I Kissed Shara Wheeler

The kiss happens at prom, which is already a charged setting, and then Shara Wheeler disappears. Chloe Green is left standing in the gym with lip gloss on her mouth and no explanation. She has spent years competing with Shara for valedictorian, for attention, for the right to be the smartest person in the room. Now Shara has done something Chloe cannot categorize. She has kissed her and vanished, and Chloe has no choice but to follow.

That is the engine of I Kissed Shara Wheeler, Casey McQuiston's 2022 young adult novel. It is a scavenger hunt, a romantic comedy, and a story about growing up queer in a small Southern town. It is also very funny. McQuiston writes teenagers who are smart and ridiculous at the same time, and the book has a big, generous heart underneath its puzzle-box plot.

Chloe, Shara, and Willowgrove

Chloe Green is a bisexual overachiever who moved from Los Angeles to False Beach, Alabama, with her two moms. She attends Willowgrove Christian Academy, a private school she chose for its AP program and its theater department. She is not religious. She is not popular in the conventional sense. She is the kind of student who corrects the teacher and keeps a color-coded planner.

Shara Wheeler is the principal's daughter, the prom queen, the girl everyone loves. She is also Chloe's rival. They have spent their high school careers trading the top spot in the class rankings. Chloe thinks Shara is fake. Shara thinks Chloe is arrogant. They are both right, and they are both wrong, which is the pleasure of the book.

The school itself is a character. Willowgrove is the kind of place where the chapel is mandatory, the dress code is strict, and the football team gets more funding than the arts. It is also the kind of place where a principal can run an admissions scandal for years without anyone noticing, because the parents who benefit are the same parents who sit on the board. McQuiston is not subtle about this, but the satire is warm rather than bitter. She clearly loves the messy, gossipy, overheated world of high school even as she exposes its hypocrisies.

The kiss changes the rules. Chloe has spent years telling herself that she hates Shara. The kiss suggests something else. When Shara disappears, Chloe cannot let it go. She needs to know why. She needs to know what the kiss meant. She needs to know whether she has been wrong about Shara, and about herself.

The scavenger hunt

Shara leaves a trail of notes. The first one leads Chloe to Shara's house, where she runs into Rory Heron, Shara's neighbor and a stoner who has also been kissed. The second leads to Smith Parker, Shara's quarterback boyfriend, who has also been kissed. The three of them become an unlikely team. They follow the clues through Taco Bell drive-throughs, choir practice, a party at Dixon Wells's house, the principal's office, the auditorium, the football stadium, and a bookstore.

The hunt is the plot, and McQuiston keeps it moving. Each clue reveals something about Shara that Chloe did not know. Shara is not the perfect daughter everyone thinks she is. She is angry. She is lonely. She is trying to tell the truth in the only way she knows how, which is indirectly, through puzzles. The notes are a form of communication that allows her to be honest without being seen. That is a very teenager thing to do, and McQuiston understands it.

The hunt also forces Chloe to spend time with Smith and Rory, who are not the people she assumed they were. Smith is a football player who is questioning his gender. Rory is a stoner who is questioning his sexuality. They are both funny and vulnerable, and their friendship with Chloe becomes one of the best parts of the book. The three of them are outsiders in different ways, and together they make a small, weird family.

The clues, and what they reveal

The clues are not just plot devices. They are character work. A note hidden in a piano says something about Shara's love of music. A note hidden in a copy of Mansfield Park says something about her love of Jane Austen, and about the way she sees Chloe. A note hidden in the principal's office says something about her father, and about the pressure she has been under.

The Mansfield Park clue is the one that makes Chloe start to wonder whether Shara kissed her because she meant it. Mansfield Park is a novel about a girl who is overlooked, who is treated as a poor relation, and who eventually finds her place. It is not the most romantic Austen novel, which is exactly why it is the right one for Shara. She is not a Elizabeth Bennet. She is a Fanny Price, watching from the corner and wanting to be seen.

Chloe's realization is slow and believable. She has spent so long defining herself against Shara that she does not know what to do with the possibility that Shara likes her. The book is careful not to make the romance too easy. Chloe has to apologize for things she said. Shara has to explain why she left. They have to decide whether they can trust each other outside the hunt.

Shara returns

Shara comes back with short pink hair and a Instagram Live confession. She tells the school that she is in love with a girl. She also admits that she deliberately bombed her Harvard interview. The revelation is a shock to everyone who thought they knew her. It is also a relief to Shara, who has been carrying the weight of other people's expectations for years.

