5/5 stars!

I'm crying. This book was so lovely, so beautiful, so filled with these gorgeous, glorious, lovely moments and each one of them just filled me with a heart-rending joy.

Where to start? Halle and her anxiety are written so attentively, so carefully, so as to make sure that it's an accurate representation, and even though her anxiety was more extreme than mine, I could still relate. I found her to be a very real, flawed, human character — and what more can we ask for?

Halle and Nash? Wow, OTP goals for life.

Le Crew, and Halle's online friends are supporting cast goals as well.

I would live and die for Gramps, his were some of the absolute sweetest moments in this book.

I'm just — out of words. This was an incredible book. Marisa Kanter is a rising star.

This is a solid YA romance that will definitely keep you engaged. The plot point of a person hiding their true identify behind on online profile is pretty common. Marisa Kanter keeps this story fresh by giving the main character a really interesting role as a book and cupcake blogger/Instagrammer. Halle moves to a new town when her parents take off to make a documentary, leaving her and her brother to live with their grieving grandfather. She quickly discovers that her online best friend (and crush) lives in the same town. She keeps her identity a secret and complications ensue. I really enjoyed the family dynamics in the story, the depiction of anxiety, and the different views of grief. They added depth to what is ultimately a very sweet young romance story. I enjoyed this as an adult reader but I think younger readers will really connect with it.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ugh. There were parts of this book that were so cute, but I will never know how it turns out. 25% of the way in and it's been mentioned 3 separate times how adults shouldn't be reading YA. I let it go the first two times but as an adult fan of YA it really rubbed me the wrong way so i won't be finishing the book. It is a bummer that we have to shame people, even passively throguh characters, about what they enjoy reading i always tell my book club members to never let someone make them feel bad for what they read. Reading should be joyful, not an embarrassment, no matter what it is you like to read.

Are you kidding me!?! This was amazing!!! I am so in love with this, if I could be any emoji throughout this boon, it would be the heart eyed one!

I feel like this is just the perfect YA book that everyone needs to read. The characters are all relatable and I loved how the author put in a Twitter/blog following. I think many students will enjoy this story and feel as though it is current. This story had me laughing, crying and even wanting to throw it down and scream (in the best way possible). I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes Tweet Cute! Great job to the author capturing a story I know many in my classroom will enjoy for years to come. Thank you netgalley and publisher for the early read. I give this story 5/5 stars and will be recommending to my students.

If you liked Tweet Cute by Emma Lord, you just found your next YA fix. I was immediately drawn to this book because the heroine is a book blogger. She also suffers from social anxiety, so she's more than a little awkward in social situations when she's not online. Nerdy/shy characters are my jam, so obviously this book was kind of made for me. While I enjoyed how relatable Halle was in the blogging aspects of her character, she certainly wasn't without her faults. This is a young teen filled with insecurities and fear, she's dealing with grief over the recent loss of her beloved grandmother. I'm not going to lie, I did get impatient with her inability to be honest with everyone in her life, but saying that, it came from a realistic place.

Halle, or Kels as she's known online, has just moved in with her grandfather temporarily for her senior year of high school. She's used to a nomadic upbringing, traveling with her parents to remote locations for the production of their documentaries. The loss of her grandmother is hitting her hard, however, and she needs to put down roots with her brother. Up until this point, the most exciting thing she thought about herself was her online presence running One True Pastry. She joined the love of baking with books, and her following has grown into the six figures. As Kels, she can use her new identity to be the person she wishes she could be in person. Someone who isn't afraid in large crowds, or uncertain how to act when forging new relationships with people. Then her safety net was ripped away from her when she suddenly came face to face with her online best friend, Nash. In her panic that her real life personality will not match up with his expectations, she bungles everything. Nash has no idea that the new girl in town is none other than Kels.

There's quite a bit of a yo-yo effect in how Halle treats Nash after he introduces her to his friends. She verges from shyly trying to open up to him to being downright rude in order to push him away. Just when they start to get a little bit close, it scares her. Her two "lives" will surely crash spectacularly, and the longer she keeps quiet the worse the end result will be. She can't help but gravitate towards him though, and she starts to realize that even Nash had been keeping private and personal information from her online. She wasn't the only one using the distance as a protective barrier. He was starting to open up to her and reveal a very vulnerable side of himself, but there was one last thing that was standing between them. Herself. If the boy you like thinks he's in love with your alter ego, things get really complicated.

The thing that bothered me the most was the amount of time Halle continued her charade, and the extent she went to keep it going. She "ghosted" her online friends, which really hurt them a lot. She allowed Nash to start a romantic relationship with her based on a web of lies. After a certain amount of time, you're only waiting for the dreaded moment of truth to happen because you know eventually everything will blow up in her face. In the end, she had a lot of soul searching to do. Not only about finding the courage to be her most authentic self, but to make amends to the people who cared about her.

Despite my impatience in parts with the heroine, I thought the story showed a realistic perspective of a teen blogger. Marisa Kanter's experience in publishing publicity lent an obvious air of authenticity that I appreciated. Another big plus was Nash. That boy was the absolute sweetest and so easy to love from first meet. He proved again and again what a big heart he had, not only to Halle, but his friends and family. Nash genuinely cared, and he had his own issues with his parents weighing on him at the same time. The end was cute, if a bit abrupt. I actually kept trying to flip further after reading the last page because it didn't feel complete. An epilogue would have been really welcome, but I liked how things resolved nonetheless.

I would definitely read more from this debut author, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she'll offer us next.

I adored this book! I loved it from the very beginning. I felt like Marisa did a great job of portraying teens and their emotions.
Halle/Kels and Nash felt super real. I loved watching them interact in person and online. I loved Halle's relationship with gramps and Ollie. I felt there was a great balance of the family relationships and the romance.
I also loved all the book blogger references. It's always fun when people in books like books.
I felt like there were some pretty big mistakes that Halle and Nash made (like not being honest about who they were in real life/online). It felt true to what I did as a teen (not the lying part) but making impulsive choices and not realizing all of the consequences.
There was also great Jewish representation which I really loved in this story.
What I Like About You will pull at all of your heartstrings and fill you with hope and love.
5/5 stars

A great insider look into how small the blogging community really is.  The added element of blogging—especially book blogging—made this online love triangle a unique and refreshing debut. There was also great commentary on the YA space in regards to authors, readers, and demographics.

This was such a sweet and lovely story. The relationships—both online and in real life— in this book were excellent. Because they lived their life on the road, Halle and her brother are the best of friends, despite a two-year age gap. We get to see two strong friend groups that spread across the Internet space and real life. Halle works extremely hard to keep those two parts of her life separate from one another, ultimately getting herself in trouble.

There are times when you just want to shake Halle for being so dense, but it was pretty consistent with people dealing with social anxiety. There's a great deal of stubbornness with anxiety and it takes a lot of convincing to change a person's perspective. To get them to see how their own thoughts are trying to sabotage good things in life.    

It might be a predictable story, but it has a lot of heart and I really loved it. A new favorite!

ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Halle Levitt lives two lives: one is her usual life as the daughter of two well known documentary directors, and the other is as a popular YA book blogger and cupcake baker named Kels. Kels is everything that Halle isn't: she's confident, outspoken and everyone like her, but the one thing Halle enjoys the most about being Kels is her online best friend, Nash, a talented graphic artist who loves books almost as much as she does. The pair have spent years getting to know one another online, but have never met. Until Halle and her younger brother move in with their grandfather, who just so happens to live in the same small town as Nash.

After a chance meeting at the library, Halle can't bring herself to tell Nash who she really is. Things get even more complicated once she and Nash make a real life connection. As their relationship grows and blossoms into something more, Halle must face her fears and tell Nash who she really is. But what if he doesn't feel for Halle what he feels for Kels?

The whole premise of this sounded cute, but it was a little too juvenile for me. I didn't really love or connect with Kanter's writing style. I'm not a huge fan of using internet lingo in dialogue, so whenever a character used "AF" or "IRL" in conversation just made me cringe. Aside from that, I also found the story line a bit too predictable, so there was nothing that really surprised me. I think maybe if I were a little younger, I would've liked this a bit better, but it just wasn't for me.

