ARC Provided by the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Becky Albertalli does it again! I will read anything and everything Becky Albertalli places her classic stamp on!

Kate in Waiting follows best friends, Kate and Anderson (Andy) during their junior year in high school. These two theater loving friends fall for the same guy, Matt, the new kid in school who they went to theater camp with over the summer. Kate likes him, like really likes him, but so does Andy. This communal crush turns out to be not so fun when best friends feelings are on the line.

Albertalli is a champion at incorporating contemporary topics and LGBTQ+ characters seamlessly in young adult writing. I always feel like the characters are my best friends at the end of the novel and Kate and Andy are no exceptions here. While this one seemed a bit repetitive and predictable, who doesn't love a rom-com?! My inner theater kid loved every moment of following Kate to musical rehearsal and all of the drama that comes with it! Fans of Becky Albertalli are going to fall in love with this one :)

Yikes... I really wanted to like this but had to DNF pretty early.

I couldn’t find anything likeable about the protagonist, and the *incessant* use of “fuckboy” and “f-boy” was really aggravating. Like ok! We get it! I hope that gets fixed in final edits, but this was just not for me.

As usual, Becky Albertalli wrote a book with a diverse array of characters depicting real emotion. Albertalli's psychology background takes a much stronger focus in this book than in her other pieces in the way the characters overly dissect their emotions and relationships. This can be a bit off-putting, but also so developmentally appropriate and fitting for the characters. Altogether, this is a book for people who love teenage angst, drama, and a good rom-com!

Becky Albertalli's latest teen rom com has all the cute moments that a theater kid could want.

Kate and her best friend Anderson have always had crushes together, or communal crushes as they call them. They both always like the same boy and gush about it together. That changes when their crush from summer camp, Matt, moves to town. The three of them join the school musical, Once Upon a Mattress. As the crush gets more and more real, Kate tries to hold her friendship and her love life together.

This is a very cute and sweet book with a lot of geek and musical theater references. It is fun for the reader to watch Kate go through the musical, get cast, and try sort out her friendships and love life. I do think that at times were too many pop culture references. I definitely recommend it for fans of Albertalli's other novels.

Thanks to NetGalley and Balzer + Bray for this eARC!

This was just as sweet and compulsively readable as Becky's other books. It brought me right back to my own theatre days (though we did plays, not musicals). As ever, capital F FEELINGS, but in a realistically teen way. Unless I missed it, not overlap with the Somonverse, but I think fans of those books will love this one just the same. I'm glad Becky is branching out from Creekside!

Thank you to NetGalley & HarperCollins!

I throughly enjoyed this book! I laughed! I cried! I got swept into a high school musical! Albertalli has such a knack for voices. The pacing was ace. The pitch was perfect. Highly recommend, exactly what I needed this weekend. A heartbreaking (but it’s okay!) and heartwarming love story of friendship most of all.

Best friends Kate and Andy have always shared everything, including crushes-- gushing over boys together is part of the fun, after all. Junior year is different, though, because Matt, their latest obsession from theater camp, has moved to their Georgia suburb... and both of them are feeling a stronger magnetic pull to him than they have for any other guy. Things become even more strained as they spend time with Matt separately, because that's where secrets between Kate and Andy begin... and they've never kept anything from each other before. Albertalli is a rom-com queen! Her humor and friendships are as authentic as ever, so much that you feel like part of the gang yourself. If you're a fan of theater, feuds, and love triangles, you are bound to fall into Kate in Waiting!

The drama! The F-boys (and girls)! The power of friendship!
Just like she does with the rest of her YA novels, Becky Albertalli perfectly encapsulates the high school experience into a novel.

Over the course of the high school musical from auditions to opening night, you can’t help but fall in love with Kate and her friends. And that’s what this story is about - love and relationships. Albertalli does a beautiful job of showing all the different loves and relationships one teen girl can have in her life, from romantic to friendly to family.

This was an absolute delight to read and I cannot wait to see this cover on the shelves. You bet the day it releases, I’ll be buying a copy to add to my Albertalli collection.

Swoon... whenever Becky Albertalli comes out with a new book it is a drop everything and read moment. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of her latest creation which is sure to be a huge hit among your realistic fiction, high school drama loving readers. What I love the most is the respect she brings to how she portrays friendships and relationships in her books, she gets it. Preorder now because you are not going to want to wait for this one! #pernillerecommends

Kate, the title character of Becky Albertalli's latest work, Kate in Waiting, shares everything with her best friend, Anderson; secrets, hobbies, and, most importantly for this story, crushes. When Kate and Andy discover that their mutual crush from summer camp, Matt, has transferred to their high school and will be joining them in the school musical, they come up with a few basic ground rules as to how they will handle the situation. But they quickly discover that the situation is going to be a little more difficult to navigate than they had originally expected.

This book is a tremendous amount of fun. Kate, Andy, and all the rest of the characters that fill their world feel like real people, with plenty of complicated relationship dynamics that feel rooted in reality. The teenagers act like teenagers, with plenty of childish, impulsive, overly dramatic moments to amp up the tension, but other moments of maturity and poise -- just like real teens. One of the best parts of Kate in Waiting is the overall message that while romantic love is special and wonderful, friendships are just as valuable, and just as real, as romantic relationships.

Fans of Camp, Kind of a Big Deal, and of course Albertalli's other works are sure to enjoy Kate in Waiting.

Thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the ARC!

