“A fitting end to the cheesiest romance ever told, an a love we can all brie-lieve in.”
– Emma Lord
Title: Tweet Cute
Author: Emma Lord
Release Date: January 21, 2020
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 368
Thank you to Edelweiss+ and Wednesday Books for an eARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!
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.
Tweet Cute was the fun, gooey romance I needed in my life. Between the witty banter and all the sass I couldn’t get enough or put it down (and I was traveling thorough Europe while reading it so that’s saying something). I love contemporaries that manage to capture realistic aspects of what’s happening in that time period; a time-capsule for later generations. Twitter wars between businesses and online anonymous apps are very in right now but like MySpace could fade into obscurity someday. Instead these things are captured between the pages of Tweet Cute and the interactions between Pepper and Jack.
➽ Pepper – All around perfect achiever who takes everything seriously. She has a lot of pressure on her shoulder thanks to her mom and their family franchise Big League Burger. Not only does she need to be the best student and swimmer to get into a stellar college, she also needs to help keep the social media side of her parents’ business relevant and avoid any online faux pas. It’s a lot of stress for a teenager. On top of all that she also runs a baking blog with her sister but baking helps to de-stress her along with talking anonymously to “Wolf” online through an illegal app for her school. Wolf is a good friend to her and while she wants to meet him she’s unsure if she’s willing to give the anonymity of it up when he’s the only person in her life she can open up to. Then things get so much worse when Big League Burger is accused of stealing a recipe from a small sandwich shop. Suddenly Pepper is launched into an online twitter war with her nemesis Jack.
➽ Jack – Being the twin to an all around golden boy is hard, managing the family business and knowing that it’s going to be handed down to you someday is even harder. Girl Cheesing is barely staying afloat and even it were doing fine does he really want it to be his whole life? The only person who knows his doubts are Bluebird, a friend he’s made on the anonymous app he built for his school. Then he goes online one day to find a chain restaurant has ripped off one of their most popular sandwiches and there’s no way he’s going to stand back and let them off the hook without a fight; did it have to be with frigid Pepper though?
PepperJack. The cutest couple name to ever exist and adds just a little bit more cheese to this mushy love story. From enemies to friends to maybe something more I couldn’t get enough of Jack and Pepper. Their online snark was hilarious to read and they definitely had a connection even off-line. While they interact in classes at school, it’s the swim team that pulls them together in real life. They go from enemies to suddenly having to coordinate swim practices together. Online they’ve unknowingly started a tweet war that becomes something more as their friendship in real life begins to grow.
The online chat room app that Jack created was honestly really cool. The school creates this supper competitive cut throat like atmosphere that the app is trying to disengage by bringing students together. While Jack and Pepper don’t know they are chatting with each other as Wolf and Bluebird it was weird but interesting as a reader to see those interactions compared to those they have IRL. It was this juxtaposition that showed just how many walls we can have built up because of society versus just being who we are.
What I was really all for was the cheese puns though. I laughed so much while reading and looked forward to just reading whatever pun came next. Yeah the romance and friendship was great, but the puns were even better.
Overall I really enjoyed Tweet Cute a lot. It was a fast paced romance that kept me engaged and kept me wanting more. There was a twist in the end I didn’t see coming but it just fit in so well with the overall vibe of the book. PepperJack was relationship goals and all I want is recipes to every single baked good mentioned in the book. A delectable read for any age.
Disclaimer: All quotes used in this review are taken from an advanced copy and may be changed from those that appear in the final version. Quotes will be updated to reflect such changes, if any.
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