An improvement from the author's previous work. This book had an interesting concept even though I'm not really a huge fan of magic in contemporary settings. I recommend giving this book a shot!

Thank you to Net Galley and St. Martin's (Wednesday) for this ARC.

I must say, going into this one, I had high hopes. As a fan of Freaky Friday and Parent Trap, I was already prepared to get sucked into this story. However, I DNF'd this one.

The writing style just wasn't for me, and the use of "excrement" as a swear word was just too cringe for me.

Again, I really wanted to like it, but I just couldn't unfortunately. Maybe I'll try and pick it up again in the future.

Unfortunately, this was a DNF for me. I kept trying to read further, but I really couldn't get past the poor writing quality. To me, this read like a very early draft both in writing quality and the overall poor plot. There was no nuance or subtlety to this book - it really whacked you over the head with everything. I found both of the sisters to be unbearable (both in personality and dialogue).

<b>I received an eARC from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.</b>

Siri lives in New York with her mother. She is struggling after a bad accident ruins her back and her career as a professional ballerina. At 18, Siri has already peaked at her dream career and is stuck.

Jamie lives in California with her father. Jamie has been struggling with stage fright and can’t seem to get through her sets. After being kicked out of her apartment, she is forced to move back home with him. She’s forced to sign a contract with stipulations for her being home, one of which involves going to a camp or therapy. She chooses the week long camp.

At the “Rediscover Yourself” camp, Jamie and Siri literally run into each other. Jamie immediately recognizes Siri and tells her she’s her sister. Siri doesn’t believe her, Jamie isn’t real. Her mom put her in therapy because she imagined her. Over the next week, they reconnect and come up with a plan to get back at their parents. Before they leave camp, they’re hit with some magic and look like each other. They each spend a few days with the parent they don’t know, with the intention of meeting up in Las Vegas.

With all the hurt and feelings of abandonment, how do they heal?

<i>Better Together</i> was a really great idea. It took the Parent Trap and put a spin on it, but I found myself pushing to finish. The first half of the book I struggled to get through and my initial thoughts were that this was going to be a 2 star read. The very beginning was confusing and hard to get into. I grew to love Siri and Jamie, but the beginning was just very weird to me. Once they got to the camp, I felt like things were moving very slowly. I found myself dreading to pick up the book.

The latter half definitely saved this book for me. Once the girls switched and had to “walk in the others shoes”, it definitely picked up. While their parents had no idea they had switched, they definitely noticed a difference in their girls. The emotions Siri and Jamie go through are very real and it was great to delve deeper into their feelings. In order to heal, sometimes you have to dig further into the pain.

Personally, I won’t be rereading this book. It’s just not a favorite of mine, but aud would definitely recommend this for someone who tends to like deep emotions and slower stories with a lot of detail.

Better Together is a twist on the classic, Freaky Friday, with a dash of the Parent Trap. This made for a really interesting and unique plot. Two sisters are separated early in life are now young adults and run into each other at a wellness camp. The older sister Jamie, moved across the country with the girl's father and is now trying to become a comedian. While, young Siri was only four when they left so was told by her mother that Jamie didn't even exist.

The book alternated between sisters and I loved hearing each sister's POV on a specific situation. Overall, it was a really enjoyable read.

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review*

I was looking forward to this book. I've been subscribed to Christine since 2013 and I've always known her to be funny and interesting and sadly, this book was neither.

The writing was stilted and the characters had no depth and simply nothing was believable. I so wanted to love this, but it was not meant to be. The whole cursing business cheapened the book immensely.

To be honest, I enjoyed Again, but Better, but Better Togther was not for me.

This book was amazing, wonderful, lovely, and every other positive adjective you can think of. Christine is such a fun and spunky person, and I think that shows through in her writing. I really enjoyed reading a book about sisters, because I personally don't come across those very often. I can't wait to read what Christine comes out with next.

