill in the blank tropes for the main character to bounce off of. It gives our character room to be imperfect and grow herself, and I appreciated that. Sometimes you finish a book and you're left with the impression that it's just fluff, but that wasn't the feeling I got here.

Just a really fun and sweet book and definitely one I'd recommend.

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