Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee by Jeff Zentner

I read Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee by Jeff Zentner to fulfill the penultimate prompt for my 2023 Pop Sugar Reading Challenge. One more to go! Can I do it before the end of December? 

On Friday nights, best friends Josie and Delia host a public access show featuring campy horror movies. But things are going to change soon because they're graduating from high school and soon their paths will diverge and who knows if they can keep that show going. Delia wants this to be her life, but Josie has bigger aspirations and is thinking about college out of town. 

And there's a basset hound name Beauford and a beagle named Tater, just in case dog appearances make a difference to you.

I don't know. Most teens I know refuse to make eye contact, can barely string together a sentence, and only communicate through gifs and emojis. The girls in this book are witty, clever with words, and confident in themselves to the max. It just seems like an unrealistic portrayal of adolescence. On the other hand, I like that this book deals with a really hard time in life - that transition right out of high school is not dealt with enough in literature. There are people who stay and people who go and there's no way to square that. You can never have a friendship like you had in high school ever again. 

3.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

I sleep like a rock skipping across a pond. That shallow sleep where your mind still screams at you so loudly it keeps waking you up. Where you're never quite certain whether you've been sleeping. (page 102)

Oh, man, do I know this feeling. 

There aren't enough good places to scream in this world. You can't do it in public. You can't really do it at your house, if you live anywhere near other people. Can't do it at school. It's strange that we provide so few places to do something that you really need to do sometimes. There should be padded, soundproof rooms, like restrooms for screaming. (page 330)

This is such a good observation. I am a lady who screams when frustrated and this has been an ongoing challenge in my life. Sometimes I just laugh manically instead of screaming. That seems more socially acceptable. 

Some things last longer than others, but everything ends. Childhood feels like it takes forever when you're in the midst of it, but one day you wake up and you're eighteen and going to college. That basset hound puppy with the bow around his neck? You're going to see his whole life pass. You may find someone and get married. And it might last a long time, but it ends one way or another. Maybe you'll be together for fifty or sixty years, but one of you is going to get left behind. I'm glad things end, though. It forces you to love them ferociously while you have them.

There's nothing worth having that doesn't die. (page 369)

Is this what young adult literature is like these days? Morbid. 

Hat mentions (why hats?):

"Don't you dare say that my hat ain't fancy," I sing in my best bro country singer voice. (page 87)

He raises a gloved hand and points in my direction before bounding up into the ring, handing his hat to his coach (?), and whipping off his shirt. (page 164)

"We will, at no time, be listening to any music that sounds like a sentient John Deere hat trying to have sex with a duck call, sir," I say.