You Have a Match is cute, but there are a lot of flaws that I had to overlook in order to enjoy this one. Abby is our main character and does a DNA test as a favor to her friend, Leo. Leo is also her crush, but since the pair does not communicate, the crush is kept a secret. This side story bothered me because you couldn't ever see the chemistry between the pair and if they ever just talked to one enough (instead of referencing a BEI - big embarrassing incident), this could have been resolved.

The main storyline is between Abby and her secret sister. What's that, you say? Secret sister? Yes, apparently during the DNA test that she took, she found out that she had a sister that was a direct match. Yet there is no mention of this in the 16 years of her life from her parents. Does she ask her parents about it? Nope. (Did she ask her parents before taking the DNA test even though she is under 18? No... explain that?!). Instead, she meets with the secret sister, Savannah, and the two make a plan to go to the same summer camp to get to hang out. Their relationship is strained, but they try to get along. The whole thing is strange and neither of them have any desire to actually talk to their parents to see what happened.

The summer camp setting was interesting, but the characters weren't developed very well. Overall, it was a cute YA book, but with too many flaws in the overall storyline.

I was very excited to read You Have a Match after so thoroughly enjoying Tweet Cute. Emma Lord is a wizard at crafting complex young adult characters on the cusp of adulthood. She makes you feel so immersed in their dramas and worries that, as an adult reader, I do not feel like any of it is trivial, I get emotionally invested.

You Have a Match has one heck of a hook -- finding an unexpected genetic match that turns out to be a full-blooded sister -- and spins out a good mystery and family drama. The main characters have depth and realistic relationships with each other that grow and evolve in the summer camp setting when the newly-discovered sisters secretly seclude themselves their without informing their families that they know about each other.

Overall I tore through this in a morning and can't wait for Lord's next work!

Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

Q: did you ever go to a camp? I went to a church camp once when I was a kid & got stitches on my chin after trying to show off for a boy on the see saw. He was not impressed 🥴.

I thought Emma Lord’s Tweet Cute was adorable & I couldn’t *wait* to get my hands on You Have a Match.

Featuring Abby Day, a grieving 16 year old who’s also trying to recover from the humiliation of having feelings for the best friend who doesn’t have feelings for her, You Have a Match takes it one step further on the emotional scale by having Abby learn her family’s biggest secret after taking a DNA test: she has an older, biological sister named Savvy.

Abby & Savvy make plans to get together at the same summer camp where they’ll try to figure out what happened: how their parents know each other & why they haven’t known anything about the other sister until after the test.

At camp, Abby will also try to put the Big Embarrassing Incident—when she tried to kiss her best friend Leo—behind her, a feat made more difficult by the fact that he is in fact at camp with her.

This is a heart-stirring & emotional YA contemporary that takes place in the charming locale of a summer camp. Seeing Abby make new friends while getting into hijinx, form a strong bond with her seemingly total opposite sister, figure out what’s going on with Leo, & take charge of her photographer dreams is really sweet. It just is.

My only real quibble with this one is that the situation with the parents after they find out what their kids know feels so big & I wasn’t entirely satisfied by how it plays out on the page. Not that it wasn’t well done; I just wanted something more—especially with Savvy—because there’s so much emotion there.

Lord has a deft way of writing stories that pull me in & make me invested, & while Tweet Cute is still my number 1, You Have a Match cements Lord as one of my fave YA contemporary authors.

4.5 ⭐️. YHAM is out now.

Emma Lord marked herself as an author to watch with her debut Tweet Cute. In You Have A Match, she secures her place as a must-buy contemporary author and an expert in characterization. Abby and Savvy play great against each other. They definitely read as sisters and the conflict/tension feels organic. I’m not surprised that Reese Witherspoon picked this book for her book club, nor that it debuted on the NYT list. You Have A Match is yet another gem and I cannot wait for Lord’s next novel.

You Have A Match is my second Emma Lord book and while it was a delight to read, I wish I liked it more.

