Tuesday, January 21, 2020

Book Review: "Tweet Cute" by Emma Lord

Could this book be any more adorable?

Pepper is an overachiever. She's in her senior year at a prestigious New York City private school, captain of the swim team, and hyper-focused on getting into Columbia. She's also in charge of social media for her family's fast-food chain, Big League Burger. The company has come a long way since her parents opened the first store in Nashville; now her mother is the ruthless CEO looking to expand, leaving Pepper and the rest of her family hanging on.

Jack's family owns a neighborhood deli, Girl Cheesing. While he and his twin brother Ethan grew up working there, since Ethan is more popular and more involved in high school, Jack's family expects he'll run the deli in the future. Jack dreams of developing apps, and in fact has developed a popular chat app for their high school, but he's also in charge of the deli's not particularly active social media presence. And in his spare time, he loves needling Pepper in class.

When one day Big League Burger steals Girl Cheesing's iconic grilled cheese recipe, Jack isn't willing to let that action go unnoticed. He starts taunting the larger company on Twitter and the only thing Pepper can do, egged on by her mother, is respond in kind. (Memes, GIFs, and sarcasm abound.)

While Pepper and Jack don't realize at first that they're the other's social media nemesis, it's not long before their identities become known to each other. Neither is really interested in keeping the Twitter war going, but both are being encouraged (or, in Pepper's case, compelled) to continue, so they propose a more friendly and competitive arrangement. However, they keep getting thwarted by family members on both sides.

Meanwhile, as their friendly rivalry goes viral and the public starts shipping the idea of the two of them as a couple, the other thing they don't realize is that they've been chatting with each other anonymously on the school app Jack designed. When Jack realizes he's been talking to Pepper the whole time, he isn't sure how to feel, especially when he learns she thinks she may have been chatting with someone else.

Is all fair in love, food, and tweets? It turns out there's a lot more to the rivalry between Big League Burger and Girl Cheesing than meets the eye, and Jack and Pepper may get caught in the crossfire. And at the same time, as they try to figure out their feelings for one another, they also need to figure out what they want their futures to hold as opposed to everyone else deciding for them.

Along the way there's lots of good-natured fun, romance, and lots of delicious-sounding food, so don't read Tweet Cute if you're hungry!! Emma Lord really did a great job with her debut novel, creating characters that you rooted for even when they annoyed you, and a totally believable scenario given how social media rules our lives! I can't wait to read whatever she writes next.

I'm honored to be a part of the blog tour for this book. Wednesday Books provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making it available!

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