The Key to You and Me

Gr 9 Up–Aspiring equestrian Piper is excited to spend the summer with her grandmother, training with a former Olympian and distancing herself from the ex-girlfriend who broke her heart. Kat is spending the summer before her senior year trying to make money to fix her car and help her sister achieve her dancing dreams while questioning whether she might be a lesbian. When Kat is hired to teach Piper to drive, she immediately feels a connection to Piper and sees an opportunity to test her interest in girls. Piper sees it as an opportunity to make her ex-girlfriend jealous and possibly win her back. Piper and Kat’s romance is somewhat predictable. Piper is the out and proud lesbian willing to do anything to win back her ex-girlfriend, while Kat is very anxious about her feelings towards girls, though her friends and family are extremely supportive and have already guessed that she is gay. Readers may grow a little weary of the main characters’ internal dialogue as they go back and forth questioning their feelings. Secondary characters are fun but are only explored at a surface level. Kat and Piper are cued as white.