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Making Out #8
Aisha Goes Wild
Aisha goes wild They're all grown up together on a tiny island. they think they know everything about one another . . . but they're only just beginning to find out the truth. Aisha goes wild when a chance encounter rekindles all her old feelings about a guy named Jeff, who was her first great crush. She's promised her whole heart to Christopher, but will a part of it always belong to Jeff?
192 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
1 person is currently reading
218 people want to read
About the author
Katherine Applegate
271 books6,282 followers#1 New York Times bestselling author Katherine Applegate has written many books for young readers, including THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, winner of the 2013 Newbery Medal.
Katherine’s picture books include THE BUFFALO STORM, illustrated by Jan Ormerod (Clarion Books); THE REMARKABLE TRUE STORY OF IVAN, THE SHOPPING MALL GORILLA, illustrated by G. Brian Karas (Clarion Books); SOMETIMES YOU FLY, illustrated by Jennifer Black Reinhardt (Clarion Books); and ODDER: AN OTTER’S STORY, illustrated by Charles Santoso (Feiwel & Friends).
She’s written or co-written three early chapter series for young readers: ROSCOE RILEY RULES, a seven-book series illustrated by Brian Biggs (HarperCollins); DOGGO AND PUPPER, a three-book series illustrated by Charlie Alder (Feiwel & Friends). With Gennifer Choldenko, she co-authored DOGTOWN and MOUSE AND HIS DOG, illustrated by Wallace West (Feiwel & Friends).
Books for middle-grade readers include HOME OF THE BRAVE (Feiwel & Friends); THE ONE AND ONLY series, illustrated by Patricia Castelao, including THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, THE ONE AND ONLY BOB, THE ONE AND ONLY RUBY, and THE ONE AND ONLY FAMILY (HarperCollins); the ENDLING trilogy (HarperCollins); CRENSHAW (Feiwel & Friends); WISHTREE (Feiwel & Friends); WILLODEEN (Feiwel & Friends); ODDER (Feiwel & Friends); and the forthcoming POCKET BEAR (Feiwel & Friends).
With her husband, Michael Grant, Katherine co-wrote ANIMORPHS, a long-running series that has sold over 35 million books worldwide. They also wrote two other series, REMNANTS and EVERWORLD, and a young adult novel, EVE AND ADAM (Feiwel & Friends.)
Katherine’s work has been translated into dozens of languages, and her books have won accolades including the Christopher Medal, the Golden Kite Award, the Bank Street Josette Frank Award, the California Book Award Gold Medal, the Crystal Kite Award, the Green Earth Book Honor Award, the Charlotte Zolotow Honor Award, and the E.B. White Read Aloud Award. Many of her works have appeared on state master lists, Best of the Year lists, and Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and New York Times bestseller lists.
Katherine lives in Nevada with her husband and assorted pets. She is represented by Elena Giovinazzo at Heirloom Literary and Mary Pender at WME.
Katherine’s picture books include THE BUFFALO STORM, illustrated by Jan Ormerod (Clarion Books); THE REMARKABLE TRUE STORY OF IVAN, THE SHOPPING MALL GORILLA, illustrated by G. Brian Karas (Clarion Books); SOMETIMES YOU FLY, illustrated by Jennifer Black Reinhardt (Clarion Books); and ODDER: AN OTTER’S STORY, illustrated by Charles Santoso (Feiwel & Friends).
She’s written or co-written three early chapter series for young readers: ROSCOE RILEY RULES, a seven-book series illustrated by Brian Biggs (HarperCollins); DOGGO AND PUPPER, a three-book series illustrated by Charlie Alder (Feiwel & Friends). With Gennifer Choldenko, she co-authored DOGTOWN and MOUSE AND HIS DOG, illustrated by Wallace West (Feiwel & Friends).
Books for middle-grade readers include HOME OF THE BRAVE (Feiwel & Friends); THE ONE AND ONLY series, illustrated by Patricia Castelao, including THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN, THE ONE AND ONLY BOB, THE ONE AND ONLY RUBY, and THE ONE AND ONLY FAMILY (HarperCollins); the ENDLING trilogy (HarperCollins); CRENSHAW (Feiwel & Friends); WISHTREE (Feiwel & Friends); WILLODEEN (Feiwel & Friends); ODDER (Feiwel & Friends); and the forthcoming POCKET BEAR (Feiwel & Friends).
