P.S. I Like You by Kasie West

When I was in high school, in chemistry, no less, I sat at a desk in the back corner of the room abutting a chalkboard.  One day, bored, I wrote "Hi!" on the chalkboard.  The next day, there was a return greeting.  My mystery chalkboard pal and I advanced to some other greetings.  After just a week or so, though, I discovered that I was communicating with my best friend who sat in the same seat in her chemistry class during a different period.  She was a little bummed because she thought she'd been making a new friend, but I was sort of delighted.  We progressed to leaving notes for each other in the chalk bin.  Once I thoughtlessly wrote the name of her crush on our note.  The next day, the note was there with a strongly worded admonishment to "Never use names here!  Anyone could read this!"  We kept it up all year.  Anyway, with this sort of backstory (not to mention some Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda love), I was fairly excited to pick up P.S. I Like You.

This book is about Lily who, in chemistry, writes part of the lyrics of her favorite song on her desk.  When she goes back to class, more lyrics have been filled in.  Thus starts an in-depth pen pal-ship where romantic feelings also grow.  Lily also juggles her large, boisterous family, a best friend, an ambition to become a song writer and a mortal enemy who is a fellow student.

My high expectations were not met by P.S. I Like You.  Though it was fun in parts, for example, I did enjoy Lily's sense of humor, I found it to be really predictable and formulaic which was bothersome.  I absolutely knew who the pen pal was going to turn out to be and was extremely annoyed at the way it was set up at the beginning.  While, as I say, I did mostly enjoy Lily's sense of humor, she also sort of bugged me.  I thought she made some odd choices at times.  And, even though she calls herself weird constantly, I didn't think she was that weird.

All-in-all, while P.S. I Like You was mildly amusing, I wouldn't really recommend it.