What I Like About You is an extraordinary YA rom com that all reviewers and bookstagrammers should read. Halle has worked very diligently over the last several years to grow her blog and instagram following where she reviews YA books and pairs them with cupcakes. She created the perfect pseudonym in order to separate herself from her publishing famous grandmother. She wants to earn her followers and acclaim based on her brand and talent, not her grandmother's influence. She has created her persona, made a bunch of online friends, and is on her way to reaching her goals. But when she moves to a new high school and meets her best online friend, Nash, in person, she can't bear to tell him who she really is. How will he react to knowing Kels isn't real?

This is a trope I've read often in Young Adult Contemporary novels and I will never tire of it. It never goes well, but I will always be here for reading the fall out. What makes this even better? Halle reads just as much in the genre and knows she is living a book trope but thinks her situation is different! It's frankly so meta and I adore it. I will never not pick up a book with this trope.

I adore everything about this book and I shout it from the rooftops if necessary so everyone will read it. The characters are fantastic, even the side characters. I love the friendship Halle has with her younger brother Ollie, I think it's a type of sibling relationship you don't often see, especially with opposite sexes. He is supportive and they like each other's hobbies out of respect for each other and a desire to spend time together and it is amazing. I also just love that the author based a book off this community that I love so much.

Read this book. It is wonderfully written and wildly interesting and seriously cute.

What I Like About You is a fun YA romp about a love triangle that's actually a line. It's a good read if you love YA, cupcakes, and wish you'd known about BookCon when you were 17 (that's right, I'm not a teen but I still love YA - more on this later!).

Halle Levitt is the granddaughter of a well-known book editor and has known since she was young that she wanted to follow in her Gram's footsteps into the publishing world. In order to avoid riding on Gram's coattails, she created an online persona, Kels - pretty much Halle in every way, except much less awkward. As Kels from One True Pastry, Halle reviews YA books and bakes amazing cupcakes to match. She's kind of a book deal in the YA book twitter world and has created many important virtual friendships.

The most important of those friendships being with Nash. They've chatted daily for years and just click. It's clear to everyone but Halle that Nash wants to be more than friends. Not that Halle wouldn't want that, she just sees her life and Kels and her life as Kels as very separate things. Halle loves the outlet that being Kels provides. She's worked hard to amass a following, and she sees her blog as her ticket to her dream school, NYU. She can't let all her work be compromised.

But of course, real-life intervenes. On her first day in Connecticut, where Halle and her brother have moved to live with their Grandpa while their parents travel the world as documentarians, Halle encounters Nash in the flesh - at the library, of course. What follows is a completely baffling and unnecessary deception as Halle decides NOT to reveal herself as Kels and instead lies to her so-called best friend. Oy.

Halle’s reasoning to keep Nash in the dark about her identity just doesn't make sense. There are no stakes behind this big reveal. He would have been stoked if Halle had revealed herself right away, but even a week, or a month later, he might have been able to laugh it off as Halle had worked her way into his crew of friends. Instead, Halle doubled down at every turn, going so far as to ghost Nash online, try to ghost him in real life, and somehow also alienate all of her other friends. Six months later, after they've entered a romantic relationship, she still hasn't said anything, hoping Nash will somehow figure it out on his own. More and more drama ensues.

This book deals with some really interesting and important topics. It paints a beautiful picture of the grieving process, and how it’s okay to not be okay, that things won't ever feel the same. There's also some great representation of the Jewish faith that I've honestly never seen included in any YA I've read. The book blogger angle feels fresh, and I guess I can forgive the conversations about YA not being for adults (adult here - I still love YA!!). Unfortunately, the central conflict falls flat as Halle’s identity crisis makes her a pretty unlikeable main character. That being said, I predict a lot of teens will love this book. Us bookish people love books that talk about books. What I Like About You does that very well.

"The flowers are dead, I'm surrounded by orange, and a suitcase has been disemboweled in the search for a phone charger."

