On The Fence Review

Charlie is a tomboy. She has no mum, a police officer dad and three brothers. Well four if you count Braden, her next door neighbour. But when Charlie is forced into taking a job at a clothing store and is persuading into becoming a canvas for make-up tutorials a bit of girly-ness begins to rub off on her. And her life begins to change. 

When I started this blog in January I had never read a book by Kasie West. I have now read three; Pivot Point, Split Second and On the Fence and it’s pretty safe to say that i’ve become quite the Kasie West fan. I absolutely love the way in which Kasie writes relationships (of all sorts, not just romantic ones) and On the Fence was no exemption to this. I absolutely enjoyed reading about her relationships with her brothers and Braden and how became friend people she previously thought were polar opposites to her. All of the relationships felt natural and realistic but still interesting and amusing. On Goodreads I rated On the Fence 4/5 stars.

I also loved Charlie’s character development. Through her new job Charlie grows and becomes more of herself than before. I often don’t like it when characters change and aren’t at all themselves anymore, but in On the Fence Charlie is still the same person there is just more to her and she is able to be open with her feelings and becomes less of the tomboy stereo-type. 
This was particularly good as I didn’t like the way Charlie was presented at the start of the book. Kasie made a real effort to describe how much of a tomboy Charlie is and often it felt like the book was telling me this rather than showing this to me. Not that Kasie didn’t back up what she was saying with actions. 

It was really interesting to read about Charlie while she was with Evan because in those instances she changed herself to be someone he would like and I’ve seen my friends do that and found it quite relatable and showed how insecure Charlie really was. 

The fence chats between Charlie and Braden were so much fun to read, even when Charlie was being a bitch. It did bother me though that Charlie and Braden made the same mistake twice where one was trying to talk about their feelings for the other, and the other was trying to talk about Charlie’s mum. Miscommunication pisses me off in books/movies/life. Just listen to what they’re saying, not what your going to say! 

Overall this is a really great summery read.

Thanks for reading. xx