This story follows four girls in their senior year of high school. Over frozen yogurt, Layla casually mentions it— she wants to lose her virginity before she graduates. The other three girls are at first scandalized, but after admitting that they want to lose their v-cards too, the ‘sex pact’ is born. Lindsey Rosin’s Cherry is a story about the complexities of friendship, love, and sexual relationships with important messages about sex-positivity.
Honesty is this novel’s greatest virtue.
Sex is often portrayed in romance novels as this big, great thing that always results in satisfaction from both parties, but Cherry portrays sex as what it is. The novel doesn’t pretend that vaginal sex alone is enough to satisfy the majority of women. It shows that even though sex is a big deal, especially for young people, it can also be kind of awkward, painful, and even anti-climatic.
Cherry has a positive discussion on masturbation, which can be seen as a taboo subject among young women, especially high school students. This book welcomes girls to have desires, questions, and curiosities about sex in addition to fears and anxieties.
During the girls’ character arcs, you can see that sometimes your sexual partners will guilt trip you, take advantage of you or show otherwise damaging, problematic behavior. The novel doesn’t excuse or romanticize this kind of behavior and allows the girls to develop in the face of it. By the end, I found myself so proud of the girls and satisfied that they did not stand by their mistreatment.
A collegiate will be able to find her younger self in Cherry’s four realistically portrayed heroines— decisive and organized Layla, indecisive artist Emma, bold Alex, and shy, self-conscious Zoe. Although this book uses the sex pact as a focal point, it’s really all about how these girls grow and develop together as friends. The novel is above all heartwarming, comforting, and nostalgic. I started reading it with doubts about the concept and characters but left with a smile on my face.
Although it’s about high school girls, I think that college-aged women can still benefit from the sex-positivity and portrayal of friendship in this novel. That, and it’s also just a really fun, light, feel-good kind of book.