Book Review – Tweet Cute by Emma Lord (4.5 stars)

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Title: Tweet Cute

Author: Emma Lord

Published: 21^st of January 2020 – Wednesday Books

Format: Paperback – 368 pages

“You can’t just casually tell someone you carry caramel sauce around and walk away like thats a normal thing” – Tweet Cute

Hello Hello! How are you?

It’s Friday, and I would usually be posting my weekly Down the TBR hole post, but I was frankly not feeling motivated enough and haven’t been very productive this week anyway, so I opted for the easy review that was already written ehehe! Don’t worry though, the weekly purge will be up on my blog tomorrow and stay tuned for a different and special post on Sunday!

I picked Tweet Cute by Emma Lord as my book for the “strange names” prompt for the Trope-ical Readathon I’m doing this month, if you haven’t read my TBR post, you can find it here. I’ve had this book on my list since the end of last year when I was looking through 2020 releases, it just sounded like such a fun and different book. I’m not the biggest fan of romance and contemporaries, but I do read and enjoy the odd one, and this was definitely the case here, so it was a great choice! Keep reading for my thoughts on this book!

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

Meet Pepper, swim team captain, chronic overachiever, and all-around perfectionist. Her family may be falling apart, but their massive fast-food chain is booming ― mainly thanks to Pepper, who is barely managing to juggle real life while secretly running Big League Burger’s massive Twitter account.

Enter Jack, class clown and constant thorn in Pepper’s side. When he isn’t trying to duck out of his obscenely popular twin’s shadow, he’s busy working in his family’s deli. His relationship with the business that holds his future might be love/hate, but when Big League Burger steals his grandma’s iconic grilled cheese recipe, he’ll do whatever it takes to take them down, one tweet at a time.

All’s fair in love and cheese ― that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life ― on an anonymous chat app Jack built.

As their relationship deepens and their online shenanigans escalate ― people on the internet are shipping them?? ― their battle gets more and more personal until even these two rivals can’t ignore they were destined for the most unexpected, awkward, all-the-feels romance that neither of them expected.

MY REVIEW

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord is a standalone YA Romance, in which Pepper and Jack, the children of the owners of two rival fast food/deli/cafes, battle it out on Twitter, and grow closer in their daily lives in high school.

I actually had this on my most anticipated reads of the year list and casually added it to my Amazon Wishlist while I was in Stirling, and someone was kind enough to actually buy it for me, so thank you to whoever got it for me, it’s been a long time so I can’t remember, but I’m very grateful to you! I don’t read much romance or contemporaries, but when I read the blurb of this book, it sounded like something I was going to enjoy, so I decided to give it a shot.

SETTING

This book is set in New York, and I felt like we got a really young and fresh look at this city, through the eyes of a small-town Nashville teenager who won’t leave a 7-block radius and also wildly loves Gossip Girl (this part made me so happy!), but also through the eyes of a teenager who has lived in New York his whole life and is known by everyone near his parent’s deli as the nice twin who helps his parents.

I thought this was a great new setting – I feel like New York is the go-to location for quite a few books I’ve read (especially French ones) – and this was actually very fresh to me, so I really enjoyed it. I really loved how Pepper used Gossip Girl references and also when both Pepper and Jack were describing Girl Cheesing and Big League Burger, because it sounded like such cute places but also so YUMMY! This book made me hungry more times than I can count and I don’t like sweet food usually, so that surprised me.

CHARACTERS

Pepper: I immediately loved Pepper and even though we are very different, I found myself identifying with her quite a bit, especially because of her being a small-town girl in an enormous city and being the outsider in school, always striving for the best. I feel like, at the start, Pepper is misunderstood by everyone, she just wants to make people around her happy and proud instead of really doing it for herself and when she eventually gets to the question of what she wants to do, she has no clue. I thought this was such a great portrayal of teens, it’s so true, and a lot of teens strive for something and work so hard, but have no idea what for or why they are doing it. I also adored her passion for baking, I’m more of a savoury cook myself and don’t like baking, but I get the improvisation and mixes she does as I’m the same when I cook. I really liked seeing her evolve and ask herself questions, sometimes YA contemporaries have quite immature characters, but this was not the case at all with Pepper, she was great!

Jack: Jack is my new book boyfriend and I want to give him a big hug because he is such a sweetie. He is the kind of guy who jokes about and pranks, but inside he is just as unsure about himself as Pepper is and is also the one left out at home. I also really liked Jack right from the start and you can definitely tell that throughout their jibes and snarky comments on Twitter in the Cheese War they are manning, they go together so well! Jack is a New Yorker, but he is also not a privileged one, so I was getting Dan vibes from Gossip Girl from Jack and loving it! I think that if you are looking for a book with down-to-earth, believable characters and a good touch of snarky-ness, baking, family, friendship, AND CHEESE, then you need to read this book!

Pooja: I really (really) hated Pooja at the start of this book and that makes me sound so bad because I don’t hate anyone, but she really miffed me right from the start. However, it’s really interesting where Pooja and Pepper’s “relationship” goes because I think they both surprised each other and myself too. I like how these two characters ended up and Pooja grew on me, but I’m still not a great fan of her aha!

