What I Like About You by Marisa Kanter - OPTIONAL

What I Like About You by Marisa Kanter, 409 pages. Simon and Schuster, 2020. $19.

Language: R (96 swears, 0 “f”); Mature Content: PG13; Violence: G

BUYING ADVISORY: HS - OPTIONAL

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE

Halle can’t put the right words together IRL, but online she thrives under her pseudonym Kels, the blogger for One True Pastry. But in her most recent move, her real life and online worlds collide. Panicking, Halle tries to keep herself compartmentalized, an obviously foolproof strategy.

When Halle made the decision to keep her online and real lives from overlapping, I knew she was in trouble and I had to put the book down for a couple weeks because I wasn’t ready. I could see the blow up waiting to happen, and my dread continued to build with every opportunity to fix the mess that Halle let pass. And, after all that stress and disappointment, the ending was just eh. I appreciate the lessons in trust and true friendship that Kanter teaches through Halle’s mistakes, but reading the story was more painful than I wanted it to be. The mature content rating is for innuendo and partial nudity.

Reviewer: Carolina Herdegen