The Harvard detail is important. Shara is not just a pretty, popular girl. She is a person with ambitions, and she has been shaped by a father who cares more about appearances than about her happiness. Bombing the interview is self-destructive, but it is also a way of taking control. She would rather fail on her own terms than succeed on his.

The subplot about Shara's father is the political heart of the book. Principal Wheeler has been running an admissions scandal, using his position to help wealthy families get their children into elite schools. Shara exposes him by printing his emails. The scandal is not just a plot twist. It is a critique of the way institutions protect the powerful and punish the vulnerable. It also gives Shara a chance to be the person she wants to be, rather than the person her father needs her to be.

The protest graduation

The other major subplot involves Chloe's friend Georgia, who works at Belltower Books and is caught kissing a girl in the bathroom. Principal Wheeler threatens to call Georgia's parents, who do not know she is a lesbian. Chloe takes the blame, which gets her banned from graduation. Her friends decide to stage a protest graduation in response.

The protest is the book's climax, and it is a satisfying one. The students gather outside the school, the news cameras arrive, and Smith tells the reporters about the admissions scandal. The adults who have been trying to control the narrative lose control of it. The kids who have been told to be quiet get to speak. It is a fantasy of teenage solidarity, and it works because the book has earned it.

The protest also gives Chloe a chance to be brave in a way that is not about grades or competition. She has spent the whole book trying to win. At the protest, she is trying to protect her friends. That shift is the emotional arc of the novel. Chloe learns that being right is less important than being there for the people she loves.

The ending

Chloe and Shara end up together. Chloe goes to NYU. Shara is still undecided about her future, but she is free in a way she has not been before. The book ends with the two of them in love and the future open. It is a hopeful ending, and it is earned.

The romance is sweet, but the book is not only a romance. It is a story about leaving home and about choosing what kind of person you want to be. Chloe has spent her whole life trying to prove that she belongs in a place that does not want her. By the end, she has decided that she does not need to prove anything. She can go to New York, be queer, be smart, and be loved. That is a simple message, but it is delivered with enough specificity that it does not feel simple.

What works

The dialogue is the best thing in the book. McQuiston writes banter that is fast and funny and specific to the characters. Chloe is sarcastic, Shara is sharp, Smith is earnest, and Rory is deadpan. The scenes where the three of them are together are a joy to read. The book is also very good at capturing the texture of a small Southern town: the heat, the church, the football games, the way everyone knows everyone else's business.

The representation is another strength. The book is full of queer characters, and it treats their identities with nuance. Smith's questioning of his gender is handled with care. Rory's questioning of his sexuality is handled with humor. Chloe's bisexuality is not a plot point to be debated. It is a fact of her life. The book does not pretend that the South is easy for queer kids, but it also does not pretend that they do not exist there.

The romance is handled with a light touch. Chloe and Shara do not have a single big conversation that fixes everything. They have a series of small ones, some of them awkward, some of them funny, and the book lets them be teenagers rather than symbols. The kiss at prom is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of a much harder process: admitting that you want something you have spent years pretending to despise.

The plotting is tight. The scavenger hunt could have been a gimmick, but McQuiston uses it to reveal character and to keep the reader guessing. The clues are clever without being impossible. The pacing is quick. The book is hard to put down.

What does not work

The adults are mostly cardboard. Principal Wheeler is a villain with no redeeming qualities. Chloe's moms are supportive and funny, but they do not have much to do. The teachers are background noise. The book is about teenagers, so this is not a fatal flaw, but it does make the world feel a little thin.

The ending ties up a lot of threads very quickly. The admissions scandal, the protest, the romance, and the college decisions all resolve in the last fifty pages. Some readers will find it satisfying. Others will find it rushed. I wanted more time with Chloe and Shara after they got together. The book spends so long building the tension that the payoff feels brief.

The scavenger hunt also requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. Shara has planned every clue, every hiding place, every timing. It is a fantasy of control, and it works emotionally, but it is not realistic. If you are the kind of reader who needs everything to be plausible, you may roll your eyes. If you can accept the book's heightened reality, you will have a good time.

Who should read it

I Kissed Shara Wheeler is for readers who love romantic comedies with a mystery, for queer teens who want to see themselves in a happy story, and for anyone who has ever been the smart kid in a small town and dreamed of leaving. It is also a good book for adults who want to understand what it feels like to be a teenager now, with social media and group chats and the constant pressure to perform.

I read it in a weekend, and I laughed out loud more than once. It is not a perfect book. It is a warm, funny, big-hearted book, and sometimes that is exactly what you need. The kiss is the hook. The hunt is the plot. The real story is a girl learning that she does not have to compete for love. She just has to show up.