Top Five Things That Are Ruining Chloe’s Day5) Working the 6:30 a.m. shift at GoodFoods Market
4) Crashing a cart into a customer’s car right in front of her snarky coworker Sammi
3) Trying to rock the “drowned rat” look after being caught in a snowstorm
2) Making zero progress with her crush, Tyson (see #3)
1) Being accused—along with her fellow teenage employees—of stealing upwards of $10,000
Chloe would rather be anywhere than locked in work jail (aka the break room) with five of her coworkers . . . even if one of them is Tyson. But if they can band together to clear their names, what looks like a total disaster might just make Chloe’s list of Top Ten Best Moments.
My Review:
I read this book within the span of one day. It was an amazing, quick, light, and fun read, with characters that were so well-developed, especially for the fact that the entire story took place in the span of one day which was Christmas Eve.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD
The friendship that developed between these six completely different teenagers was wonderful to get to read. Before Christmas Eve, these six were nothing more than acquaintances, but by the end of the day, after all they had been through, they had become friends with each other. Some of their break room conversations when they were stuck there helped them talk about some real issues of things such as judging other people without really knowing them. Which is what they had all basically done to each other was judge each other without knowing each other. But this changes by the end of the book. This cast was diverse in both personality and in their ethnicity. Zaina is a Middle Eastern Muslim girl who is soft spoken, sweet, and beautiful. As the book progresses, the others learn how people judge her based on her beauty and make assumptions that she is easy. Sammi is a bit rougher. She smokes and has hair that is cut short and dyed. She was in the foster care system as a child. Now many people judge her by her looks and automatically assume she's a lesbian, even though she is actually straight. Micah is the sweet, homeschooled boy who is smart. He has a deep sense of moral commitment, and would not do anything wrong. Tyson is the sweet African American boy that Chloe is crushing on, who is working at the grocery store to make money to afford college. Gabe is athletic and rich and feels like he has option other than following the path for college that his dad has chosen for him.
And of course, we have the final member of the six, Chloe, who is the narrator of this story. She is a shy girl with diabetes, who is also really funny, though she often is funnier in her narration than in her dialogue since she often doesn't let that side of her show to people when she interacts with them. She reads like a real teenager. She makes mistakes like accidentally running a bunch of carts into a car, and she gets freaked out over things like this. She doesn't always take care of her diabetes like she should, especially when she ends up stuck at work for hours when she should already be home. She doesn't want people to know about her diabetes, which causes a bit of an issue later in the story. She also is a bit of a book nerd, which is relatable to someone like me who loves to read. She has a crush on coworker Tyson, but she doesn't know how to make any progress with him. This day at the grocery store helps her make new friends, since she didn't really have many friends at all since moving from where she used to live. Anyway, Chloe was a lovable character and a great narrator of the story.
The setting of a grocery store was such a fun place for this book to take place. There were the games that the teenagers played where they would try to guess what groceries different customers were going to buy. There were all the weird things that the customers did or wore, and how they would trade stories about these with each other. There were the lists that Chloe made about grocery store related things, which were always funny. Also, these six got up to a few shenanigans when they were set loose in the store to clean it while they still weren't allowed to leave. One of these such shenanigans included a race around the store. The grocery store setting enriched the story by adding these fun adventures and observations to the story.
If you like fluffy YA contemporary, read this book.
Katie
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