The Prom by Saundra Mitchell

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 All Emma wants to do before graduation is to dance with her girlfriend at senior prom. But everyone in her small Indiana town won't let that happen. Alyssa Greene is the pretty, popular girl at school. She seems like the perfect daughter, but she has a secret. She's been dating Emma for the past year and a half. When people find out that Emma plans to bring a girl as her date, Alyssa's mom (who is president of the PTA) threatens to cancel the prom. The only thing that can save this prom is two Broadway legends: Dee Dee Allen and Barry Glickman.

My favorite movie of 2020 was The Prom. It was such a great movie starring a lot of my favorite actors. I always have the soundtrack on repeat so needless to say, my hopes for this book were very high.

The most disappointing thing about this book was that Trent and Angie were left out of the book. "Love Thy Neighbor" was one of my favorite songs from the musical and book adaptation of this song just wasn't the same without Trent. It was the whole reason all the popular kids had a change of heart. Also, I couldn't believe Barry was given Trent's iconic role from Talk to the Hand. Besides, Angie was the reason Emma found her self-confidence. It just wasn't the same without those two.

While the absence of Angie and Tent was so disappointing, I loved all the theatre references. There were so many lyrics from the songs embedded in this book! I also love that a lot of the chapters were named after Broadway songs!

I liked that the POV was switched between Emma and Alyssa. While the musical mainly focused on Emma, I liked getting to learn more about Alyssa.

I think Emma was wrong to force Alyssa into coming out of the closet. Alyssa's fears were valid and I had a lot of the same thoughts when coming out to my own parents. I don't think Emma saw how scary coming out can be because she was already out. Alyssa's relationship with her mom was already unstable at the beginning of the book and I don't think Emma acknowledged that enough. Coming out is a really big moment and really scary. It felt like both in the movie and book, Emma was trying to force Alyssa to come out.

I feel like the book should have been longer. Just over 200 pages didn't seem like enough room for everything that needed to happen.

Page count: 207 pages

Published: September 10, 2019

Genre: contemporary

My rating: 3 stars

Buy this book!


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