Going into it, I had very high expectations as Tweet Cute was one of my favorite books reads last year and You Have A Match definitely stands it’s own ground and is a delightful book. I just felt like something was missing for me, perhaps it’s the fact that I just couldn’t connect to the characters as much. I still however enjoyed it and I think others will as well!

This was a fun read and I liked the characters, but it was hard to suspend my disbelief about the Abby and Savvy keeping their big deal discovery a secret for so long. I can imagine the sister-separation-by-parents and in played out in a way that was interesting to uncover - but I have a hard time accepting that the two of them would keep their discovery secret for so long and then rapidly develop a relationship behind their parents' backs. Overall it was cute and the friendship and relationship conflicts felt realistic.
3.5

You Have a Match is about two sisters who discover each other through a mail-away DNA test. In an effort to figure out what their parent's stories are, they agree to meet up at summer camp and get to know each other. As the summer spirals on, they each realize what being sisters really means. There's also a bunch of less elaborated upon subplots woven through the book.

What I Liked:
- Abby & Savvy are such adorable sisterly foils. Honestly I loved the weird funhouse mirror way they seemed to warp into each other at different angles.
- I also enjoyed the contrast of their styles of photography, but with them still being artists of the same medium.
- The entire idea/plot of the book is so unique and interesting, if executed a bit lackluster-.
- The ensemble cast was a lot at first, but each of the characters ended up being adorable little surprises, especially a few of the side characters. (Mickey, Rufus, & the litter brothers)

What I Didn't Like:
- There are a lot of "missed connection" moments, like too many. And I'm not saying that because its my least favorite romantic trope.
- I love a good summer camp YA novel, but this felt like a scraped out attempt of that? I just wish that there had been more summer camp-esque shenanigans, and less brooding. Also, that Abby didn't just recap events to her friend over the phone, instead of us getting read them first hand?

Recap:
Honestly, I had a really hard time reviewing this book. You Have a Match was a good read, but it was also filled with so many literary things that drove me up the wall. The story and characters were enjoyable, but all the little things kept me from falling completely into step with Abby & Savvy (& Leo & Mickey & Finn & Jemmy & Cameron & Izzy & Connie).

4/5 stars

*Thank you Net Galley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.*

Everything about this story was perfect - the friendships at the beginning, the summer camp setting, the influencer surprise sister - all of it. I want to go to this camp, and be friends with these kids. Loved it.

This book was so cute! I enjoyed reading about the friendships, sister bonding, family secrets, and the Filipino representation (when it comes to the food). Overall, I enjoyed reading this story.

A delightful coming of age tale! Who knew a DNA test could reveal a family secret so big that nobody will be the same afterwards? When Abby discovers she has a sister that was given up for adoption before she was born, she's determined to not only know more about Savvy, but the reasons behind the lies. I enjoyed watching this story unfold, and was kept guessing what truly happened to cause the rift between families. Side note: I'm in a similar position and scared/excited to take the test, but this definitely gave the courage to move forward instead of always wondering "what if."

This was a cute YA novel with an ingenious plot and a fun cast of characters. Abby and her two best friends, Leo and Connie, all take a DNA test because Leo wants to find out about his birth family if he can. Much to her surprise, Abby discovers she has a full sister living nearby, who wants to meet her. From here the plot thickens and adventures ensue when Savanah convinces Abby to join her at summer camp so they can learn about each other and try to figure out their story. There is a nice dash of romance and some interesting plot twists.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press/Wednesday Books for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review.

Review also published on blog: https://books-are-a-girls-best-friend.com/

Exactly What You’d Expect from a YA Novel: Light and Heartwarming.

High School best friends Abby, Leo, and Connie are like the three musketeers. About to be Seniors, they do everything together. That includes signing up for a DNA service. Abby and Connie mainly do it to support Leo, who is adopted and is looking to see who else might be a part of his family tree. It’s Abby however who gets the shock of her life when reviewing the DNA results and she discovers that she has a full-blood sister!