I'm a firm believer that the first line of a book is incredibly important. This one caught my interest and before I knew it, I was face-to-face with a main character who might as well have been me, only she gets a more fun YA adventure than my actual life. I mean, a bookstagrammer, blogger, book reviewer girl who is incredibly bad at making friends and talking to people in real life? A girl who walks around in "The Book Was Better" t-shirts and has a Harry Potter obsession? It was like reading a book written about myself. Halle is a book nerd--she is an avid lover of books, particularly the YA genre. She also loves cupcakes and out of that, One True Pastry, a bookstagram account, was born. However, she goes by Kels on there because Kels can be what Halle isn't--cool, fun, adored by people. Out of all her online friends, Nash is the one she is the closest too. They've been online friends for years, dreaming of the day they could meet. So when Halle accidentally ends up going to the same school as Nash, she has no idea what to do. She ISN'T Kels--or is she? Pretending that she is just simply Halle, she cleverly maneuvers through her real life relationships and her online ones. This book sounds pretty light, but this book has some dark themes. Death, grief, panic attacks, etc. I expected some angst, given that always seems to be the case when one is living a double life, but I wasn't expecting this. As Halle grows closer to Nash, a horrible yet wonderful truth comes to light: Nash loves Kels. Who is Halle. But not Halle. At what point does Halle need to come clean? How far is too far? Halle has to tell him eventually, but will she lose him and all of her friends in the process? This book was absolutely fantastic, though I might be biased since the main character sounds so similar to myself. The author's dedication to such small details is so impressive and makes the read even more entrancing. She writes out some of the reviews, emails, DMs, text messages, etc. and does it so so well! She created such a relatable character people can connect to and feel for throughout the book. Watching Halle go through so many ups and downs was hard because I could relate. I'm slightly jealous of Halle though, as the fact remains that she's a very influential bookstagrammer and reviewer and managed to make friends IRL. Ultimately, this book was amazing and funny and sad and relatable and beautiful and fun! I loved reading it from start to finish. Any YA romance fans out there need to pick up a copy of this book when it hits the shelves!

I really love this story. While it is hard to read it on an ereader and I believe I would have loved it more in print. The conversations and budding romance that the main characters tried to push back on was wonderfully written. I especially liked the fact that we got both sides of the story not just a one sided thought process.

What I was able to read of this book, I enjoyed. Unfortunately, the format for the texts/PMs was wonky on my kindle. Because of that, I felt like I was missing a lot, so I'd like to get my hands in a hard copy of this book once it comes out.

The idea seems intriguing, but it's one of those "why doesn't she just tell the truth" plots that frustrates me. Additionally, there was a line in the book that made me go "huh" in a bad way: Halle says, "Because engaging with adults who think YA is for them? It's exhausting."

This makes my librarian heart unhappy. Books are for everyone. Read what you want to read, and don't feel shame for it. From some other reviews I read on here, this sentiment is repeated throughout the book.

Marisa Kanter’s contemporary YA What I Like About You is super cute and also hard-hitting, like that one pocket-sized woman on Friends who Joey dates and who fiercely punches him when she laughs.

On her mega popular bookstagram and Twitter accounts she’s Kels, an amazingly inventive YA reader who pairs books with cupcakes and whose best friend is Nash, whom she’s never met in person. IRL she’s Halle, who’s very uncomfortable in some social settings, doesn’t have many (any?) friends except her brother, and stumbles across Nash at a library in a town she’s just moved to. She should just tell him who she really is—his online BFF Kels. But feelings.
​
As they start spending more time together, things predictably get confusing. Her own budding feelings for Nash are complicated by the fact that Nash actually has a crush on Kels, which he’s never revealed to her, and she actually is Halle & Kels, even if the guy she really likes doesn’t know that.

Yikes. Though the beginning of this conflict feels kinda thin to me—Halle doesn’t really seem to consider the long-term effects of her deception—by the middle and end I was agog, waiting to see how she and Nash would get over the hurdle. I had hope, but Halle really does some questionable things throughout the book that merit quite a bit of forgiveness. And I actually loved that.

But while Kanter really brings our sweet & snarky Halle to a moment of reckoning, she also shows how it’s possible for someone to take solace in social media anonymity, to hide their true opinions behind it, and to step away from their phone when things start feeling too hard. That’s the temptation of online life.

Kanter also gets major points for featuring a diverse cast of characters, engaging with mental and emotional health from panic attacks to grieving, and tackling general conversations surrounding YA books, like matters of audience.

