This was a DNF for me. I am always here for sibling stories, especially those featuring sisters, but this one just didn't work for me. I loved the setting and the climbing, but it was hard for me to enjoy when I could not connect or even like the main character. I wanted to root for her, but Rilla just kept disappointing me. I hate rating DNFs, so I am leaving this rating right in the middle. Who knows? The book may have gotten better for me had I stuck it out.

I went into this neutral and unsure of what would happen. I didn't read any reviews so I could have a blank mental slate. That was probably the best thing because nearly all readers are split on this one. Some liked it, others did not. This will be a "either you love it or you won't" type book. I am here to say I am on the did not enjoy it side.

I almost DNFd this book in the first 100 pages because I was bored. The plot was painfully slow and the characters were just as boring. Setting up the story is one thing, but going on about nothing at all is something else. The MC, Rilla, was moved to a state where outdoor adventures are a way of life , yet she doesn't do any of that? She doesn't rock climb or hike? Then why does she make friends with a group that loves to rock climb? I get that it was probably for a character arc but it came across cheesy and painfully predictable.

Sadly there were not a lot of redeeming qualities to this one. In the end it was not for me. The entire story was heavily laden with technical jargon for rocking climbing, most of which made zero sense. I did not read this to learn how to rock climb, I wanted to read a coming of age story. The ending was so rushed that it felt forced and written as an afterthought. I wish I had DNFd because this did not get better and I would not recommend to anyone.

Rilla is a partier who gets put on a bus to Yosemite National Park to live with her park ranger sister. Rilla isn't much of a fan of the great outdoors, I love stories about personal change and growth and this was a great YA example of it. Rilla is definitely a tough character to like, but I'm glad I stuck with her on her journey. Rock climbing was integrated into the story in a very metaphorical way. The book's supporting characters were amazing, and the setting is so beautifully described that I can't wait to go back.

I thought Rilla was a bit weak as a character. She is very moody and insecure and keeps making dumb mistakes repeatedly. The book is also slow and confusing in the beginning for the first 100 or so pages, but then picks up pretty well In fact, I had to force myself to continue reading for the first few pages before I actually got down to liking the story.I did like the beautiful setting around Yosemite and found the details of the climbing process and the techical terms the author uses pretty interesting. Overall, this was a somewhat interesting book if you can get past the few 100 or so pages.

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to Netgalley and Amulet Books for this free copy.

This is such a long time coming, and I’m trying to clean up all my ARCs that I have before the end of the year, so we will see how I do. I’m glad that I was able to get a physical copy of this book though by the time it already came out so that I could read it without looking at my screen. The monotone voice of the Text to Speech kind of makes me tune it out so I haven’t been doing that as much, but it still helps in a pinch.

Pacing and dialogue seem rushed
Still not really sure what this is about besides climbing in Yosemite National Park
Unfortunately this is my first DNF of the year, and I couldn’t push through after the first 200 pages.

Rilla feels abandoned by her older sister Thea because she left West Virginia without her years ago. I don’t really know what the reasoning was behind it, and by the time I stopped reading, I didn’t really know much. But I was also really disappointed with Rilla and how she kept trying to justify why it was okay to our her sister in front of Lauren (even though Lauren is Thea’s girlfriend) and how there wasn’t a problem with it. Lauren did an amazing job straightening up Rilla and calling her out on that behavior, but Rilla didn’t even apologize for it. Not to Thea or to Lauren. It was just very disturbing.

For the first 100 pages (where I’m at while I type this exact sentence), I haven’t felt much of anything for any of the characters. If anything, I felt confused because each chapter didn’t seem like everything a part of it really should have been together. By the time I got to the first 200 pages, I felt the same way really.

Some of the dialogue felt like there were parts missing, like there should have been more of a discussion in between the beginning and the end, and whenever some of the characters looked confused or just stopped talking, even I was confused. I couldn’t always follow along with Rilla’s thought process, which made it even more confusing for me to see where she was coming from in her head.


I unfortunately didn’t connect with the story enough to want to finish it. Rilla kept putting herself down so much that it was making even me feel hopeless about her, and I usually don’t let characters get to me like that. I don’t know. I felt like she really punished herself too harshly over the things that weren’t the important things, and then that justified why she could behave as the bad sister. It didn’t make sense to me, why she would self-sabotage herself so much. I know that it’s not my place to understand someone’s thought process, or make judgment on it. Unfortunately, it prevented me from finishing the book, and I wasn’t finding many positive things to say about it.

3.5/5

Rilla is a fierce protagonist who learns to fight for what she wants; that becomes learning to climb an incredibly challenging route in Yosemite.

At times, Rilla was frustrating in her bullheadedness; but that is less a writing problem (because characters can and should frustrate us) and more a sign of good writing.

