Book Review: PERFECT CHEMISTRY

Author: Simone Elkeles
Number of Pages: 360
Publisher: Walker Books for Young Readers
Release Date: December 23, 2008

Brittany Ellis is a seemingly perfect girl. She has an amazing boyfriend, she's Captain of the pom squad, she's outrageously popular, her family is very wealthy, she gets great grades- what more could she want? What people don't know is that she's hiding the tense arguments between members of her family and the fact that her older sister can't even feed herself.

Alex Fuentes lives on the other side of town, in which he is part of the gang his father belonged to before he died when Alex was only six years old. On the outside, Alex looks like a tough guy- he rides around on a motorcycle, he displays his gang colors, he has many tattoos. What people don't know is that he's only part of the gang because he needs to protect his family. Deep inside all he wants is to go to college, but he knows that will probably never happen.

As these two teens start their senior years of high school, they find that they are paired up as partners in chemistry class- for the rest of the year. Brittany worries that it will ruin her social status, but she soon realizes that maybe, just maybe, Alex Fuentes isn't all that bad.

My friend recommended this book to me, and I am really glad that I took her advice and read it. I loved the depth of both of the main characters. They seem to grow immensely throughout the book. I thought that the relationship between them was close to realistic, which I appreciated (I would consider that a spoiler, but I think the cover already gives that away). This book was great, however I really didn't like the epilogue. It sort of ruined the book form me, actually. I hate epilogues where everything ends like a fairy tale, where everyone is happy and nothing is wrong. That's not realistic! In the case of this novel, the epilogue ruined a perfectly good book.

My Rating: :0) :0) :0) :0)  4 out of 5 smileys. Perfect Chemistry was great- except for the epilogue.

Would I recommend it to a friend?: Yes.

I will definitely be reading the next two books in this series. I've heard they are even better than the first one.

Yours,
NutFreeNerd