Clara Shin is good at two things: getting into trouble and making people laugh. With her two friends, Patrick and Felix, Clara has coasted through her first two years of high school leaving a trail of chaos and epic pranks. Along the way she has also managed to infuriate her nemesis Rose Carter quite a few times. But that's just a bonus. It's not like Clara's an actual bully or anything.
When her latest joke goes too far ending in a fight and a fire, even Clara's usually laid-back father Adrian knows that things have gone too far. Clara's plans for a laid-back summer and a vacation with her Instagram-famous influencer mom are cancelled. Instead Clara gets to look forward to working on her dad's food truck, the KoBra, to pay back the school for fire damage. Worse, she'll be working with Rose.
Clara isn't sure how to deal with having actual responsibilities let alone working with uptight, perfectionist Rose whose ambitions and extracurriculars make the Obama daughters look like slackers. But there is Hamlet Wong--the boy who is as earnest and open as a Labrador, really cute, and totally not Clara's type even if he does think she's hilarious.
As Clara starts to learn more about the food truck, Rose, and her own family she starts to care about what happens with the KoBra and, more importantly, what other people think of her. After years of treating life as one big joke, Clara might be ready to let herself be more than a punchline in The Way You Make Me Feel (2018) by Maurene Goo.
The Way You Make Me Feel is a delightfully funny contemporary filled with food, family, and evocatively described Los Angeles locations.
Clara's parents are Korean by way of Brazil--a cultural identity that comes through in their personalities as much as in the food that Adrian prepares on the KoBra--they're also young and not married, things that don't come through a lot in contemporary YA. While I'm never a fan of stories where the main character pines after an absentee parent the way Clara does with her mother. However Goo handles the inevitable dose of reality well and in a way that makes sense for her character.
Clara's first person narration is acerbic, sarcastic, and often laugh out loud funny. She is used to not being well-liked and she doesn't care as long as it doesn't impact the persona she has created for herself. One of the only people to call Clara on her attitude and her bad behavior is Rose, an overachiever trying to balance dance classes, school, and her punishment on the food truck. Rose is also struggling with anxiety--the one chink in the otherwise perfect image she presents to the world.
While there's some romance with Clara and the always adorable Hamlet, the main event in this novel is friendship as Clara and Rose start to understand and, much to their own dismay, appreciate each other the more they're thrown together.
The Way You Make Me Feel is a funny, smart, and utterly entertaining story that reminds you it's never too late to make a few changes. A novel that's guaranteed to make you laugh and leave you smiling. Highly recommended.
Possible Pairings: Unclaimed Baggage by Jen Doll, It Started With Goodbye by Christina June, The Secret Ingredient by Stewart Lewis, Nice Try, Jane Sinner by Lianne Oelke, Foolish Hearts by Emma Mills, Your Destination is On the Left by Lauren Spieller, Pride by Ibi Zoboi
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THIS BOOK MADE ME LAUGH.Which is rare. I IMMENSELY enjoy and get HIGHLY invested in a few books too many than is healthy, but I very rarely laugh because of a book.The Way You Make Me Feel, in a nutshell, was an adorable read, filled with GREAT FOOD, diversity and anxiety rep that also made for a wonderful, light summer read and the perfect way to close out my last summer as a student (hello, senior year and my twenties *bursts into tears*)There were a lot of things I really liked about this book, so let’s break it down:1. KOREAN – BRAZILIAN FUSION FOOD: If you read the synopsis, (directs you upwards) you’ll know that our main character spends her summer working in her dad’s Korean-Brazilian fusion food truck and OH MY GOD THE DESCRIPTIONS OF FOOD AND THE DIVERSITY IN THE FOOD WERE ESSENTIALLY THE BEST THING IN THE FOOD.2. ALL THE DIVERSITY: Our main character, Clara Shin is Korean and Brazilian. Her co-worker on the food truck is African American and it all just felt right. It was so well done, and I loved how Maureen Goo portrayed her characters, especially how their skin color and roots were a part of who they were, and they were also so much more.3. THIS WAS KIND OF HILARIOUS?: I read a sampler before requesting this book, and this book made me laugh in the VERY first scene which contained feminism, prom queens and tampons and I kept laughing after.4. IT JUST MADE ME FEEL GOOD: Reading this story made me feel happy. I don’t know if it was Hamlet, the ADORABLE love interest, the fact that it was a summery read and also a love letter to LA and delicious food OR Clara’s personal growth, but I loved it regardless.The One Thing I Thought Could Have Been Better:1. The Lack of Connect/ The Extreme fast pace of everything: When I read The Way You Make Me Feel, I felt disconnected from the story and all the brilliant elements playing out on the paper. I quickly realised it was because I felt like the dialogue was… insubstantial and very fast and there was SO MUCH TELLING AND NOT SHOWING, that I simply didn’t enjoy it as much.Would I recommend this book? YES. The Way You Make Me Feel was a hilarious, feel-good, summer read with some great character growth, diversity, romance and family.
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Top reviews from other countries
Casey Carlisle
Food truck fighting...
Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on September 17, 2019
Casey Carlisle
Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on September 17, 2019
An adorable little contemporary. This book made me hungry with all its talk about food. At first I thought the characters were going to be annoying, but I ended up loving them with their individual charisma.
Yes, there are tropes and stereotypes in ‘The Way You Make Me Feel,’ but in a good way (well, for me.) The rebel, the nerd, the prissy one; but Maurene Goo does not shy away from quickly dismantling these stereotypes. This novel fell into my favourite wheelhouse of a light contemporary. Perfect for a lazy afternoon’s reading..
The humour was great in Goo’s writing style and had me laughing out loud, I even put the book down because I was laughing so hard, my eyes blurred up with tears. I can’t remember the last time a contemporary did that for me.
Great landscape and world building. I got a real feel for the LA climate and the food truck culture. Not to mention spattering of references to both Asian and Latino culture and language.
We get some great character arcs, and not your usual self-acceptance thing typical to this genre. We see a real transformation in our protagonist.
Our protagonist Clara is the big prankster - such a great hook - not the usual type of protagonist you get in this genre. I found her endearing from the get-go and loved reading her journey.
The frenemy/antagonist, Rose is the character I liked her the most. I know girls like this, heck, I was a girl like this. Striving to be perfect, scared of doing anything wrong or being perceived as colouring outside the lines. Stress, anxiety, all rolled up tightly and hidden away from all eyes as you prepare, study, and perform. It’s isolating and all-consuming. Leaving you constantly all-too-serious, uptight, and with a short fuse. A great place to start from and a fantastic character to counter Clara.
Hamlet, Clara’s love interest is a little straight-laced, and the most stereotypical of all the characters, but I had boy envy and was wishing for a Hamlet of my very own.
Have to say, I love the role of a present and involved parent. Adrain, Clara’a father is a tattooed hot D.I.L.F... ‘nuf said. But it was endearing how he cared for Clara, and juggled a small business with being an outstanding parent.
It is predictable, I pretty much guessed every plot point in advance – and even thought of one that never happened. But that is pretty much how it goes in most contemporaries I read. Its why I read them. The happy ending, the promise.
Definitely see what all the hype was all about and keen to check out a few more of Goo’s titles. A solid recommendation from me.
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Janelle Dazzlepants
A heartfelt tale of letting people in and see the real you
Reviewed in Australia 🇦🇺 on February 27, 2019