Becky Albertalli does a great job of capturing a time in a kid's life that is the most critical, and most important. What starts off feeling like a crazy rom-com, with the idea of communal crushes, turns into a heartfelt and necessary look into the world of the drama program in high school, and the kids that center their lives around it. Albertalli is able to give the reader well rounded, complex characters. Anyone that is introduced into the storyline doesn't feel slighted, even though the reader knows from the start that Kate and Anderson are BFF, they are the core of the squad. I enjoyed that the story wasn't so cut and dry, that Albertalli was able to take a reader on a journey, where the main focus was Kate, and how she grew throughout the production of the play...musical...play...whatever! (Sorry Lana!!) It was an immersive novel, and a welcoming read!!

Kate loves drama, but she’s never gotten a part with more than a few lines before junior year, when her school puts on “Once Upon a Mattress.” Kate and her squad, which includes best friend and next door neighbor Anderson, all have roles, as does unbearably cute and nice transfer student Matt. Anderson and Kate met Matt briefly at drama summer camp; now that he’s at their school they both develop a crush on him. They’ve shared crushes before since Anderson came out, but this seems more serious, as if something could come of it for one of them. Focused on Matt, Kate mostly ignores the clumsily romantic vibe from Noah, who she’s known forever and who is an athlete - a group Kate and her friends mostly try to ignore.

Becky Albertalli writes delightful primary characters - Kate and Anderson work through all the barriers and difficulties in their shared crush with the best of intentions, setting rules that are meant to keep them honest and guard their hearts, but prove impossible to keep. Kate genuinely mis-reads what she takes to be Matt’s interest in her as well as Noah’s interest in another girl. Secondary characters like Kate’s mom and trans friend Raina also linger in the mind. Albertalli (and high school theater) fans won’t be disappointed and new readers will find joyful welcome. EARC from

Fort anyone who is or ever was a Drama Department kid, this is a great read. I enjoyed the way they explored high school crushes: the good, the bad and the ugly. The characters are real and don't feel "written," you know these kids...you've met them. All in all, a great read.

Fun romance with LGBTQ+ twists. Becky Albertalli deals with the HS scene well--its stereotypes and its cliques and the feeling that the crush you have might be completely all consuming and that your friendships are the most important thing in the world. This will appeal to the drama kids and the LGBTQ kids and the ones who are Becky Albertalli fans.

Let me start off by saying that Becky Albertelli is an auto-buy author for me. I’m a ride or die fan. I was thrilled to get this advance copy and did a dance around my kitchen to celebrate. While this book did have her signature gay character and setting in Georgia, it is not the caliber of Simon vs, Leah on the Offbeat, or What if It’s Us. Here’s why:

-One thing I love about Becky is her snarky, hilarious writing style. There was an Avril Lavigne reference early that spoke to my millennial heart, but otherwise, it fell flat

-This book brought back all my painfully awkward High School memories that I have been trying to suppress for the last decade-plus. Maybe that was intentional? If so, it hit the nail on the head. Definitely the most haunting book I’ve read this October

-How did I not know that Anderson was black until 75% way through the book? The fact that I didn’t pick up on this sooner is a critical omission of the character’s identity.

-I absolutely hated how the characters referred to the athletes or popular kids as f-boys or f-girls throughout the story. Yes, some of them were mean and slutty, but it just seemed unnecessarily harsh. Drama kids don’t like to be put into the drama kid box, and each drama kid had their own independent identity and quirks outside of the label. Why wasn’t this individualism afforded to all their classmates? It kinda seemed like Kate was jealous and obsessed with the f-people.

Again, Thank you so much to the publishers for granting me this advanced copy. I really appreciated the opportunity.

A love letter to high school theater and musical theater in general and the kind of friendships that transcend and also to f-boys who turn out to have more depth than you thought, but also a firm rebuke of the ones who remain terrible. Kate and company (her diverse and lovely group of friends and family members) will delight existing Becky Albertalli fans and anyone looking for a fast-paced, funny, and heartfelt romance.

Kate in Waiting is a great book for those "theater kids" in your school. It is a love letter to high school productions and the amazing community you are a part of when you participate.

Albertalli is known for her teen love stories, and this one adds in an element I have never read before: a communal crush. Kate and her best friend Anderson only do crushes on the same guys at the same time. These crushes are usually wonderfully unrequited, giving them the fun of swooning over someone without any of the messy relationship stuff. This is all great until their unrequited crush enters their lives for real, and now they have to navigate what might happen if he actually likes one of them back.

Super fun teen book! There is a lot of swearing, but it really reads the way teens talk. Recommend at the high school level,

I liked this a lot! The friendship between Kate and Anderson felt authentic but more importantly, so did their surroundings. There are lots of books about a friendship or a crush where the rest of the book feels thin - the family, contextual surroundings etc are insufficiently detailed - but the other relationships made it feel like Kate had a whole life. I found the setting cute and I was rooting for the romance.

I love this book so much. Becky Albertalli has truly captured the essence of why I love theater. Her descriptions of the shows and the magic that happens on stage and behind the scenes is truly perfect. Kate is a great character that I absolutely related to because of her real voice she had throughout the whole book. It was amazing getting to read a title that was focused around theater and done so well that I actually believed this school was one that could exist in real life and I wanted to visit to see the show so badly. I liked seeing the development of Kate's relationship with Andy, mostly how they navigated their mutual crush as well as the general high school drama of having a crush. Mutual crush isn't a plot I've ever seen in a book so this feels really refreshing. I can't wait for this book to be released, I'll definitely be purchasing a copy for my bookshelf!

Kate and Andy are the best of friends. Closer than family, they are inseparable. When one has a crush, they both have a crush. And so far it really hasn’t developed any further than that, until Matt comes along. I loved the premise of this book and the story really has you rooting for all the characters. My only hesitation in recommending this to upper grades in school is the language. Kate’s group friends refer to a group of jocks as f@&$ boys. And it was just WAY over used. That was my only negative experience, because other than that Becky Albertalli writes a great story!