This is a romance but even more than that, it’s a self-mance (this is me running with that word) and I was there for it.

4.25⭐️. What I Like About You is out on April 7, 2020. I received a complimentary ARC of this book from Netgalley but all opinions provided are my own.

Kels and Nash’s story was incredibly cute and sweet. I loved all the bookish touches throughout the book. I fully bought Kel’s’ blog popularity and the reasons for her pen name and the resulting misunderstandings.
It’s a very sweet romance that book lovers will enjoy.

This book is a really sweet love triangle between a girl, her best friend, and her Internet personality. It’s a very enjoyable read. I also really appreciated the Jewish representation in the book. I didn’t realize how much I was missing Jewish representation from YA novels and it was great to know that people who read this book will come away with a better understanding of Jewish culture.

What I Like About You is the debut young adult contemporary novel from Marisa Kanter with an intriguing original premise about a love triangle between a boy, a girl, and her online persona.

Halle Levitt is the granddaughter of a well-known editor from a major publishing house, and after deciding at the age of 14 that she wanted to explore a career in the same industry, she created an alternate persona to avoid her brand being built on the back of family connections. As Kels from One True Pastry who reviews YA books and bakes amazing cupcakes to match, she’s developed a huge online following over the years on her own merit as well as formed important online friendships with a few peers through Teen Book Twitter. Life is looking pretty sweet for Halle!

This book features a diverse cast with Jewish representation in the form of Halle’s family and a few of her peers, plus multiracial representation as her love interest Nash is a quarter-Asian Jewish person. Her brother Ollie is also working out his sexual orientation as he believed he was gay and then experiences attraction to a girl from school, which is a nice acknowledgement of fluid sexuality and that figuring out your identity can be a work-in-progress. While the LGBTQ aspect doesn’t have a major focus in the story, Halle’s Jewish heritage is front and center which is wonderful. As their parents moved around so much while the kids were growing up, she and Ollie didn’t have a chance to connect much with their heritage until moving in with their grandfather in Connecticut to finish high school while their parents shoot a documentary in Israel. Jewish customs and traditions are incorporated into the storyline in a natural organic manner as they celebrate holidays with their grandfather and attend Shabbat services at the local temple where they engage with the rest of the Jewish community.

There is also a fantastic and emotionally resonant arc surrounding the family’s grieving process as this is set six months after the death of Halle’s grandmother. Their grandfather is still struggling with her loss, and while the kids do their best to support him and give him their strength to help him move on, they’re also still affected by losing their Grams. It was really sweet and poignant how big a role Grams played in this story despite not being physically present, as Halle continually reflects on her kindness, wisdom and fond memories of her instilling a love of books in Halle at a young age. I shed a few tears at a couple points because the author’s depiction of their grief felt completely raw and real.

One of the most compelling parts of the story was the depiction of how Halle managed Kels’ online existence. As a blogger and bookstagrammer, I’m often in awe (and jealous!) of my peers who are massively talented and amass tons of followers, and from the outside, it can look quite effortless. It was so interesting to watch how much time and effort Halle devoted to maintaining her social media profiles, because as much as you theoretically know that it takes a lot of work, reading about a character living this lifestyle and dealing with the daily trials and tribulations was eye-opening. The baking aspect was such a creative touch and added a more fun element to Halle’s book blogging as she frequently experimented with cupcakes and photography set-ups incorporating the goodies she baked!

Unfortunately, there is one main weakness that will be a drawback for some readers. By happenstance, Halle encounters one of her online friends, Nash, in the flesh after moving to Connecticut. What follows is a completely baffling and unnecessary deception as Halle decides NOT to reveal herself as Kels and instead lies to a boy who is meant to be her best friend, giving him a false backstory to avoid being identified as Kels.