Enter eighteen-year-old Savvy. Instagram Influencer who is sheer perfection in every way. Savvy has always known she was adopted, she just didn’t know the story behind it. The fact that Abby had an older sister however is a complete shock. Now comes the hard part for the both of them, discovering the story behind their parent’s deception.

Then, of course, there’s Leo. Abby has had a crush on him for eons. Something almost happened between them a few months ago and then well, it didn’t and since then everything has been totally awkward between them. Now however they are going to be spending the summer together at camp, along with Savvy and all of Savvy and Leo’s friends. Enter sparks, romance, and a whole lot of teen angst!

“You Have a Match” is a sweet story filled with family, sisterhood, and romance by Emma Lord. This is now the second book I’ve read by this author and while I liked this book, in my opinion, it was nowhere near as cute or funny as “Tweet Cute” - which I absolutely loved. If you like YA novels, however, this might just be the perfect match for you. 3.5 stars

Published on Goodreads on 2.14.21.
Review to be published on Twitter.

After Tweet Cute, I was excited for this. It was super cute, but felt like something was missing. Or maybe there was too much going on.

This was a really interesting concept. It felt like the book was trying to do too much. I would have liked more development of the sister's relationships, and the romantic relationship.

I am not typically a YA reader and didn’t realize that this book was YA when I started it. I am so glad I gave it a chance anyway. Abby takes a DNA test along with her friend Leo and finds out she has a sister she doesn’t know about who lives close by.
This book was a fun read full of light hearted laughter, but also took on some heavy topics, which it did well. The book was able to touch on tough issues with out laying blame or being one sided.
The relationships among the teens were also well done. While they stayed true to typical kids their ages, they weren’t all self centered and making bad choices like the characters in so many YA books. I loved reading a clean teen based book for once.
I did feel like the ending was a little too convenient, but other than that, this was a very enjoyable read.

Regrettably, I was unable to finish this book. I wasn't a fan of Emma Lord's first book, and I think I should have probably learned my lesson from that one and refrained from requesting this one. I was hoping that the writing would have matured or that the story would interest me more, but I was actually far less invested in the plot and the writing had many of the same irritations as her first book.

(I do not give star ratings for DNFs, but NetGalley requires it, so I give three stars in order to be as neutral as possible)

I ended up really enjoying this book but there were points when characters weren’t saying what they meant or being open with each other that drove me crazy! Like, have to set the book aside for a second and do something else. But the more I read the more I liked it. Thank you to Netgalley for letting me read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Sixteen year old Abby takes a DNA test to support her friend Leo who was adopted and is trying to find out more about his biological parents, only to discover that she too has a sister she didn’t know anything about. The two arrange to meet and then go to the same summer camp so as they can get to know one another and uncover the secrets their families have kept from them.

While I liked this one, for a large portion of the book I felt like I was reading something intended for a much younger audience than YA. I really enjoyed the storyline about Saffy and Abby and their families but some of the secondary storylines I felt were a little underdeveloped. I wish in a way that there hadn’t been a love aspect to this story and that it had stuck solely to the friendship between the sisters as the romance element felt a bit forced to my old cynical eyes. The ending however did redeem that for me and I really enjoyed the last quarter of the book.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4

You Have a Match
By Emma Lord

I ABSOLUTELY ADORED this book! I had been a fan of Emma Lord since reading Tweet Cute last year and this was even better.

This YA contemporary read stole my heart and warmed my soul. I thought this was an endearing story about families and friendships that is endearing, fun and light-hearted. I related so well because I myself discovered that I have a half - sibling and having a filipino character in the story always delights me (I am married to one and lived there for many years).

I loved the whole premise of the story and meeting up at a summer camp. The characters and their relationships, dialogue, and cute romance was all a delight to read for me. This was pure joy for me.

I really enjoyed the author’s debut novel and was excited to hear about this one! It didn’t disappoint and I thoroughly enjoyed these characters. They were all so relatable for their age. I feel their actions reflected their ages and they were dealing with issues regarding family, friendships and relationships something that we’ve all dealt with at some point.