Book Synopsis: 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.
My Review: 4/5 stars. I really enjoyed this! From the premise alone I knew it would be good and I was excited to read this. I know some people hate love triangles, but I don’t mind them, and the idea of an online, two-person, love triangle really intrigued me. There were a few things I had minor issues with, but nothing too big. There were times where things got really messy in the the main character's life and it made me want to keep reading to find out how it got resolved.
I owe a thanks to this book for being the reason I started the blog you're reading this review on right now. I saw how the main character, Halle, had her online life where she shared all her bookish opinions and it inspired me to want to do the same.
One thing this book did to relate to a younger audience is used common internet slang. I wasn't a huge fan of it and thought it was slightly cringey and unnecessary at times. I read in another review that they thought it wasn't like that, but I did. Maybe it's just because, despite me being a teenager, I'm not really the type of person to use slang all the time. The slang and abbreviations definitely wasn't as bad and overused as in some books or movies for teens, however.
On a related note, something I DID like was the little snippets of DM conversations or Tweets between the characters in between chapters. It was a way to give a tiny bit of exposition or important details without being unnaturally shoved in. Plus, it was accurate to how social media actually is and fit in well with the style of the book.
Another thing I didn't like, which was only a small part of the story, was the online drama about this book that Halle loved. The drama basically was that the author of this book was complaining about teens reading it, and then all the main characters were doing the same but saying that adults shouldn't read books "designed for teens". This was mentioned quite a lot throughout the book. As a teen myself, I think it's great that adults are reading YA books. Just because a book or TV show or anything has a target audience of teens, that doesn't mean other people can't enjoy them. I think it would be unfair to say otherwise and just limiting the number of people who will read your book by saying that. There was also a lot of references to "cancel culture" about this fictional author and book, which is a thing online today that I frankly think is really dumb. It reminded me a lot about all the controversy going on with J. K, Rowling in the world right now.
Back to what I did like. I loved all the pop culture references. Halle loves to listen to Hamilton and loves watching the Harry Potter movies with her grandpa. It made it feel less like just a fictional story and more like I was reading about a girl from the real world who actually existed. It made me chuckle anytime there would be a real world thing mentioned that I related to. I also love Hamilton and Harry Potter.
Finally, I loved Halle's relationship with her friends and family. She made this group of friends she spent so much time with because she sat at the same lunch table with them on the first day of school. I can relate to making friends this way. I loved when she would go bowling with them and just goof off like teenagers. I also loved how well she and her younger brother got along. They talked about their problems with each other and had so many inside jokes. I feel like the stereotypical teenage thing is that they hate their family, so I'm glad this showed a great brother-sister relationship.
This book has some bad language, but nothing too bad. There aren't any F-bombs or anything. As for mature content, there's only one scene where things got pretty intense between the character and the love interest but it was short and didn't go too far. I would say this is appropriate for teens and up just because of this one scene but otherwise it's pretty clean.
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