I really liked Valley Girls, Sara Nicole Lemon brings such a beautiful depiction of nature and contrasted that beauty to none other than the Valley Girls, sisters Rilla and Thea. It's such a refreshing read.

The book, for me, focused on the wrong character and left too many unresolved threads for it to be a fulfilling read.

This book is about a girl who wants to make her own path. This book is as if Sarah wanted to speak to every reader through her beautifully descriptive writing and I can't speak about anyone else but it's utterly beautiful!.

I'm sad to say I couldn't finish this. I hate DNFing books but thanks to Marie Kondo's "does this spark joy" method, I find I'm giving up on more books that I'm just not enjoying. This is one. It was just utterly boring, and the protagonist was annoying. I need to like an MC to get through a book, and I didn't like RIlla.

Unfortunately, this book was not a good match for me, and I will decline to review. I hope plenty of other readers find it more compatible, and thank you for the opportunity to review!

Loved the setting
Loved the concept

But. I felt there was too many characters, there wasn’t enough character growth and it left me feeling slightly confused at times.

I was pretty excited to try VALLEY GIRLS since I really love the idea of climbing! I've done a bit of rock climbing, but nothing professional with ropes like they do in this book. So getting to experience it through a story was amazing and made me wish I'd had the chance to do this myself! However, overall, I was really confused at how nothing seemed to actually happen in the book. It was basically about turning Rilla from a "bad girl" into someone who cares for people and works hard and isn't just smoking and drinking all the time. So while her character arc was great, it wasn't particularly enthralling to read dozens of uneventful climbs.

The cast is also very huge and I didn't find anyone remarkable enough to stick out. It was obvious Rilla would eventually fall in love with Walker, despite him being a reported player, and it was a little anti-climatic how everything fell into place like a very predictable puzzle.

I also could've sworn I saw the author talk on twitter about how Rilla had undiagnosed ADHD, but I couldn't see signs of it in the book? Rilla was disorganised and messy but after having read #ownvoices ADHD books, this didn't seem to fit the other needed traits? So maybe I'm misremembering. (But either way I'm very frustrated with books that don't use labels at ALL, not even in acknowledgements, because you're not showing anyone what it's like to live with ADHD unless you give it a name. Or how the heck is anyone supposed to know?)

The writing was nice, and I enjoyed Rilla's third person perspective. And like the whole premise was UNIQUE. Rock climbing! It had an epic squad-goals team and it was lovely how they adopted Rilla without much questioning. (I swear this isn't YA though. It feels entirely NA or adult, especially with Rilla being 18 but everyone else in their 20s.)

Overall? I needed a plot to be fully engaged with this and have a slow build character arc of changing-into-a-better-person is nice, but not super captivating for me.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about Valley Girls. I loved the setting and the basics of the plot. A broken girl learning to find her strength and leave her past behind. We watched Rilla grow and learn with the people around her. I learned a lot more than I thought I could ever know about climbing. It was really interesting to learn about the nitty gritty details that I didn't know. I spent my high school years tree climbing with my sister as she worked for a distributor for climbing gear, yet I didn't know half of this. The details we also got to learn about Yosemite and how it's constantly changing was fascinating. I had no idea about the rating systems for the climbs and I was enthralled watching her grow with the climbs.

However, the character growth was just too slow for me. She didn't really grow into a new person until the very end. Right up until then, she was making assumptions and sabotaging herself. I got exhausted being dragged along her journey, seeming like she never actually took a step forward.

I also felt like we were missing key details. We never got to see what really happened between her and Curtis, which is way she came out here. We didn't get to see her sister interact with their mother or Rilla interact with her mother that much. I felt like we really needed to see more of this to understand how toxic her home life was. I wanted more of a fallout with her old friends. We don't know who old Rilla was and I think that affects how we see her growth.

I loved the diversity in this story. We had people from all over the globe, along with LGBTQ* characters. I loved the conversation about not forcing someone to come out, along with the sex scene that was included. It was exactly the kind of thing I want to see in YA. I was upset, however, that the first instance I saw of polyamory in YA fiction was a very toxic relationship. I wish we could see those types of relationships through a healthy lens. Rilla's mom was greedy, self-centered, and toxic. She fit parts of the negative stereotype of polyamorous relationships. I feel like it was a missed opportunity to showcase a community that hardly gets a light on them, let alone a positive one.

I didn't understand Rilla's constant back and forth. She was also changing her mind, going between ideas and feelings constantly. I couldn't keep up with what she was feeling and I felt like I had whiplash. I was disgusted by her "friends" talking crap about her towards the end. They were gossiping about her and saying very mean things about her. I was really shocked she forgave them so easily and I really don't think they deserved to be forgiven, at least not that quickly. It was just a strange scene for me and it felt out of place.

