Review: Welcome Caller, This is Chloe by Shelley Coriell

from goodreads

Big-hearted Chloe Camden is the queen of her universe until her best friend shreds her reputation and her school counselor axes her junior independent study project. Chloe is forced to take on a meaningful project in order to pass, and so she joins her school’s struggling radio station, where the other students don’t find her too queenly. Ostracized by her former BFs and struggling with her beloved Grams’s mental deterioration, lonely Chloe ends up hosting a call-in show that gets the station much-needed publicity and, in the end, trouble. She also befriends radio techie and loner Duncan Moore, a quiet soul with a romantic heart. On and off the air, Chloe faces her loneliness and helps others find the fun and joy in everyday life. Readers will fall in love with Chloe as she falls in love with the radio station and the misfits who call it home.

cover

I love the cover! It's bright and colourful and very Chloe!

review

"People need best friends." I waved my arms in the air. "Like oxygen. Without friends I'd die. I'd be all alone."

A lot can change over one summer. Chloe finds this out the hard way as she skips across the road, dressed up as a burrito for her job at Dos Hermanas while wearing vintage shoes to meet her friend Brie and Brie startles her with harsh words and a quit exit. When the school year begins, Chloe's shocked to discover her BFs, Brie and Mercedes, don't want her anywhere near them. They find her self centered and their issues with her obviously built up over the summer. Brie has even started to spread rumours about Chloe. Add her new counselor Ms. A. Lungren making her change her Junior Independent Study Project (JISP) to the mix and her mother and grandmother being at war for most of the year and happy-go-lucky Chloe is confused and well, not-so-happy.

Let me start by saying that Chloe's probably someone you'd either love or hate and it was full on love for me! She was cheerful and sweet and there was no doubt that she had a big heart! Her obsession with vintage shoes was cute and I loved how she doted on her Brad-Pitt-loving grandmother. But at the heart of it all, she was also a very mature person and this, I did not expect. Despite Brie's attempts to spread rumours about Chloe and impersonate her online, Chloe surprisingly took these things in her stride. She did not attempt to retaliate even once. She seemed beyond payback or revenge!

But Chloe's not perfect. And I liked that too. She had this compulsive need for everyone to like her and there was some truth to her BFs label of her as self centered. Which probably accounts for her need to talk all the time and how she feels personally responsible for other people's problems as well.

Over the course of the book, Chloe ends up having to work at the school-run radio station and hosts a radio talk-show. She meets a bunch of people who aren't very Chloe-crazy and gets to know them better. She bonds with Duncan, a boy at the station who is in desperate need of cheer and fun. Chloe learns to listen and not to chase away solitude all the time. 

This book was very Chloe-centric. (Which I guess, I should've expected!) It makes sense as the story is told from Chloe's perspective which is probably why there were these really unique and memorable characters like Clem, Hayley, Ms. Lungren and even Mercedes who I would've loved knowing even more about but we only get little peeks into their lives. Still, I loved what I got to know about these characters. Even Brie, the former best friend who gives Chloe hell, seems justified for hating Chloe in her own way. 

Just like Chloe herself, Welcome Caller, This is Chloe is every bit of the cutesy and charming debut it seems to be but also, surprisingly, deals with heavier issues -like drug addiction and Parkinson's- as well. Chloe's grandmother has Parkinson's and the toll it takes on Chloe and her family who struggle to come to terms with it is portrayed well. It's also not very easy to deal with your best friends suddenly hating you. It would make me question the core of myself and even after Chloe makes peace with them, it's obvious that they've outgrown each other. It was a simple yet heart wrenching premise.

Filled with personality, cute shoes, fun and surprises, Welcome Caller, This is Chloe is about a boy in need of laughter, a "princess in skates" who realises that not everybody loves her all the time, a radio station and the coolest grandmother ever. I loved meeting Chloe and I hope you do too!

Publication date: 1st May, 2012
Publisher: ABRAMS/Amulet Books
Source: NetGalley

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars