Sweet Fifteen

Margot Maples is the girl next door. She’s the high school sophomore just trying to navigate the world of class presidential elections, mean girls, boy drama and typical high school life.
Sweet Fifteen lives up to its name in every way. A sweet story and a clean read for young teens. Rodger’s Kipperton High is like any school. And when you’re in high school, there’s bound to be drama. But where some YA characters are thrown into situations well beyond their years, Rodgers keeps it real.
When it comes to the YA audience in general, readers span all ages and demographics and there is a trend of aging up the young characters to appeal to an older audience. That often leaves young readers with the wrong impression of what their own high school lives should be like. Author Beth Rodger’s nails it with a true-to-life representation of what a fifteen year old should be experiencing as a young sophomore student.
I did not have the opportunity to read Freshman Fourteen, but as a standalone, I was able to fall into Margot’s current life in Sweet Fifteen with ease. I did feel like I was missing out on some key elements of the previous story here and there, but the author does an excellent job of quickly catching the reader up to speed in those little moments throughout the book. However, the prologue, written as a diary entry the night before Margot’s first day as a sophomore, was a bit of an information dump, which wasn’t the most gripping intro into this new phase of Margot’s life. I would rather have jumped into the new story right away and figured out the rest along the way.
The book is well edited and clean of errors, although I would have appreciated a little more dialogue and not quite so much narrative. The story flows well with a delightful cast of characters that display the kind of flaws any young teen struggles with. Yet each well-rounded character also displays the kind of growth readers crave.
I would highly recommend Sweet Fifteen to young readers just venturing into high school, or even junior high and elementary students (as we all know, kids like to read about those a bit older than themselves). I would also recommend this book as an addition to any school library.
Sweet fifteen is a wholesome and entertaining read for those who enjoy contemporary YA fiction with an adorable splash of age appropriate, sweet romance.