Pest
Elizabeth Foscue
Summary: Between her dad’s pest control company, her mom’s pond cleaning service, and her side gig at a tourist hotspot in Santa Barbara, Hal puts the “work” in working class. But Hal has qualms about gassing gophers. She’s tired of ditching friends to skim dead fish from fountains, and she’s weary of divorced-parent politics. So Hal has a plan: win the prestigious Verhaag Scholarship, go to an east coast school, and never come back.
But the Verhaag Scholarship has a proud history of nepotism and a last-minute contender just crawled out of the woodwork. Hal’s parking lot nemesis has usurped the Yearbook Committee, depriving her of her only extracurricular credit. To make matters worse, her Montecito clients are in a defensive frenzy over a rash of estate burglaries, and if her jobs keep making her tardy, she may not even graduate.
With her college plans rapidly derailing, Hal is forced to enlist the help of Spencer Salazar: the dim, infuriating (and kinda hot) rich kid next door. Hal’s willing to do anything to win the scholarship, but her side gigs are creating a tangled web that might keep her stuck in Santa Barbara forever, and now she’s wondering—maybe too late—if she misjudged the boy next door.
My Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this one, the banter was quick and witty, it was short (under 300 pages!) and I read it in a day. The only drawback I had was with Hal herself - she's got this cool, quirky, Veronica Mars vibe, but she's also super quick to jump to conclusions and make assumptions about people that were only (in my opinion) in order to further the plot. It felt like we had this super smart main character who would make assumptions for plot drama and not because it was necessarily true to the character. It's a minor disagreement though, because overall the book was amazing, I'd highly recommend to anyone looking to get out of a reading slump.
Recommended age: 13/14+ (mild thematic elements, language)
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