I kissed shara Wheeler

To get the girl, first you have to find her.

Chloe Green is so close to winning. After her moms moved her from SoCal to Alabama for high school, she’s spent the past four years dodging gossipy classmates and a puritanical administration at Willowgrove Christian Academy. The thing that’s kept her going: winning valedictorian. Her only rival: prom queen Shara Wheeler, the principal’s perfect progeny.

But a month before graduation, Shara kisses Chloe and vanishes.

On a furious hunt for answers, Chloe discovers she’s not the only one Shara kissed. There’s also Smith, Shara’s longtime quarterback sweetheart, and Rory, Shara’s bad boy neighbor with a crush. The three have nothing in common except Shara and the annoyingly cryptic notes she left behind, but together they must untangle Shara’s trail of clues and find her. It’ll be worth it, if Chloe can drag Shara back before graduation to beat her fair-and-square.

Thrown into an unlikely alliance, chasing a ghost through parties, break-ins, puzzles, and secrets revealed on monogrammed stationery, Chloe starts to suspect there might be more to this small town than she thought. And maybe―probably not, but maybe―more to Shara, too.

Fierce, funny, and frank, Casey McQuiston’s I Kissed Shara Wheeler is about breaking the rules, getting messy, and finding love in unexpected places.

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content warnings: includes mild spoilers

I Kissed Shara Wheeler explores a very specific teenage experience: coming of age queer at a conservative Christian school in the southern United States. In the world of queer fiction, repressive religious environments are well-traveled territory, so I doubt there’s much in this book you won’t be expecting once you know its setting. But I do want to tell you that I did my best to approach the world of Shara with a lot of love and a lot of humor. The issues listed below are handled with care, but I like to think they are also cushioned with enough laughs to make the read a fun one. Don’t be scared! We’re in this together.

Homophobia, Evangelical Christianity, religious homophobia, religious trauma, discussions of racism and misogyny, mentions of past off-page outing of an adult supporting character, threatened outing of supporting character (avoided), underage drinking

Bust

“I Kissed Shara Wheeler is a love letter to all of us queer kids who were high schoolers in the ’90s. Especially those of us who lived in small towns and whose social scenes revolved around Friday night football games and church on Sunday. [An] unexpected mystery and love story all in one.”

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Good Housekeeping

“This one has it all: rivals who share a shocking kiss, a mysterious disappearance, an unexpected alliance and the kind of page-turning drama that makes McQuiston one of the best in the game. You won’t want to miss this one.”

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Time

“Funny and compassionate.”

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Betches

“I really can’t wait for this one…I can already see [a] movie being made.”

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Becky Albertalli

New York Times bestselling author of Kate in Waiting and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

“Raise your hand if you’ve been personally victimized by this funny, weird, razor-sharp, intensely compassionate, subversive, sweet, electrifyingly romantic knockout of a book. Casey freaking McQuiston, you’ve done it again.”

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