With her husband, Michael Grant, Katherine co-wrote ANIMORPHS, a long-running series that has sold over 35 million books worldwide. They also wrote two other series, REMNANTS and EVERWORLD, and a young adult novel, EVE AND ADAM (Feiwel & Friends.)
Katherine’s work has been translated into dozens of languages, and her books have won accolades including the Christopher Medal, the Golden Kite Award, the Bank Street Josette Frank Award, the California Book Award Gold Medal, the Crystal Kite Award, the Green Earth Book Honor Award, the Charlotte Zolotow Honor Award, and the E.B. White Read Aloud Award. Many of her works have appeared on state master lists, Best of the Year lists, and Publishers Weekly, USA Today, and New York Times bestseller lists.
Katherine lives in Nevada with her husband and assorted pets. She is represented by Elena Giovinazzo at Heirloom Literary and Mary Pender at WME.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 3, 2018
Ok, so this was a very strange one! Like, twilight zone strange. And again, the title doesn't go with the actual events... Plus Aisha and Christopher weren't the only couple left on the island... 👀
April 19, 2015
Hmmm I liked this one less than I have generally liked the books in this series. Perhaps it because I took a big break between the last one and this one. A lot of the plotlines were just kind of ridiculous :P
Overall, it was a good book, but not my favourite.
Overall, it was a good book, but not my favourite.
July 9, 2015
lol this was a weird book. now I know why I always skipped it in my rereads.
April 4, 2023
Bit of an odd one.
- Aisha gets a phone call to say that her ex-boyfriend is going to be opening a concert for Tiesto in Boston and he wants her to go. Aisha says yes, and asks all her friends to go.
- Before leaving Aisha lets slip that this boy (Jeff) was her ex-boyfriend and she had sex with him when she was only 14, and the girls are shocked 🤣
- They go off to Boston is multiple cars.
- Aisha leaves Christopher, Zoey, and Lucas and goes to visit her old house. She gets mugged, hits her head, and stumbles into Jeff's path. She believes she's still 14 after the bang to the head and goes with him to the concert where he kisses her and tries to have sex with her. Luckily Christopher spots her and intervenes.
- Claire goes off but goes to the airport where she meets the boy she'd been talking to online. Turns out the boy she meets isn't Flyer though, but an actor hired by Flyer to meet her because Flyer is fat. She considers it, then leaves.
- Jake gets drunk with Lara, and thinks about how she looks a bit like Zoey but gets freaked out when she tells him her real father is a demon. He leaves her, buys some tequila, and ends up on his brother's grave, where his brother's ghost tells him to stop drinking or he'll end up dead too.
- Nina and Benjamin go off in the van but Nina takes a shortcut and they end up with the van stuck in a field. They find a farmhouse with a scary farmer, and scary dog, and then end up running through a recreation of a witches Halloween celebration or something. Weird.
- Aisha gets a phone call to say that her ex-boyfriend is going to be opening a concert for Tiesto in Boston and he wants her to go. Aisha says yes, and asks all her friends to go.
- Before leaving Aisha lets slip that this boy (Jeff) was her ex-boyfriend and she had sex with him when she was only 14, and the girls are shocked 🤣
- They go off to Boston is multiple cars.
- Aisha leaves Christopher, Zoey, and Lucas and goes to visit her old house. She gets mugged, hits her head, and stumbles into Jeff's path. She believes she's still 14 after the bang to the head and goes with him to the concert where he kisses her and tries to have sex with her. Luckily Christopher spots her and intervenes.
- Claire goes off but goes to the airport where she meets the boy she'd been talking to online. Turns out the boy she meets isn't Flyer though, but an actor hired by Flyer to meet her because Flyer is fat. She considers it, then leaves.
- Jake gets drunk with Lara, and thinks about how she looks a bit like Zoey but gets freaked out when she tells him her real father is a demon. He leaves her, buys some tequila, and ends up on his brother's grave, where his brother's ghost tells him to stop drinking or he'll end up dead too.
- Nina and Benjamin go off in the van but Nina takes a shortcut and they end up with the van stuck in a field. They find a farmhouse with a scary farmer, and scary dog, and then end up running through a recreation of a witches Halloween celebration or something. Weird.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 14, 2015
This is the Halloween episode of Making Out. I do love a good seasonal episode, especially a Halloween episode because it gives an otherwise realistic series (be it TV or book) an excuse to stick a ghost in the mix, just like Christmas is an excuse to do a rip-off of It’s a Wonderful Life.
