Tweet Cute by Emma Lord // Book Review

This book was Gossip Girl meets Romeo and Juliet meets You’ve Got Mail. I would say out of all these comparisons, it’s more like You’ve Got Mail and here’s why.

Tweet Cute follows Pepper and Jack. Pepper’s family owns and operates Big League Burger; a fast food chain that’s been growing exponentially over the last few years. Jack’s family runs a small deli called Girl Cheesing in the East Village for the past two generations and Jack’s dad is thinking of passing the deli to Jack in the future. When Big League Burger announces a brand new sandwich, Jack and his family can’t help but see a suspicious resemblance to one of their iconic sandwiches. And in good modern fashion, they retaliate via Twitter starting a Twitter hashtag war between the two brands.

And here’s the added layer; both Jack and Pepper go to the same school in the same homeroom class and they’re both on the swim team. However, for the four years Pepper’s been in school, she’s been a little robotic focusing only on schoolwork than making friends. Meanwhile Jack is hidden behind his twin brother, Ethan’s, shadow. Jack and Pepper will have to work together in their final year of high school as Ethan shirks his swim team captain duties to his twin.

But then there’s another added layer. There’s a new app the entire school has been using called Weazel. It connects its students anonymously to set up study groups, complain about tests and teachers, and speak directly with each other. Of course this app isn’t an official school app, but everyone uses the app to connect to one another and that even includes Pepper and Jack. Pepper has been talking to Wolf for a few months now, but his identity hasn’t been revealed yet to her. She thinks it might be her high school crush, Landon. Jack created the app and spends his time filtering out the trolls and bullying on the app, but he’s been talking to Bluebird and really enjoying their conversations. The app hasn’t shown either who is who, but when both Jack and Pepper find out who they’ve been talking to for all these months, it’s not very surprising.

This story isn’t the easiest to explain mostly because there’s so much going on. I was worried with so much going on that one will get dropped over another or Emma Lord would forget something. However, she was able to cover all her bases and do it in a way that makes reading so natural. I honestly was surprised by how easily everything fell into place. Did it work really well together? Yes. Did it work 100% of the time? Not really.

I loved this story and to be honest, I was a little nervous with reading this one. I’m not a huge fan of Gossip Girl-like stories where the super rich just abuse their privilege to get whatever they want. It doesn’t read well with me, but because neither Pepper or Jack are born with spoons in their mouths, the story was a little bit more fun to appreciate. I love that Pepper is a chronic people-pleaser and that conflicts with Pepper’s entire life. She feels beholden to her mother and continue a toxic Twitter feud. She also feels like she needs to get everything done and perfect. I absolutely loved that Pepper wasn’t perfect.

Pepper’s mom also seemed like a such a complex character. At first, I thought her instance to keep the Twitter feud going was a little hard-headed, but when she tweets herself I knew she was as stubborn as myself. But when you finally learn the truth about Pepper’s mom, it starts to make more sense why she pushes so hard. I felt like Pepper’s mom was a much bigger feature in the story than Jack’s family. I mean, Jack’s family does get some of the spotlight, but I feel like I knew Pepper’s mom’s character way better than I knew Jack’s entire family (including Ethan).

Coming from this third part perspective where the reader is exposed to both Pepper and Jack’s perspective really made it difficult for me. I wanted to side with Pepper but Jack’s side revealed something I couldn’t look past and vice versa. You couldn’t help but to love both these characters and hope for the best for both.

For issues, I don’t really have many. There was one big reveal that didn’t make sense to me or was a little too convenient and the story does lag a little bit, but it’s not the end all of the story.

Overall, this is such a great and fun read. I absolutely enjoyed this book from cover to cover. It’s perfect. It’s fluffy as hell. And you’ll definitely be satisfied by the ending.

• 4/5 stars
• Find my review of Tweet Cute on Goodreads
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I received a copy of this book from Wednesday Books for free in exchange for an honest review. My opinions have not been influenced by the publisher or the author.