Ethan: I also really didn’t like Ethan, and even at the end I wasn’t a fan either. He is just such an entitled, goody-two-shoes character and acts all high and mighty, I really hated how he treated his brother (Jack and Ethan are twins). I don’t have much to say about this character because I don’t even feel like he amended himself, so yeah, not a fan!

Pepper’s family: I loved Paige and Pepper’s relationship, it was so nice to have sisters actually get along in a book (I’ve only read ones where they don’t) and even though sometimes their relationship is strained, they always come back to one another and bake! Their baking blog is *goals* and their recipes made me want to crank on the oven and get baking – especially the So Sorry Blondies. Her dad was also really cute even though we hardly saw him. However, I despised her mum from page 1 and as the book went on, I just wanted to strangle her. I couldn’t believe how stupid she was acting, I think again it’s a case of parents in YA books being morons because her mum was just pushing and pushing and then asked her what her problem was, like “EXCUSE ME?????????” – yeah, Pepper’s mum was a (insert not nice word here)! 😊

Jack’s family: Jack’s family, however, apart from Ethan, was the cutest and most caring one ever and I loved them. They aren’t privileged and they struggle for money, they want to keep everyone happy and especially Grandma Belly, and I just loved their whole family dynamic within the deli. Grandma Belly is the inspiration behind Girl Cheesing’s famous cheese toastie that Big League Burger steal at the start of the book and it was great learning from Jack all about how his family were while he was growing up. His mum was my favourite I think and I wanted to give her a really big hug!

THEMES

Family: I think that this book has a really big focus on family and how teenagers get along with their parents, their whole dynamic and wanting to please everyone, but also wanting to break free. Family can be a really tricky thing in books and I usually don’t like reading stories about/with a big focus on families because its just weird to me for some reason (mostly in thrillers and contemporaries), but here I didn’t have an issue and it was actually really cool to see the big contrast between Pepper’s family and Jack’s. I might be over-analysing here, but it seems like Pepper’s family have made a name for themselves and are quite successful, whereas Jack’s family are still struggling day to day, however, Jack and his family are so much more caring, happy and listen to one another, where Pepper’s family is falling apart at the seams – analyse that how you will!

Teenagers: This book is basically about, for, by, focusing on teenagers in all their intricacies, be it friendship, school, extra-curricular activities (swimming here), college/university, the fear of the unknown, their family and themselves. I don’t read a lot of books with/about teenagers because I’m not one anymore and sometimes find them a bit immature, but I frankly really enjoyed this one and seeing things through a teens’ eyes again. They actually were a lot more mature than their parents at times.

Twitter War: This was funny, snarky, but also at times a bit saddening because this happens so much and not just on Twitter. Social media can be an amazing place, but it can also be scary and dangerous and things can spiral out of control rapidly. This was a great way to show this and I think this book will make people think twice about what they say on social media. In the end, these teens used the Twitter war for their own reasons, and that’s great, but oftentimes it doesn’t end like that, so I thought this whole aspect of the book was a really interesting one and it really showed what means people go to on social media sometimes.

Food: I love food, and if there is one thing that will make me pick up a book is the word “food”, or “cheese” and this one has both, so I couldn’t help myself (cheese is my weakness although I’m lactose intolerant – don’t let it know I said that). This was a great part of the book and I loved every minute of it, both Jack and Pepper are so passionate about their respective foods/menus and I love seeing foodie teenagers in books. Pepper’s recipes sound so yummy even though I don’t have a sweet tooth (is there such a thing as a savoury tooth?) and I want to try them all. But who are we kidding? The cheese sandwiches won me over! This book made me hungry and if you like food, you will love this book!

Trigger Warnings: cyberbullying (social media war and getting out of control), toxic family relationship, divorce (prior to events of book), privilege (private school), illness/hospitalisation of a loved one, fear of heights.

MY THOUGHTS AND RATING

Overall, this was such a fun, snarky, messy great book, it definitely pulls on your heartstrings and I loved reading it. I sped through it and couldn’t put it down, when I did I just wanted to pick it up again. I loved that there was diversity in this book with a male/male relationship throughout and also characters of different races and social backgrounds.

The writing style was really fluid, a lot of things made me laugh, it was just written so well and made the reading experience such a fun one. it was fast-paced but the characters didn’t rush into anything, so there was also some slow-burn elements and I thought that it all came together really well in the end.

The characters were all different and intriguing, I didn’t like Pooja, Ethan and Pepper’s mum, but the other ones more than made up for them and made this book really lovely. It’s definitely a comfort read type of book with the food and cuteness (great title choice by the way). The Twitter war is a really great message to people and I loved the portrayal of teens and seeing how the evolved, their questions, their fears and their relationships.

I gave this book 4.5 stars, it was great and I loved it, just shy of my 5-star spark but still such a great read and one I highly recommend if you are a romance reader or want to branch out of your comfort zone and try something fun, sweet, snarky, foodie and just all-around great!

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed this review and will pick up this book. What other romance books would you recommend to me? See you soon, stay safe,

Ellie xx

If you would like to purchase this book, you can find it here: Amazon UK (affiliate link) – Amazon FR (affiliate link) – AbeBooks (affiliate link) – The Book Depository (affiliate link) – Audible FR (affiliate link) – Amazon US – Waterstones – Barnes and Noble – Audible UK – Scrib’d – Kobo