Most Likely (Most Likely #1)

3.3

A group of friends are finishing up high school, each with their own set of hurdles- and each with a connection to a certain boy. One of them is going to be the first female president, and take that boy's last name. But which one?

It's hard to rate this book because I'm yet again torn between the "teen" rating and my personal rating. I read this book for my YA Book Club's presidential themed pick, so, since it's not a book I would have picked up for myself, I've kind of got to have that teen headspace. But, if I'm rating for past, teenaged me, I actually think it would be about the same, so we're going personal either way!

Here are the pros of the story. It's about friendship, which is always great to see! It highlights different ways you can change the world. It manages to be a fairly diverse friend group- 2 POCs, one person with depression, one queer girl- including showing the different financial circles they're in. There are two pretty cute romances.

I'm going to start critiquing by jumping off that last point.
By "two pretty cute romances" you need to know 2 things. First, both of these couples were cute at a certain point, and managed to not stay that way. It's not that they got terrible or anything, their storylines just got really weak or really rocky- in one case, the relationship started plainly bad, got cute, and then ended kind of uhhh?????. They were both wrapped up neatly in a way that I didn't feel was satisfactory. The other thing you need to know, is that there are 4 romances in this book, meaning I hated two of them. One of them was super creepy, which I'll get into later, and one of them was just uninteresting to me and didn't seem to have any legitimate chemistry involved other than that everyone needed a relationship and we needed to keep teasing the mystery of the future marriage and presidency.

I found the majority of these characters unlikable. Out of the main cast I really only liked CJ and Martha grew on me- out of the whole book there are only a small few left to add. The drama of the other two were so melodramatic. And the decisions Ava makes throughout this book, which lead to the possibility of a very messed up relationship, is not a forgivable arc in a single book, sorry, I kind of hate her.
As unlikable as I find many of these characters I actually think this book would have been more interesting if it stuck to just one character and their story. Maybe I would have been more sympathetic towards Ava if I was stuck just listening to her issues, instead of wanting to jump ship to something I might like better in, say, CJ's. It's the gimmick that weakens the story, in my opinion.

I also have some weird feelings about the vehicle this is even delivered in. The whole idea of finding out who grows up to be the president- and who is voted most likely too, which does at least open it up for a discussion of what changes and what can be predicted by high school alone- is interesting, and adding in the "who gets married to him" thing as an additional clue could maybe have worked for me if I was a teenager? But as an adult, watching this romance mystery guide the entire main story I can't help but be like "oh, so we're finding out about this woman's accomplishments by finding out more about her husband huh? we're focusing on her love life and the drama of who gets the guy instead of learning about their personalities of values???". That is simply who I am, I cannot change, it makes me feel kind of frustrated with this book at large.

I like the concept of this book, and the unified friend group that carries it, as a concept. But it just wasn't a book that was going to be for me personally. I could see a teen enjoying it.