While I didn’t love this one, I can look back objectively and say it’s a good coming of age short story. Sometimes I get an expectation in my head about where a story is going to go and find myself let down when it doesn’t go that way. This is no reflection on the author or the quality of their story; it’s just something in my brain and unfortunately it happened with The Cool Kids. 

That said, I’d recommend this one to fans of coming of age stories, especially those who don’t want to get into the horror genre. I hate that my own mind sabotaged my feelings for this one, and I’m excited to read more books by this author.