Book #71: The Distance Between Us by Kasie West

Okay, I'll admit it--I only just read On the Fence last night and now, less than 18 hours later, I've already finished another Kasie West novel. I was at the library this morning with Dane for storytime and I looked up Kasie West on the library system to see if they had any others of her books there--and they happened to have this one. I got it and read most of it while we were at Barnes and Noble and Dane played on the train table there (one of his favorite things--as a birthday activity for him). The Distance Between Us is actually set in the same town as On the Fence (and actually happens a little before that one--some of same characters appear as cameos in each), which is kind of neat. This novel is about Caymen Meyers, who spends all of her time working on her mom's doll store and worrying about paying their bills. Their clientele are mainly the super-rich of their town, who Caymen's mom is super prejudiced against and is always warning her daughter about getting too close with. But one of their accidental clients, Xander, starts following Caymen around and even though he's super rich, she actually likes him... What to do?

It had all of the same elements that I really enjoyed from On the Fence, with the fun, outspoken characters, and I really enjoyed the romance between Caymen and Xander. I just don't really understand why Caymen was so ridiculously insecure about the rich/poor conundrum here and always attributing everything Xander did to him being rich and caring about being rich. It really kind of started to wear on me. And just like with On the Fence, I kind of thought there was some unnecessarily dark background here--like with Caymen's dad, who left her and her mom (apparently just because he was rich)--which didn't get resolved satisfactorily by the end of the book. But I liked the dialogue between Caymen and Xander and how their relationship evolved, and I thought it was definitely a fun read.