It just felt like an empty story to me. I felt like key details and interactions were missing and Rilla's growth was way too slow and painful for me. I really wanted to love this more than I did. *Thank you to Netgalley for this review copy*

Unfortunately this book was not what I expected. I felt that the main character kept making terrible choices despite complaining about the consequences of her choices.

The character development and pacing were weak -- I never got to know Rilla or any of the other characters, and since Rilla's experiences in West Virginia were why she was in Yosemite with her half sister, I needed more -- but the setting in Yosemite and the climbing were excellent. Those made up for the weaknesses for me, as I loved experiencing those climbs as a reader.

I have to admit that I struggled with Lemon's debut initially, but by the end adored it. With Valley Girls, it was the opposite. I didn't really feel as though I got to know any of the characters. And Rilla was not a character I liked all that much.

I think I'd have enjoyed it more if the writing style had been different. If things had been explained fully sooner.

MORE YOSEMITE LESS DRAMA but still pretty nice book just not really what I wanted or was expecting but happy days for this book and the setting forever and always thanks

Loved this book. Reviewed and mentioned it on my channel in 3 separate videos.
May wrap up: https://youtu.be/7Czh4h-tMfc?t=59s

I loved loved loved Sarah Nicole Lemon’s debut Done Dirt Cheap, which I picked up on a whim, knowing not much about but loving the girl power vibe of the cover and unorthodox name. I loved her ability to write resilient, strong female characters and went into her sophomore novel, Valley Girls, with similar expectations. What I encountered was a story that was much, much different than her debut, and that unfortunately failed to compel me the way Done Dirt Cheap did. While Valley Girls has a stunning setting and is no doubt a book that was dearly and thoroughly researched, it unfortunately missed the mark for me.

Valley Girls focuses on Rilla, who’s been sent to live with her sister, a summer park ranger of sorts, in Yosemite Valley. She’s left behind a troubled and tainted past in West Virginia and this summer in Yosemite is a bit of a last chance situation for her. Rilla unfortunately was the main issue for me in this book. As the protagonist, readers spend all of their time in her head, and she’s quite frankly irritating and self absorbed and honestly doesn’t start showing much growth until the very end of the book. She constantly and consistently makes poor decisions and holds herself back with them, and is insecure beyond belief. Now I know insecurities are a huge part of the teenage experience, but she would lament over the tiniest of mistakes she’d made in social situations for pages upon pages, which was such a change from Lemon’s previous protagonists. While the novel is obviously focused on the tale of her growth, I wish I could have seen more progress than I did.

While an unlikable protagonist doesn’t completely make or break a novel (sometimes the best novels can have the worst protagonists), I failed to connect with Rilla at all, as I feel I never really got a clear vision of her backstory. There’s a lot of really heavy, formative experiences and issues that are hinted at (parents who are polyamorous and in and out of jail, excessive partying, domestic abuse, etc.) which are huge themes but only ever get mentioned in passing. I really wish I had a chance to get to know exactly WHAT happened to get Rilla sent to Yosemite, as then I feel like I could have connected more with her on her journey (I know this is obviously a tale of the protagonist leaving her past behind but I felt let down by the mention of these huge issues that were never addressed fully).

The other element that had me struggling through the book was the rock climbing. Now, this is completely just my personal taste, but I am not an athletic minded person at all, so as soon as a book starts getting too technical for me I tend to get bored. I found this book was super technical and descriptive about the rock climbing process (which is a great thing if you’re interested in it! It’s evident a lot of care and research went into writing those scenes and I definitely know way more about rock climbing than I ever thought I would- including some of the wild stuff like how climbers literally sleep suspended in midair off of a mountain on a port-a-ledge). However, I did find myself eventually skimming many of the climbing portions.

While many of the main focuses of the book didn’t work for me, there were a lot of secondary elements that I liked that I wish had been featured more. I really liked Rilla’s sister, Thea, who had completely turned her life around from her West Virginia upbringing. There were a ton of female rock climber characters who all had their strengths and flaws but who were all incredibly independent, from Caroline, a sponsored, Instagram famous climber to Adeena, a climber from Pakistan who scaled Everest when she was even younger than Rilla, and who used climbing as a way to help finance her education. I wish I had gotten to know these women’s backstories even better as well, and I wish their presence had been more motivating to Rilla rather than discouraging.

Overall: Valley Girls is an book that’s obviously written with incredible research and care regarding rock climbing, and has a very vivid portrayal of life in Yosemite Valley. However, Rilla’s behavior and lack of growth coupled with my disinterest in the technical rock climbing scenes made this one a miss for me.