What I Like About You
by Marisa Kanter
Synopsis
Is it still a love triangle if there are only two people in it?
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.
Review
What I Like About You brought me back to my teen years in a way no other book I’ve read has managed to do. It’s a perfect blend of humor, big emotions, awkwardness, and plenty of hijinks to try and cover up said awkwardness. The characters are sympathetic without even trying, because I feel as if I know them—as if I’ve met them before and even used to have classes with them. They are realistic teens with big dreams and even bigger stakes.
Halle (otherwise known as Kels) leads us through the entire madcap journey as only a book-crazy, anxiety-ridden teenage girl can do. The whole mess starts when she meets an online friend and freezes up (been there, done that) and throughout the whole book, she’s forced to navigate every mess that unfolds as a result. Add to this the stress of living in a new place, applying to colleges, and the massive growth of her online platform and we’ve got a real page-turner.
I think what I most appreciated about this book was that a lot of the conflict was internal—again, true to my experience in high school. Unlike the troped-up TV shows and films featuring mean girls and bullying jocks, a lot of life’s lows or at least its greatest challenges came from within my own head, and I found that to be the case with Halle. She’s neither good nor bad, and though she makes some massive mistakes along her journey, she’s just as quick to learn and grow from them. Her biggest enemy, then, ends up being self-doubt.
And God, what an enemy. As a prominent figure in the YA Book Twitterverse, Halle faces a higher than usual amount of scrutiny as the book goes on and her popularity grows. She faces trolls, controversies, rumors, and again her own ever-present, crippling self doubt.
One of my favorite lines of the book came when she said, “Literally, I don’t know why I speak most of the time.” It’s maybe the most relatable thing I’ve ever read, and is something I thought time after time when I was 15-18i—it still crosses my mind weekly. But Halle comes from an incredibly ambitious family, so I was deeply heartened to see she never truly abandoned those dreams or let the doubt overtake her.
On that note, I appreciated Kanter’s handling of the Young Adult online community at large as she addressed quite a few hot-button topics today through a fictional situation in her books. As we all know, sometimes the author of a book or series that we’ve loved all our lives can say something that feels like an utter betrayal. Many are dismissive of YA as a genre, looking at it as “less than” or not real writing, and unfortunately even some of our most beloved authors can mindlessly alienate their target audience. It’s heartbreaking in a unique way, and often times it comes with what feels like the entire YA community’s worth of deep, divisive opinions against not only the author, but their supporters or critics.
The same can be said with any controversy. Kanter addresses the pile-ons, the boycotts and trolls, the broad assumptions and “cancel culture.” She walks us through such delicate, explosive topics with grace using Halle as a conduit, and it made her feel all the more real to me. I especially appreciated the way she broke up narrative and scenes with a page here and there of tweets addressing whatever was happening at the time.
One of those things being, of course, the rumored romance between Nash Stevens and Kels of One True Pastry! The romance in this book was perfect for the genre—sweet, exploratory, layered, and with what felt like a perfect first kiss for these two characters. I could not be more pleased with the pacing and dynamics that came with Nash and Halle here!
Finally, I have to say, reading this book reminded me of all those massive hopes and ambitions I had in high school in the most perfect way. It wasn’t a downer, it didn’t bum me out that I haven’t achieved even a quarter of them yet. Instead, determination flooded my veins and I decided it was time to brush off the acquired doubts of adulthood and start chasing them again.
This book is perfect for audiences 16-19, but as a 25 year old I enjoyed it just as much and am willing to bet most anyone who read it would fall in love.
Recommendations
Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen — YA Contemporary RomCom, own voices, Asian protagonist/cast, enemies-to-lovers, comedic, steamy romance. Ever Wong is sent to Taipei by her overbearing parents in an attempt to take her focus off her true love, dance, and direct it toward college and med school. There, she runs into her childhood nemesis-turned-dreamboat and learns to push boundaries and come into her own.
To All the Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han — YA Contemporary RomCom, half-Asian protagonist, fake dating, comedic, romantic. Laura Jean finds herself fake-dating school heartthrob and childhood crush, Peter Kavinsky, after old love letters are sent to all her old crushes—including the boy next door.
