Reviewing Always Best Buds by K.S. Jensen (a.k.a. Suey @sueysbookbanter)

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Hi, my name is Pat and this is my channel Book Chat with Pat and I'm glad that you're here. Today I am delighted to be reviewing a new novel entitled Always Best Buds by K.S. Jensen on its release day, May 12th, 2026.

[00:00:24]This delightful Y A novel was written by BookTube's own Suey from the channel Suey's Book Banter and I was honored and delighted to read an ARC or an advanced reader's copy of this debut novel.

[00:00:49]Always Best Buds is an epistolary novel written entirely in long notes passed almost daily between two teenaged best friends, Jan and Liv or Janica and Livia.

[00:01:12]Each note is signed ABB, for Always Best Buds. The notes are exchanged throughout the school year from August 1982 through June 1983, although there are also a few letters exchanged in the fall of 1983 as well at the beginning of the girls' senior year of high school.

[00:01:48]Jan is clearly the honors student and the intellectual of the pair, taking [snorts] harder classes and stressing and obsessing over her extracurricular activities and commitments, which include dance, writing for the school newspaper, and playing saxophone in the school band.

[00:02:17]Her best friend, Liv, is less sure of herself academically, but knows that she excels as an athlete. And she is the star of the school's track team. She, too, is a member of the band.

[00:02:38]The novel opens with their early exchanges of notes, uh, as their junior year begins in August of 1982.

[00:02:52]And each girl expresses to the other, uh, her hopes and fears about the upcoming school year.

[00:03:02]Their dreams for junior year include meeting boys and pursuing crushes. This prospect introduces two additional characters.

[00:03:17]Miles is an extraordinarily talented guitarist who also shares some academic classes with our two main characters.

[00:03:30]And Jace is the mysterious, quiet, new boy in school. He seems very serious and kind of antisocial at first.

[00:03:45]He definitely has his guard up as the new kid in town. He also runs track.

[00:03:54]He's an artist of quite a bit of talent, and he also plays drums in the school band. So, all four of our main characters have plenty of opportunities to meet and to interact with one another as the school year gets underway.

[00:04:19]At the beginning of the novel, both Liv and Jan seem to be fairly obsessed with Miles and Jace. And it actually takes a few months for them to work out exactly who likes whom. We get detailed letters from each girl chronicling every interaction with both of these boys. And they also chronicle all of their interactions throughout the school day in all of their classes.

[00:04:59]There are places where this very close friendship between Jan and Liv is actually threatened by feelings of jealousy that arise primarily over these two boys. But conflicts are mostly worked out through letter writing as well.

[00:05:25]Suey does many things extremely well in this novel. First, she absolutely captures the voices of these two teenaged girls through their letters.

[00:05:41]As each girl documents her thoughts, fears, worries, insecurities, triumphs, and accomplishments to her best friend, Sue captures the emotional intensity of female adolescence.

[00:06:03]Although I was not a teenager in the 1980s when this novel is set, in fact, I was already teaching adolescence in 1982-83 when this novel takes place.

[00:06:21]I absolutely do remember this kind of intense letter writing among friends all through high school in the 1970s and and just the absolute intensity, emotional intensity of it. This novel definitely made me feel nostalgic for this period in my own life where my friends and I wrote letters to one another as if our lives depended on it.

[00:06:57]There are also some letters in the novel from the teenaged boys as well where at certain key points in the narrative, each boy has reason to write to one or the other of the girls. We do hear much less from the boys. Most of what we know about them comes through the girls' narratives. But there is one key point in the novel where the boys also enter into this note writing.

[00:07:36]I was just a little bit less convinced about the authenticity of the teenaged boys voices because we just don't hear that much from them in their own words.

[00:07:52]But I absolutely can vouch for the authenticity of the girls voices where Suey captures just perfectly what teenage girls sound like in in their in their writing to each other. She carefully develops the thoughts and feelings of both of these teenage girl characters through these very very detailed letters. Suey also beautifully creates a sense of the early 1980s through cultural references including the music and the movies of the day.

[00:08:44]Jan regularly writes reviews for the school newspaper and those are part of the novel as well including reviews of the movie ET and also the movie Tootsie.

[00:09:04]She also makes recommendations in her column about movies that are now available to rent at home to be watched on a video cassette recording machine or a VCR. And some [snorts] of the movies that she recommends watching at home on this new technology are Rocky 3 Star Trek 2 Wrath of Khan The Outsiders and Star Wars.

[00:09:38]There are also really wonderful playlists of songs at the end of the novel that can be downloaded.

[00:09:50]Always Best Buds Mixtape includes all of the songs from the dances depicted in in the novel from movies mentioned in Jan's reviews as well as songs played by the high school band which all of the kids are involved in.

[00:10:13]>> [snorts] >> There are codes at the end of the novel that take you to these playlists on both YouTube Music and also on Spotify and that was just really a lot of fun.

[00:10:29]One of the aspects of this novel that I think I liked the best is that Sue not only captures really well the voices of the adolescents that she's describing but she also depicts very poignantly the innocence of these kids even as they navigate some challenging emotional issues. These are really good kids who deal with the mostly normal stresses of teenage life in the early 1980s as well as a few extraordinary stressors.

[00:11:18]They grow up considerably through the course of one year in high school through their friendship and through their first loves and through some challenges in their family lives, as well.

[00:11:34]But, they remain relatively innocent kids at the end, about to face a whole new set of challenges in their senior year of high school.

[00:11:49]I found that there was something achingly bittersweet about this glimpse into teen life from over 40 years ago.

[00:12:03]If you enjoy YA fiction, if you have some young teens in your life, or if you feel any kind of nostalgia for the early 1980s, I think you would love to read Always Best Buds by K.S. Jensen, or Suey.

[00:12:30]K.S. Jensen, aka Suey at Suey's Book Banter. I am very grateful to have had this opportunity to read an advanced reader's copy, and congratulations to my friend Suey on the publication of her first novel.

[00:12:53]As always, I thank you for watching. I hope that you're doing well. I'll speak with you again soon. Take care.