I think this book might’ve been intended to be the last book of the series because by the end all the little relationship niggles are ironed out and Jake quits drinking again and there’s a weird heart graphic at the very end. I’m glad it wasn’t the end, but if it had ended here I would also have had no problem.
In this instalment Aisha’s old boyfriend from Boston gets in touch to invite her to a concert, where he will be opening for Queen Latifah and Salt n Pepa. Aisha invites the whole gang to come along, she gets separated from the other Chatham Islanders, hits her head and gets amnesia so she forgets she ever moved away from Boston, she thinks Jeff is still her boyfriend and she’s still on the cusp of giving up her girlhood to him. Zoey, Lucas and Christopher are in a race against time to find her and make sure she doesn’t. Benjamin and Nina get lost in the sticks and spend the night in a barn. Jake gets drunk with Lara and ends up getting a graveyard intervention from his dead brother. Claire skips the concert and goes to an airport instead to meet her internet boyfriend Flyer/Sean.
I feel a bit sorry for Claire in this instalment. She gets all dressed up, goes to the airport holding her icy cold little heart in her hands, only to find herself entangled in a crazy web of lies almost as baffling and complicated as one of her own manipulative plots. On the other hand, turnabout is fair play.
The good thing about Jake’s storyline is that Benjamin and Zoey’s half sister Lara plays a pretty big part. We find out that she’s an artist, a prankster and a giant boozehound. Back in the day I liked her because like Louise Kronenberger, she was a counterpoint to Zoey’s wussiness and prissitude. Nowadays however, I find Zoey to be mostly cool yet naive and K-berger to be a horrible person all around. Luckily though I still like Lara, in my head she’s Hole-era Courtney Love:
My least favourite thread in this book is the Benjamin/Nina road trip. It’s the comic relief storyline and they never work for me. The Making Out series is not unfunny, but I prefer my literary titters to be a little more organic, a few zingers thrown into the dialogue for example. Whenever we switched to Nina and Benjamin and whatever they were up to, I rolled my eyes because I wanted to be elsewhere, finding out if Claire’ll figure out that the fat guy in the restaurant is her real internet boyfriend or if Aisha will come to her senses before she accidentally puts out.
Fave moments:
-More proof that Aisha couldn’t teach an Estonian (or indeed ANY Baltic native) how to dance:
“Aisha, you are the living, breathing proof that not all black people have rhythm. You couldn’t keep the beat in time with Barney singing the ‘I love you, you love me song.”
-Classic situation:
“Christopher had consumed a pair of sautéed soft shells, offering expert criticism on their freshness and preparation to the point where Zoey and Lucas were getting sick of him”
-Jeff sounds hot, lively and fashionable:
“He was dressed in hugely baggy jeans and a jean jacket with no shirt on underneath.”
Yo Jake, where Holly at?
-Dunno.
I think this book might’ve been intended to be the last book of the series because by the end all the little relationship niggles are ironed out and Jake quits drinking again and there’s a weird heart graphic at the very end. I’m glad it wasn’t the end, but if it had ended here I would also have had no problem.
In this instalment Aisha’s old boyfriend from Boston gets in touch to invite her to a concert, where he will be opening for Queen Latifah and Salt n Pepa. Aisha invites the whole gang to come along, she gets separated from the other Chatham Islanders, hits her head and gets amnesia so she forgets she ever moved away from Boston, she thinks Jeff is still her boyfriend and she’s still on the cusp of giving up her girlhood to him. Zoey, Lucas and Christopher are in a race against time to find her and make sure she doesn’t. Benjamin and Nina get lost in the sticks and spend the night in a barn. Jake gets drunk with Lara and ends up getting a graveyard intervention from his dead brother. Claire skips the concert and goes to an airport instead to meet her internet boyfriend Flyer/Sean.
I feel a bit sorry for Claire in this instalment. She gets all dressed up, goes to the airport holding her icy cold little heart in her hands, only to find herself entangled in a crazy web of lies almost as baffling and complicated as one of her own manipulative plots. On the other hand, turnabout is fair play.
