Book Review: Tweet Cute

Author: Emma Lord

A fresh, irresistible rom-com from debut author Emma Lord about the chances we take, the paths life can lead us on, and how love can be found in the opposite place you expected.

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.

Tweet Cute is my second Emma Lord novel after enjoying You Have a Match. First things first, I love that the author went with the two main characters being called Pepper and Jack (put together make a type of cheese) and they are brought together through a war surrounding grilled cheese. While this is not limited to this novel, as this story focuses on teenagers, the parents do not come across well in this story. In these types of stories, it seems that authors give unrealistic lifestyles to the main characters. In this case, the two characters oversee their families’ Twitter accounts and some of the parents come across as treating their children like equals compared to parenting them. This is how it came across to me, but it may not be the same for every type of reader.

Pepper is a senior in a NYC high school who transferred there from Nashville. Her family owns a successful burger chain called Big League Burger. She is captain of the swim team and works hard in school to maintain her straight A’s. Jack is also a senior at the same school and is Pepper’s opposite as he is considered the laidback class clown who also is the captain of the dive team. His family owns the eatery, Girl Cheesing, which is famous for Grandma Campbell’s special grilled cheese sandwich. Since the story is dual perspective, it is told to the reader that the two characters interact in three ways: in-person, over twitter through their corporate accounts, and over the media platform, Weasel. It was a lot to have the three types of interactions between the characters, so there were moments where I wish it was more focused. While it was nice since each platform gave a different type of interaction and side of the characters, it still was a bit too much for me.

Their main rivalry takes place when BLB is accused of stealing GC’s grilled cheese recipe and a Twitter war begins. Along with the pressures of this war, the two characters have the added stresses of deciding their next steps in life plus family dramas. Jack lives in the shadow of his twin brother, Ethan, and has a complex relationship with their father. Pepper has a very complex relationship with her sister and father, who live away from her and her mother. With everything together, there isn’t a lot of time for any element to shine. I enjoyed the contrast between Pepper and Jack’s characters while they also had many similarities. Overall, this was a cute and enjoyable read where it was interesting made me continue to want to read more from the author.