Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo

Amelia is fifteen. She just got her braces off and she’s started her first job at a grocery store. She is in love with her co-worker Chris. Chris is smart, funny, confident…and twenty-one. He’s in his final year at university and there is no way, not a chance, that he’d be interested in Amelia. But Amelia can’t help but find herself drawn to him, and as their conversation get increasingly intense and personal, she can’t help but wonder if a relationship with him just might work…

Love and Other Perishable Items is a smart, painfully awkward, and realistic novel is told in both Amelia’s and Chris’s voices over the course of an emotionally tumultuous year. Buzo’s coming of age story takes most of its action from the grocery store setting in which both protagonists work, and the many zany and entertaining characters who work there. The plot isn’t particularly action-driven, but the characters’ thoughts and motivations are smart and insightful, and both Amelia and Chris ask the reader to ponder questions about love, modern family dynamics, education, and the consequences of feminist movements. With many quiet revelations and comically awkward scenes, Amelia and Chris learn to work through their personal issues, their feelings for each other, and how to embrace an uncertain future. Love and Other Perishable Items is an intelligent, satisfying book, and readers will be reluctant to leave Buzo’s carefully constructed world.

Cover Comments: I really appreciate the simplicity of this cover, and I think it fits well with the story. The interior design is also really nice. 

Review copy provided by publisher.

This one will be out in paperback on December 10th! I highly recommend adding it to your Christmas lists! Plus, it was a Morris Award finalist! That's a great award, and I've enjoyed every book I've read with that sticker.