The good thing about Jake’s storyline is that Benjamin and Zoey’s half sister Lara plays a pretty big part. We find out that she’s an artist, a prankster and a giant boozehound. Back in the day I liked her because like Louise Kronenberger, she was a counterpoint to Zoey’s wussiness and prissitude. Nowadays however, I find Zoey to be mostly cool yet naive and K-berger to be a horrible person all around. Luckily though I still like Lara, in my head she’s Hole-era Courtney Love:
My least favourite thread in this book is the Benjamin/Nina road trip. It’s the comic relief storyline and they never work for me. The Making Out series is not unfunny, but I prefer my literary titters to be a little more organic, a few zingers thrown into the dialogue for example. Whenever we switched to Nina and Benjamin and whatever they were up to, I rolled my eyes because I wanted to be elsewhere, finding out if Claire’ll figure out that the fat guy in the restaurant is her real internet boyfriend or if Aisha will come to her senses before she accidentally puts out.
Fave moments:
-More proof that Aisha couldn’t teach an Estonian (or indeed ANY Baltic native) how to dance:
“Aisha, you are the living, breathing proof that not all black people have rhythm. You couldn’t keep the beat in time with Barney singing the ‘I love you, you love me song.”
-Classic situation:
“Christopher had consumed a pair of sautéed soft shells, offering expert criticism on their freshness and preparation to the point where Zoey and Lucas were getting sick of him”
-Jeff sounds hot, lively and fashionable:
“He was dressed in hugely baggy jeans and a jean jacket with no shirt on underneath.”
Yo Jake, where Holly at?
-Dunno.
February 28, 2017
Feeling nostalgic for the books of my youth, I revisited Katherine Applegate and her Islanders omnibus editions (first released as the Making Out series way back in 1993. Yes, I am that old...).
While I found them to be overly-dramatic and a little bit cheesy on second reading, I think they would be loved by teenagers today. YA has taken a much-welcome step in the sphere of fantasy, science fiction and Dystopia, largely, in recent years so for teenagers looking for the traditional romance novels filled with teen-angst and buried secrets, these are a good series to turn to. A little bit Dawson's Creek in it's setting and it's drama, The Islanders is the perfect teen soap opera.
While I found them to be overly-dramatic and a little bit cheesy on second reading, I think they would be loved by teenagers today. YA has taken a much-welcome step in the sphere of fantasy, science fiction and Dystopia, largely, in recent years so for teenagers looking for the traditional romance novels filled with teen-angst and buried secrets, these are a good series to turn to. A little bit Dawson's Creek in it's setting and it's drama, The Islanders is the perfect teen soap opera.
April 10, 2022
Enjoyed it! Remembering why Nina and Benjamin were always my favourite couple
July 20, 2022
Another reread of a classic series I first read when I was like 13. The Benjamin and Nina plots are always my favorite even 27 years later.
July 12, 2020
This was definitely the weirdest installment of the series and a lot of it just felt random or far fetched. The Aisha storyline was a bit stupid and really wrong at the same time. I also didn't like how the Claire storyline developed. Benjamin and Nina were hilarious as usual. Lara is definitely one to watch! Not my favourite of the series.
August 15, 2024
4.25
There was a lot that happened in this one - it was definitely the series “Halloween episode”. I just wish the plot line of amnesia was brushed off so easily at the end - the girl needed medical attention of some kind.
There was a lot that happened in this one - it was definitely the series “Halloween episode”. I just wish the plot line of amnesia was brushed off so easily at the end - the girl needed medical attention of some kind.
April 13, 2022
I thought the ending was crazy!!!! So good though
April 4, 2024
Same opinion as for the previous books.
January 9, 2017
diese Buchreihe hat mich während meiner Teeniezeit begleitet. ich habe sie so geliebt...
December 6, 2023
I remember being obsessed with this series when I was 14! I made my mom buy me all 29 books (in Germany a 29th book was published, there is no English translation) after borrowing the first one from my then-best friend.
Looking back, the plots got wilder and wilder with time: A lost half-sister, Claire's stalker, Ben miraculously being able to see again etc. I don't think I would enjoy it as much now as I did ten years ago, but it will only have a special place in my heart.
Looking back, the plots got wilder and wilder with time: A lost half-sister, Claire's stalker, Ben miraculously being able to see again etc. I don't think I would enjoy it as much now as I did ten years ago, but it will only have a special place in my heart.
Want to read
September 24, 2007went to a secondhand store in london and picked up some cheap reads.
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October 27, 2007relationships.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews