Interference by Kay Honeyman
Kate Hamilton likes to “interfere” and it mostly gets her in trouble. When her Congressman father decides to run in a special election in his hometown in West Texas, Kate finds herself out of her usual Washington D.C. element and thrust into a world where football is king. As things get off to a rocky start, Kate keeps running into an irritating boy, Hunter, every time she screws up. Can she finally use her good intentions and machinations to help make this new place home? Kay Honeyman takes a somewhat bland YA retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma and saves it through her characters. Kate, like Emma, tends to annoy me as a reader as she continually messes with the lives of the good people around her but Kate seems to have better motivations for her interference. And of course, it is Hunter that draws all the attention just as Mr. Knightly is the perfect gentleman. I enjoyed this retelling by the end but it lacked imagination in spinning the West Texas, football, political campaign, and high school dramatics all together in a cohesive story.