Review: Tweet Cute by Emma Lord

It is a rare thing for me to read young adult. I got burned out on it after being on a few committees and it is just not something I have picked back up again, despite knowing there are so many great titles out there being published. When I was approached about participating in the blog tour for Tweet Cute by Emma Lord, I was very intrigued by the premise. It sounded fun to me and since I’ve had a tough time reading in general, fun is just what I wanted. And this book is definitely fun, make no mistake. But there is a lot of striking character development and a plot with more depth than I expected.

Pepper Evans is a leader in her New York school. She is a straight A student, she has been elected as the swim team captain for her senior year, and she is overall a people pleasing student trying to make the best grades and the best future for herself. It comes with a price though. On top of dealing with all her AP classes, Pepper is basically the de facto person in charge of social media at her mother’s company, Big League Burger. What started out as a mom and pop restaurant in Nashville has grown into the fourth largest burger chain. It is a lot of pressure and Pepper’s mom unfortunately kind of uses her daughter’s snarky talents to make the BLB social media shine.

When Jack Campbell sees Big League Burger has come out with a new sandwich called “Grandma’s Special” he is angry and hits back on twitter. His family’s restaurant, Girl Cheesing, has been part of the East Village for years. He has grown up in the restaurant and knows its customers. He also knows that Girl Cheesing is well known for their Grandma’s Special. He isn’t going to let Big League Burger live this down.

And well, a twitter feud begins. It is not necessarily as fun as it sounds though because while Jack and his twin brother, Ethan, are sending a few retaliatory tweets, for Pepper, these tweets come at the cost of her state of mind. The pressure is on big time.

Tweet Cute has a great mix of humor and teen pressure. Both Pepper and Jack are facing a few assumptions about what the future will hold for them via their individual family members. And unfortunately, neither of them is super gung ho into the restaurant business. Jack is developing apps that may just take off if he gives himself the chance and Pepper loves baking more than she likes high pressure business dealings. Add to that, Jack and Pepper are being thrown together a lot lately in school and while they are starting to become friends, all that swiftly changes with the reveal about who Pepper’s mom is. And the thing is, Pepper needs and deserves some friends. She doesn’t give herself much time to just be herself. She is constantly playing one role or another to appease her mom, or her older sister, or her classmates. No one really knows the Pepper that grew up in Nashville.

I really liked the characters in Tweet Cute and of course, I enjoyed the David versus Goliath battle between Big League Burger and Girl Cheesing. The battle of the corporation versus the hometown favorite may remind people of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks’ You’ve Got Mail. Tweet Cute stands on its own two feet though. I loved seeing the city through home town guy Jack versus transplant, Pepper. I really liked reading about all the delicious food in this story too!

Tweet Cute has the perfect modern flair and the right amount of teen high stakes pressure to make this book an easy sell to any reader. And of course, there is a great developing romance!

Tweet Cute is available January 21, 2020!

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.

 

Emma Lord is a digital media editor and writer living in New York City, where she spends whatever time she isn’t writing either running or belting show tunes in community theater. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a major in psychology and a minor in how to tilt your computer screen so nobody will notice you updating your fan fiction from the back row. She was raised on glitter, grilled cheese, and a whole lot of love. Her sun sign is Hufflepuff, but she is a Gryffindor rising. TWEET CUTE is her debut novel. You can find her geeking out online at @dilemmalord on Twitter.

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