Borrow my Heart by Kasie West Review

 Good Morning Bookish Friends :)

I pray today finds you all doing well, and I'm so thankful you chose to drop on by The Preppy Book Princess today for another book review.

I've been an avid reader for a lot of years, and for a lot of those years young adult fiction was my absolute favorite genre. As a general rule, young adult contemporaries were my favorite novels, and I devoured many, many of these titles over the years.

However, in recent years as I've gotten a lot stricter about the type of materials I'm allowing into my mind, I haven't been reading as many of these novels. I've noticed a downward trend in the content being included, and they are definitely not as clean as they used to be in the past.

One author in the past that I could always count on to deliver swoon worthy, cute and clean young adult romances was Kasie West, and I've devoured a lot of her titles over the years. Unfortunately, I found that last year's release was definitely not as clean as her previous releases, and I ended up feeling a little bit disappointed. You can check out that review here.

However, I still ended up including her 2023 release on my list of my most anticipated releases for 2023, and I was hopeful it would be back to her amazing stories like before.

I hope you'll all keep on reading down below to see if that was the case or not.

Borrow My Heart by Kasie West:

Source: Library

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Publication Date: June 13th, 2023

Genre: Young Adult Fiction/Contemporary

Synopsis:

When a girl overhears a guy getting verbally destroyed by his friends for being catfished, she jumps in to save the day—and pretends to be his online crush. A young adult romance from the critically acclaimed author of Places We've Never Been.

Wren is used to being called a control freak. She doesn’t care; sticking to the list of rules she created for herself helps her navigate life. But when a cute guy named Asher walks through the door of her neighborhood coffee shop, the rulebook goes out the window.

Asher is cute, charming . . . and being catfished by his online crush. So Wren makes an uncharacteristically impulsive decision—she pretends to be the girl he's waiting for to save him from embarrassment. Suddenly she’s fake-dating a boy she knows nothing about. And it’s . . . amazing.

It's not long before Asher has her breaking even more of her own rules. But will he forgive her when he finds out she's not who she says she is? Wren's not so sure. . . . After all, rules exist for a reason.

(synopsis from goodreads)

My Review:

Kasie West has long been my all time favorite young adult author, but her last release wasn't anything like what I expected, and it left me feeling disappointed. I was a little hesitant to pick this one up, as I was scared it was going to go the same direction as the last one. However, I just couldn't resist reading Kasie's new novel, especially since the synopsis and the cover were both downright adorable. I ended up being so thankful I chose to dive into this one, as I felt it was comparable to her earlier swoon worthy and cute contemporaries, and I appreciated that it stayed pretty clean for the majority of the story.

Borrow My Heart has all the light hearted adorable vibes that this author has become known for, and I was definitely here for it. Our protagonist Wren decides to save the day when she overhears a conversation in a coffee shop between two teenage guys whereas one appears to be trying to embarrass the other over his online "girlfriend" refusing to meet him in person. Wren decides on the spot to pretend to be the online girlfriend to help the boy in question, Asher, save face in front of his friend. Only she wasn't quite prepared to the can of worms she's about to open. She wasn't prepared for Asher to be such an awesome person that she wants to get to know more. She wasn't prepared for him to give up his time to volunteer at the animal shelter that's become her pride and joy. And most of all, she's definitely not prepared for the butterflies that seem to emerge every time he comes around her. How can she possibly be falling for this guy when such a big secret lies between them?

However, as much as I loved all the adorable, heartwarming moments included within this one, I also loved how the author also touches on many deeper topics that gave the novel an entirely different feel from her usual style. The story dives deep into dysfunctional families and the corresponding hurt that can develop, the quest we're all on to try and find the place we truly belong, and the dark side of social media and its many devastating consequences on society today.

I came for the adorable romance, I stayed for the wonderful story that captivated my interest, and I loved the additional tidbits about the animal shelter as I'm definitely a huge animal person (especially cats!), and I loved how the adopt not shop message was portrayed throughout the story. With how many books I read, I'm always impressed when the twist in the story ends up being something I'm not expecting, and that was the case here. Without giving away spoilers, I'll simply say that it went in a different direction than I was expecting, and I enjoyed that. 

Overall, this is definitely one of my favorite reads of the year, and considering I picked it up to read during a really awful time in my life, I loved that it was able to take my mind off of everything, and give me a few moments of reprieve to just enjoy a sweet and wonderful story.

Final Rating: 4/5.

I felt a few of my questions went unanswered at the end, and it wasn't quite as clean as her earlier works were, but overall I loved this one, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone looking for a super cutesy adorkable ya contemporary.

Thanks so much for reading guys! Have a great rest of your day :)

This is not a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. The photo does not belong to me, and all rights to the respective owners.