I loved this book so much. I didn’t expect to really even like it because it is so hard for me to find young adult contemporaries that fit with my tastes these days, but this book is all around good, and I can’t recommend it enough.
The quotation on the back says it all: “Great friendships can help young women achieve anything.”
Most Likely is a feminist novel focused on the power of friendship that gets us through the tough times. It starts with one of the girls married to a Mr. Diffenderfer and is about to be inaugurated as President of the United States of America, and then the story jumps back thirty years to when the four girls and Logan Diffenderfer are in high school together, and you have to figure out which one is “most likely” to end up as the President. I think that’s a really neat concept.
This book features really diverse characters and ways of life. There were lots of real-world issues discussed and deftly handled as each character was facing a challenge in his or her life. I honestly did not find anything in it to be negative or offensive but instead the whole story was just so well crafted.
We have Ava, an adopted Latinx girl struggling with her identity and whether or not she should pursue her passion of art; CJ, who has a big dream of going to college but is worried that her terrible SAT scores will prevent her from getting accepted anywhere and who’s also trying to connect with a young wheelchair-bound girl; Jordan, a budding journalist who is lobbying to keep the local park from getting demolished; and Martha, a quiet girl struggling to find a way to pay for college after her parents’ divorce. Each of these girls has hard decisions to make during their final year of high school as they all worry about college, new relationships, family issues, and staying close to each other after graduation.
I love that all four girls are interested in politics and social issues going on in the world, but the book doesn’t really focus on that. Instead, it focuses on each of their lives during their senior year of high school and how they each, with the others’ help, overcome their trials. As the whole mystery is which one of them will become the President, there are little conversations or clues here and there that could lead you to believe any of them will be it, but it’s so fun trying to guess throughout the book how it will end.
The characters have great relationships with each other. I really felt like these girls were going through real issues and were very relatable to teens today. This is exactly the kind of book I think every high school girl needs to read. That is such a formative time of your life when friendships mean the world and can get you through anything. I love how these girls constantly support each other no matter what and are always helping each other succeed. They even have a rule that none of them will talk about any of them behind their backs, only to their faces. Honesty and communication are so important in any relationship, and I love the emphasis on that here.
The ending of the book was so excellently done in my opinion. I had a guess the whole book about who I thought would be President, and I won’t give anything away, but my guess was both right and wrong, and I absolutely loved how the book ended. There is a planned sequel, which I’m not sure what the premise will be, but I’m definitely interested in reading it because of how well written Most Likely was. This book was so heartwarming and enjoyable to read, and I hope everyone loves it at much as I did.
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