I didn't know Hayley Kiyoko wrote a book, so I read it!

 

So today I’m talking about Girls Like Girls by Hayley Kiyoko… As in the singer… Now I already knew who Hayley Kiyoko was. I listen to her music, and I’ve even seen her live. Fully had no idea that she had a book out, though. I was at the point where I was almost out of books on my shelf that I hadn’t read, so just went looking for new stuff, and then I just saw this one, with Kiyoko’s name attached, and was kind of gagged.

The blurb says that it’s summertime and 17-year-old Coley is alone, again. Forced to move to middle-of-nowhere Oregon after losing her mother, she is in no position to risk her already fragile heart. But when she meets Sonya, the attraction is immediate. Coley worries she isn’t worthy of love. Up until now, everyone she’s loved has left her. And Sonya’s never been with a girl before. What if by opening her heart, Coley’s risking it all?

The first chapter is literally two pages. It’s this narrator saying that their mum is gone, and a dad that’s barely holding on, and that they’re not like other girls, but not in an edgy not like other girls way – a lesbian way. Chapter two is the same, two pages, and it’s Sonya posting on this page somewhere that nothing is happening, and her friends reply to it. Third chapter has Coley getting knocked off her bike and then clearly immediately falling in love with the girl who happened to be in the car with someone called Trenton. The first few chapters are all really short, but Coley ends up going into an arcade, and so do the people that hit her, they have the briefest of chats, and after she drags Trenton once, Sonya, the girl from the car, invites her to come with their group to where they’re meeting some friends at a lake. And then finally before the book gets going, you see a private entry on this page, but on Sonya’s page, talking about how Coley just “isn’t boring”.

Just below the blurb, it also says that this book was “Based on the smash hit song and viral video” for “Girls Like Girls”, also by Kiyoko, so I went and watched the music video before actually reading the book – it kind of felt like homework, like additional reading. I really just thought it might give me a little insight into the book itself, too. And for a very brief synopsis of the video, there’s a girl riding a bike and she arrives at someone’s house, knocking on the door. She’s got blood on her face, and you then see the events that led up to her getting the blood on her face. Hanging out with this girl, who seemingly has a boyfriend, up until the point that the two girls kiss, and then the boyfriend grabs the first girl and she’s knocked against rocks (that’s how she gets the bloodied face), and then beats the shit out of the boy.

This is definitely a things just happen kind of book. Even from the blurb, there was no conceivable plot, just Coley going along and doing stuff. It’s giving very much some of the BL series I’ve watched where, again, there’s not a specific plot, it’s just a string of events that leads up to two people getting together, again with not actual story or plotline. A lot of it is Coley struggling with being queer, the loss of her mother, being forced to move to Oregon, and then just existing really. And then since she was just existing, you got to see a lot of who she was as a person and that, even at seventeen, she was pretty sure of herself in certain areas. I mean she definitely went through the “I’m heartbroken so I’m going to cut my hair” phase in this book, which I feel hits very hard for younger people, but I liked who she was. I liked how hard she felt, but how hard she went for herself more than anyone else.

One of the big vibes I got from this book was that Coley was very much a big city girl compared to everyone else in the book. I mean, she’s from San Diego, and compared to where she ends up in Oregon, she is a big city girl, and you could even tell that in her attitudes and about how she acted towards the stuff around her.

It was difficult to see Sonya. I mean this in the case of I see things in her situation from both sides. One in that I get how she felt in not wanting to be the reason her family breaks apart, but at the same time, that didn’t excuse what she did. It really doesn’t help that since Coley is the main character, and that most things are from her POV, minus Sonya’s LiveJournal posts – both the public and private ones – you really get to see the damage that Sonya is doing, and does, to Coley. It just makes it difficult to be on Sonya’s side. There’s a good chunk of Sonya going through it through her private and public entries, and that a character called Faith accidentally sees her private posts. Faith then seemingly tries to be on Sonya’s side to just help her in self-acceptance, but it seems like Sonya isn’t there yet. And that’s fair. Obviously, everyone moves at their own pace, so that maybe it’s not her time yet. It was just a shame that she ended up having to hurt Coley so badly along the way. In a way, I’m glad we got to see all of, and this will sound mean, but Sonya’s struggling.

Also, I liked Curtis, Coley’s dad. I thought he was sweet. I feel like it’s often that you see the father being the abandoner in this. You see that, and Coley also comments on the fact that, he doesn’t really know how to be a dad. His whole thing throughout the book was basically him learning to be a dad while Coley, rightfully so, fought back against him. The whole concept with these two was that Curtis did leave, so that’s why she’s so mad at him for a lot of the book, which, like I said, rightfully so. But it was nice to see that he was trying so hard, despite how bad he was as it.

In relation back to the music video the book was based off. I definitely see it. Obviously, there’s only so much that could have been done in a five-minute music video compared to a three-hundred-page book. There definitely were similarities in the events of what happens, but obviously, there’s going to be so much more in the book. And in me saying that, because of that, I felt like this book could have benefitted from an epilogue. Because the book managed to set up so much more than the music video, I finished the book okay, but feeling like I needed a bit more after the end. So, both Coley and Sonya have this big thing where because they were at different points in self-acceptance, they couldn’t be together which came to a head right near the end of the book, and then with the events of the end of the book, there was no (to me) real resolution to it, so I was left feeling like I wanted a bit more in terms of where they were. Also, yes, I am using this as my conclusion.

Okay, bye!