In the first book of the Montgomery Lake High series, The Right Person by Stacy A. Padula, a group of friends enter their freshman year of high school together, quickly realizing the forces of both peer pressure and desperation to fit in. For many, high school is glorified as being the fun time where you meet your best friends, find the great love of your life, and attend the coolest parties. For this group of friends, however, they rapidly discover the not so glamorous aspects of being this age. Between substance use addictions, friendship fallouts, and relationship drama, these freshmen are having anything but an easy adjustment to the reality of what high school truly is: the time where you discover who you really are deep down.

Before the school year can even officially begin, many of Montgomery Lake’s students are trying to decide how they want their high school years to go. For Chris, he is trying to decide whether the pressure to be the “party boy” is worth harming his chance of a starting position on the JV football team, or if it is time to commit himself to faith in God and set himself straight. Courtney, on the other hand, finds herself slipping further away from her faith in a desperate attempt to be accepted by the popular crowd. Both of these characters, while also trying to make a relationship with one another work, struggle to accept the fact that they are not truly happy with the course their life is currently on and find themselves torn between what they think they want and what their best interests actually are.

Another hardship that comes with transitioning into high school is losing friendships that once were so important. For Julianna, she watches from the outside as her two best friends, Courtney and Marielle, seem to forget all about her. Courtney is obsessed with maintaining a popular status, and intentionally abandons Julianna in the process. Marielle makes a new connection and becomes so distracted that she doesn’t even consider including Julianna in her plans. These co-occurring incidents leave Julianna feeling all alone, desperate for attention. While the start of high school was supposed to be a time spent with the people she loved the most, now Julianna finds herself trying to figure out how to re-start her social life.

Written by Stacy A. Padula while she was this age herself, The Right Person is a real account of what high school is like. Many young adult novels that tackle these topics shy away from shedding genuine insight into how hard and dramatic this time period can be, but not this novel. Instead, it offers a level of relatability that makes it stand out from others in the genre. The Right Person is a perfect start to the series that many young adults will be eager to read. 

ABOUT EMILY MCDERMOTT

Emily is a recent graduate of  Bridgewater State University where she completed a Bachelor’s Degree in English with a concentration in Literature. While at Bridgewater State, Emily worked in the Academic Achievement Center as a writing consultant where she helped enrolled students with any stage of the writing process. Being in this position helped Emily realize that working as an editor might be something she could see herself doing as a career. Currently, she is employed for a small business in her hometown of Bridgewater, MA while actively searching for jobs within the publishing field. She spends most of her free time reading books, playing with her dogs Neely and Kevin, going on coffee runs with her friends, and watching the Bruins with her dad. 

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