This decision may sit better with other readers than it did for me, but Halle’s reasoning to keep Nash in the dark about her identity will never make sense. If there were legitimate stakes to Halle being revealed as Kels, that would have improved the storyline tremendously, but her excuses for keeping Nash in the dark are extremely flimsy. This isn’t the same as a mistaken identity plot where, for instance, a princess poses as a commoner and falls in love – one could understand her agonising over confessing who she really is because it would mean her partner having to come to terms that there is a whole other side to her that was hidden all this time. But in Halle’s case, Nash loves her as Kels and also comes to care for her as Halle, so there is literally nothing to lose. It also reads as slightly sadistic when ‘Kels’ is messaging with Nash online as he confides in her how confused he is about his interactions with Halle, because again, this is her best friend that she is intentionally hurting by blowing hot and cold, but she doubles down on maintaining secrecy at all costs.

What makes this even more confusing is that after Halle’s decision to maintain two separate personas with her best friend, this results in her ghosting her long-time friends Elle, Amy and Samira because they’re Nash’s friends as well and she worries about compromising her secret somehow. Halle causes a lot of hurt and confusion to multiple people who are important to her, with her brother frequently calling her out on continuing this deception. Her frustration at him for pointing out the obvious makes Halle even less sympathetic because even with the narrative from her perspective, none of her internal justifications for withholding the truth sound remotely convincing. 

This is a YA novel that is at its best when dealing with the delicate themes of loss and grief and how it's okay to not be okay, to take time to figure yourself out and establish a new norm. The book blogger angle is enjoyable, feeling fresh and relevant with the incorporation of multiple platforms like Instagram and Twitter, which is very relatable given how big a role social media apps play in the life of today's teens. Unfortunately the central conflict falls flat as Halle's identity crisis felt contrived and makes it difficult to root for her at times. What I Like About You will appeal most to readers who enjoy protagonists involved in the bookish community, stories that have a major focus on social media and fandom identities or who are looking for Jewish representation.

Three and a half stars, but I'll round up to four stars because I want to judge the book on what it wanted to be, and I think it mostly succeeded in that respect, even if I was a little uncomfortable with the choices that the main character made.

I knew going in that the book was going to have a certain amount of deception. The tagline "Can a love triangle exist with only two people" was what hooked me, after all. But I kind of thought that it would be mostly false assumptions and not realizing what was going on, and the occasional lie by omission. I hadn't expected the level of full on lying that went on. There is a point at which failing to reveal pertinent information goes from merely keeping a secret to full on conscious deception of another person, and Kels/Halle definitely crossed that line in a way that made me frustrated in a romance. Relationships in which one love interest intentionally, repeatedly, and purposefully chooses to falsify information is not a relationship that is healthy, or one that I trust.

I think part of the problem was the timeline. If all of this had happened in the space of a couple of weeks, I think the book would have worked much better for me. In a handful of weeks Halle could have made some poor choices, but the scope of the problem would have been much smaller, both in emotional impact and in number of times she needed to outright lie. I think the EIGHT MONTHS of lying was being driven less by character development (there were several time skips where a month or six weeks would fly by in a single sentence) and more the author wanting college admissions to be a strong part of the story. But that could have been achieved in other ways without compromising the main relationship to the degree that it did. It also didn't make sense because the long timeline meant that there were times where Halle was feeling awkward/unwanted by Nash and/or his friends where it would've made no real difference in the strain on the relationship for her to reveal the truth.

Halle's brother Ollie constantly telling her how unethical the situation is was an interesting choice, because on the one hand, it's clearly signaling to the reader that this is not right, but on the other hand, it also shows that Halle is well aware that she's in the wrong. This is also where the elongated timeline is frustrating. This isn't a panicked reaction that, once she's calmed down, she understands is not the right thing. It's a calculated, months-long plan that she knows from the beginning is wrong.

One of the strengths of the book is the tight relationship Halle has with her brother.

I appreciated that many of the characters were Jewish, and that they approached their faith differently. I also liked the anxiety representation as well (though I do not in any way think her anxiety justifies months and months of lying.)

This book was SO frustrating - but in a good way. At no point do any of Halle's rationalizations or defenses about keeping her identity from Nash make ANY sense. She's told it's a bad idea, and it almost costs her everything and everyone in her life. I found myself practically screaming at her. I love how Kanter shows how even the smartest teenagers sometimes do the dumbest thing. This book also has wonderful subplots about making friends, and getting over loss. If you don't read it, you're missing out.