"The course of true love never did run smooth" Shakespeare tells us in one of the opening lines of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Of course, love never accounts for foolish hearts or foolish actions, no matter the kind of love -- between friends, family, or lovers. There is a lot of love in the world, and none of it is easily obtained or easily held on to, if it's worth it. Mills takes a stab at this idea, and captures the feelings associated with budding and evolved love in her third novel, Foolish Hearts. Starring a flawed yet likable main character with her unexpected new friend, Claudia takes on new adventures in her last year of high school, that might just lead to new understanding of herself, and of those all around her.
Emma Mills is the author of First & Then, This Adventure Ends, Foolish Hearts, Famous in a Small Town, and Lucky Caller. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and has recently completed a PhD in cell biology. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter @elmify. If you're interested in more of my reviews of her work, you can find them all here.
When Claudia accidentally eavesdrops on the epic breakup of Paige and Iris, the it-couple at her school, she finds herself in hot water with prickly, difficult Iris. Thrown together against their will into a class production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, along with the goofiest, cutest boy Claudia has ever known, Iris and Claudia are in for an eye-opening senior year. Smart, funny, and thoroughly, wonderfully flawed, Claudia navigates a world of intense friendships and tentative romance in this book about expanding your horizons, allowing yourself to be vulnerable, and accepting--and loving--people for who they really are.
I feel like "smart, funny, and thoroughly, wonderfully flawed" captures the essence of Claudia's character better than I could have (thanks to the one who wrote the summary!). Claudia's flaws, certainly, were what made her such a compelling main character. She's awkward at the Pink Party, and sometimes she fails at when to pick and choose her battles, but she's also selfless and knows who she is (or, at least the kind of person she wants to be). She stands up for herself, and for others who can't, even in the face of personal or social embarrassment. Claudia might not be instantly relatable, because she's such a specific character, but in the end, everyone will find some part of her they can tie themselves to. For me, that was her desire for nothing to change, despite life hurtling at break-neck speed. This desire of hers, made clearer by her reconciling with it at the end, is a similar desire across the young adult fiction genre, but is different in that it doesn't relate to college at all! It's a fresh of breath air, seeing the same desire applied to a young adult character, but it affects them and their decisions and mindset in a completely different way. One last. note on Claudia was her ability to quickly fall in with the theatre crowd. I'm not sure if this is true of all situations, but the drama club at my high school was full of cliques -- I admired Claudia's go-get-'em attitude, and how she "fell in" with the theater folks by being herself, and only herself. To me, it was an awesome and empowering way to maintain complete control of yourself and your desires. I am so grateful that Mills portrayed Claudia in this way, because it reminds any and all readers that truly the only path through life is through, and the only way to get through is by being yourself.
At first, I detested Iris, and hated her for being so mean to Claudia -- some of the things that came out of her mouth at the beginning sting. But Claudia offers forgiveness and extends friendship to Iris, when Iris needs it the most. And Claudia's the only one that knows Iris needs it. While driven to this odd friendship by the sheer need to have someone at your side (being at an all-girls school and all), their connection grows much deeper. Iris becomes a character we can all relate to, if only in the sense that when we're at our lowest, we're usually at our worst. I appreciated how Mills expanded on Iris's character slowly, reflective of how Iris herself is slow to open up. Claudia and Zoe can joke as much as they want about a redemption arc for Iris, but I truly believe that Iris uncovered herself during this novel, and is determined to make herself a better person.
I would be remiss not to talk about Gideon, the tentative love interest mentioned in the summary! It is true though, that the love interest is tentative. I would even argue that the book is way more about Claudia's relationships with her friends and family, than about any romantic relationships. I wish we saw more books like that in young adult fiction, and again am grateful for this portrayal of high school Emma Mills gives us. Gideon reminds me a lot of Levi from Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl: nice to a fault, loves to please, and knows when to back off. Best of all, he knows exactly when and how to be a friend to Claudia, even though he's hoping for more. The book is about friendship, truly, and how to be a friend to someone when they don't know they need a friend, when you don't really want to be a friend, and when you want to be more than friends. Mills captures all these experiences perfectly, in a way that yes, these relationships all revolve around Claudia because they involve her, but they also exist because of Claudia and her actions. Luckily for our romantics, the end for Claudia and Gideon is hopeful and exciting, the same way all the other loose ends get tied up in the story, for all the relationships and tangles involved. Mills didn't leave one thread untied or one rock left unturned, which is greatly appreciated by all readers, everywhere.
One of my favorite observations about the book was how it was rooted in its specificity. Claudia's family and friend situations is not "perfect" but it's also not "dysfunctional." She has a best friend, but they don't go to the same school. She has siblings, but there's a major age gap. She goes to an all-girls school, but still hangs out with and interacts with boys her age. She's not rich, but she's also not poor. Mills's ability to deconstruct some of our assumptions about "extremes" gives Claudia's story depth. Some of these details feel "off" or "skewed" (how can you be best friends with someone in the same town as you but not go to school with them, for example?). These specific details remind readers that Claudia's life is far from any sort of "perfect," which actually reminds us that her life is perfect, in its own way. Claudia wouldn't have had to learn or grow the way she did, had any of these details been different. We also learn so much about all the characters through details (what game Gideon likes best, how many cardboard cutouts Iris owns). In fact, for me, this story comes alive in those details, because they allow me to see the story up close. Without them, I might not have been able to relate so easily to Iris's (and Claudia's) love of TION. I might not have understood that no matter the years between them, sisters will always be sisters, and brothers will always be brothers, in how they act towards and speak to one another. They say that the devil is in the detail, but I found that the heart of the story could be traced back to the thousands of details we earned as the story progressed, and eventually found its very satisfying end.
Mills is also the author of Famous in a Small Town, a story about another girl in another town, with all sorts of drama and a classic Mills ending. If you're interested, find the book wherever books are sold, and find my review here!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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