Shuffle, Repeat by Jen Klein (Book Review)

Title: Shuffle, Repeat
Author: Jen Klein
Publication: Random House, Hardcover, 2016
Genre: Young Adult

Plot: June is a high school senior in Michigan who prides herself on her pragmatism and can’t wait for her real life to begin after graduation. Her classmate Oliver is an outgoing football player with his own car. When June’s mother decides they are moving to the outskirts of Ann Arbor, she and Oliver’s mother arrange for Oliver to give June a ride to school every morning. Even detached June can’t help noticing Oliver’s good looks and unassuming charm, and the reader is swooning by page 8. However, as June is dating the (boring) Itch and Oliver the inevitable cheerleader, they ignore any frisson of attraction by debating about the meaning of high school and create a carpool playlist by awarding each other points for winning arguments. Slowly but surely, June and Oliver begin to care about earning the good opinion of the other, and their friendship becomes more important than either is willing to admit...

Audience: Fans of YA authors such as Sarah Dessen, Susane Colasanti, and Maureen Johnson.

My Impressions: There is something immediately appealing about this book. I enjoyed June’s snarkiness and her quirky friends, especially her best friend Shawn who is out and accepted by his peers, and understands June as a best friend should. I liked that the friendship between June’s mother and Oliver’s mother has survived despite their different financial and marital status (and in contrast to June’s and Oliver’s friendship which ended when they were in kindergarten). Oliver’s friend Theo is so awful he is amusing in his own right. He is like every teenage boy you want to run a mile from.

The story is told from June’s point of view but she is not a perfect heroine: she is judgmental and does a poor job figuring out where her loyalties should lie. Oliver’s character is what makes the story so charming; in particular, the way he listens to June, hearing what she says and does not say (even when she is so busy assuming he is a dumb jock that she marvels at his vocabulary). An ongoing issue is that he keeps sharing details of a senior prank with her: each time she is critical of his elaborate plans, and he reluctantly comes to appreciate that she is right and ultimately conceives of a plan that is funny but does not cause gratuitous damage or harm.

The book made me laugh but there were some poignant moments as well, particularly regarding June's relationship with her father.

Mistletoe

Question for the Author: I understand that June is initially reluctant to admit she likes Oliver but I didn’t understand why (once she knows he likes her too) she pretends that tequila and starlight are responsible for her behavior (271-275). Is she unwilling to do a conventional high school romance because of her aversion to high school? Did she think Oliver was on the rebound?

Hydrangeas and lilies

Does she distrust romance in general because of her father’s absence in her life (yet, if so, why did she date Itch – and further, it is recognizing her father’s limitations that seems to set her on the right path at the end)? I just didn’t get the need for the angst at the end.  It seemed manufactured to keep them apart.

Source: I checked out this book from the library, and highly recommend it.

Flower image from https://www.etsy.com/shop/SongsFromTheGarden