I read this book to check out the diversity in Entangled Teen's lineup of romance books, and I was pleasantly surprised. The book reminded me a lot of [b:The Fill-In Boyfriend|18660447|The Fill-In Boyfriend|Kasie West|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1414605032s/18660447.jpg|26479163] -- except instead of an adorkable theater-geek guy and a popular girl, it was the girl who was a theater geek and the guy was the popular golden boy. So what's the diversity -- well, this series takes place in a posh school of the arts in Austin, and in this installment, the female MC is a Mexican-American scholarship student in the theater dept., while the boy is a rich, white, and gorgeous art student.

I'm not overly fond of the poor Hispanic scholarship student trope, but I thought the author did a decent job of exploring how tough it is to be a have-not at a private school, to have to work twice as hard to prove you belong, to be embarrassed of your humble (or downright crappy) home life. And while I wish more YA authors would depict Latino teens who are middle or upper-middle class and not just struggling with absentee or working-class parents, I liked Mariely enough to forget all of that. Look, this storyline, like in THE FILL-IN BOYFRIEND is ridiculously predictable, but it was fun, fast, romantic, and actually substantive in parts. I liked that it delved into the fact that yes, rich kids can have dysfunctional families, but they still don't know what it's like to worry about their next meal, their mandatory after-school jobs, etc.