Taylor’s life seems normal, but she still quips, “I wanted to be anyone else in the world besides myself.” Taylor is dating Brad, a popular cool guy with a kind heart everyone wants Brad, including Taylor’s childhood best friend, Susan. We Were Promised Spotlights, Lindsay Sproul’s debut young adult novel, introduces us to Taylor, a sometimes mean and often messy popular teenage girl coming of age in a small town in the late ’90s. But there are so many great titles with LGBTQ characters that would be a better choice.Lindsay Sproul, author of We Were Promised Spotlights (Photo credit: Josh Hailey Studio) Who should buy this book? Public libraries, if there’s demand. But due to the mature content (drinking, sex, self-destructive behavior), I’d say it’s for an older audience. To whom would you recommend this book? I can’t recommend it.
I spend all my waking hours around high school students and found it hard to believe that Taylor would have any friends at all, despite her good looks. Watching Taylor ping pong through her senior year and then blow Hopuonk for California with a quickly chosen new love interest just seemed like another bad idea. A side plot surrounding Taylor’s mysterious and missing father (who turns out to be a shallow, heartthrob movie star) goes nowhere interesting. But why Susan? As another friend eventually points out, Susan is wishy-washy, mopey and dumb as a box of rocks. She thinks she’s in love with her best friend Susan, who’s in love with Taylor’s boyfriend Brad. I found it very difficult to take much interest in her. The idea of telling the story from the Regina George perspective is sound and the teen dialogue and school setting is well-rendered.Īnything you didn’t like about it? Taylor is so mean that she’s one-dimensional and almost pathological in her swirling animosity. Setting the book in the 90s means no pesky cell phones to ruin the plot and helps explain the fact that Taylor is gay and closeted, without supportive adults or a Gay-Straight Alliance to watch her back. I’m always keen to read books set in the Commonwealth, so I was hoping this one might be a keeper. What did you like about the book? Set in 1999, this outing to the recent past focuses on Taylor Garland, the good-looking but mean girl who was just crowned homecoming queen at Hopuonk High. Rating: 1-5 (5 is an excellent or a Starred review) 2
Putnam’s Sons (an imprint of Penguin Random House), 9781524738532, 2020 We Were Promised Spotlights by Lindsay Sproul, G.P.
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