Review: What I Like About You by Marisa Kanter

Hi all my Bookworms!

My name is Chiara and I am a Bookworm.

How are you all?

So this wasn’t what I had planned for today.  I was going to put up my review of The Bromance Bookclub today but I then I finished this book and with it being so new and so brilliant I wanted to share it with you all as soon as possible.  I haven’t seen this around much over other book blogs and I really want you all to read it.

But I’m talking about it when I should be telling you more about the book.

Title: What I Like About You

Author: Marisa Kanter

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Date published: 7th April 2020

Format: e-book

Length: 416 pages

Genre: YA, Romance, Contemporary

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Blurb: Can a love triangle have only two people in it? Online, it can… but in the real world, it’s more complicated. In this debut novel Marisa Kanter explores what happens when internet friends turn into IRL crushes.
There are a million things that Halle Levitt likes about her online best friend, Nash.
He’s an incredibly talented graphic novelist. He loves books almost as much as she does. And she never has to deal with the awkwardness of seeing him in real life. They can talk about anything…
Except who she really is.
Because online, Halle isn’t Halle—she’s Kels, the enigmatically cool creator of One True Pastry, a YA book blog that pairs epic custom cupcakes with covers and reviews. Kels has everything Halle doesn’t: friends, a growing platform, tons of confidence, and Nash.
That is, until Halle arrives to spend senior year in Gramps’s small town and finds herself face-to-face with real, human, not-behind-a-screen Nash. Nash, who is somehow everywhere she goes—in her classes, at the bakery, even at synagogue.
Nash who has no idea she’s actually Kels.
If Halle tells him who she is, it will ruin the non-awkward magic of their digital friendship. Not telling him though, means it can never be anything more. Because while she starts to fall for Nash as Halle…he’s in love with Kels.

---

What I Like About You follows Halle, a young teen who is starting her senior year, runs a successful blog called OTP (One True Pastry) under the pseudonym of Kels and has no friends IRL, and Nash, another blogger and graphic novel artist and Kels best friend.  Halle/Kels who moves around a lot and doesn’t make friends easily, cherishes her online friendship with Nash and would never want to do anything to jeopardise it.  At the beginning of a new school year Halle and her brother Kels move in with the newly widowed Grandfather while their parents go off to film a new documentary.  On her first day in Middleton on an emergency trip to the library Halle comes face to face with Nash.  And our story follows on from there.

At one point Oliver, Ollie, Ol, he gets many different names during the book, says to his big sister, ‘You’ve read this book before.  It’s going to blow up, and it’s going to be your stupid fault.’  And I agree with him.  You have read this book before, but never quite like this.

When I read the blurb and I saw ‘Can a love triangle only have two people in it?’ I was suitably intrigued.  I couldn’t get the idea out of my head and I had to buy it straight away.

But the story is so much more than that a story about a love triangle.  Our characters, every single one of them, start out as semi-moulded beings, their life and decisions still moulding them into beings.  As much as this is a love triangle story and a first love story it is also a coming-of-age story.  A story about growing up, facing your fears and life.  Kanter writes about that process so well.

I love Halle/Kels. She is imperfect in the best way and she is determined.  I’m not sure in the same situation I would have made the same decision of not telling him.  I think personally I am much more of a Nash than a Kels.  I also really want to try her cakes.  The way they are described.  My mouth watered.

This book had so many emotions in it.  I don’t really cry at books, I’m not built that way, but my eyes were stinging on more than one occasion and right near the end there were definitely one or two tears rolling down my cheeks.

Oliver is my favourite character.  He holds his sister accountable for the messed up stuff she does but he also her rock when she needs him to be.  He has his won drama and his own life and I wish we had more of an insight into his character and life.  But maybe that’s another book?  I want to say more about Ollie and his life but I don’t know the best way to phrase it.  Lets just say I identify more with Ollie than any of the other characters.

One last thing I want to say before I round this post up … book bloggers, we need to be reading this book.  It is wrote for us.  I know this book is wrote for teens and I am a few years past being a teen but it is a book about book blogging.  How much more ‘for us’ could it be?  Kanter talks about all those things we struggle with, creating content, staying current, what to do when authors make stupid comments on twitter and all the drama that comes with it.  Please, read this book.

To sum up I … I just want to scream about this book.  Read it, please.  It was an amazing read and I hope that you all love it as much as I did.  If you have already read it, leave it in the comments down below, let me know if you agree with my opinions.

And until next time, happy reading!