Better Together
By Christine Riccio

Better Together by Christine Riccio is a PArent Trap / Freaky Friday retelling about sisters Jamie and Siri who who reconnects with each other at a retreat after many years apart. Jamie is a budding stand up comic from Los Angeles while Siri is from New Jersey and is trying to reinvent herself after a career ending injury as a ballerina. They decide to switch places to seek revenge from their estranged parents with the help of some glitter magic.

This was a fun and cutesy read about sisterhood and the road to self-discovery.

So umm basically a retelling of parent trap but in a more modern way I guess. It was cool. I'm always down for this concept.

Freaky Friday meets The Parent Trap is the perfect way to describe this book. As a kid I was a huge fan of both so I knew I would love it. If you ever wondered why anyone would split up and each parent take a kid, but act like the kid you didn’t keep doesn’t exist, this book is for you. I loved that we got to see why and how something like this would work.

Jamie and Siri are complete opposites but I really enjoyed their interactions together. I loved Jamie the best. She was loud, quirky, and totally obnoxious at times, but her POV was my favorite. I honestly disliked Siri at first, but she definitely grew throughout the book, and by the end I had some love for her.

This was definitely a fun, quick read for me. I gave this book ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Christine Riccio's sophomore novel was great. While Again, But Better is very different, I could definitely see her improvement as a story teller. Her writing was stronger—while just as hilarious and relatable. The characters too were so well rounded and you could seemlessly see their character progressions. I love that Christine wasn't afraid to make Siri and Jamie unlikable in the beginning, because it gave them so much room to grow, and grow they did. I also love that we got to travel and see the two girls in so many types of situations and interactions. They felt so real! Great job Christine!

However, I do think it could have been at least 50-100 pages shorter. While the pacing was okay, there was too many b, c, and d plots that weren't very necessary. (Though I did really enjoy Shane and Pilot's cameo!)

This book is pitched as The Parent Trap meets Freaky Friday, and I think right there is where the book’s worst enemy lies.

By that pitch alone, a lot of elements can come into play. Firstly, we have the story of two sisters who didn’t know about each other’s existance (I’ll correct that later, bear with me) but somehow find each other and decide to switch places as both a way to mess with their parents after separating them and also reconnect with the parent they didn’t get to grow up with. That alone is very heavy, and it was applied in a way that didn’t really work. But then, on the other hand, we also have the fact that “switching places” also takes place in a magical physical form. As to say, they switch bodies (or conicousness), like in Freaky Friday. That alone IS A LOT. But the way it’s executed continues to oversaturate the narrative.

Let me explain. In The Parent Trap, the sisters are twins and facilitates a lot of the switching off the brain and enjoying the charming fiction process. Because at the end of the day, what those parents did was extremely messed up. Chosing one of your children??? Separating twins???? However, thanks to the movie’s endearing aspects, the audience is able to just enjoy the kids’ shenanigans and then the romance between the parents. And you know, the switcheroo is a lot easier to understand because they’re identical twins. In this book however, Siri and Jamie and different ages. Jamie is two/three years older than Siri. This doesn’t inherently mean that the story is more complicated, it doesn’t even need to bring new elements in. Nonetheless, things get a whole new level of messed up very quickly when we learn that they do sort of know about each other, it’s just that Siri thinks that Jamie’s presence in her first four years of life was a figment of her imagination. Mara, her mother, the parent that stays with her, gaslights her into thinking that she made up Jamie in her head to cope with her father leaving. Yes, you read that right. Sent her to a therapist and everything.

Once Siri realizes everything that’s going on, they both agree to do the great bamboozling and switch places. Jamie wants to torture her mother a bit (because you know, she not only never reached out to her but also made her other daughter think she wasn’t real) and Siri wants to reconnect with her father and demand explanations. See, this could have worked out by itself because they look like each other, but the book also throws magic elements into it. On their last night on their retreat, they get glitter bombed by some magic thingy and a peculiar riddle. Nothing much happens there, they already have the plan under way, they’ve already had their makeovers and everything. However, when they’re on the plain rides home (or their other respective parents) they suddenly switch bodies. BUT THEN ALSO, their respective love interests can magically see who they really are. I think this was unnecessary, it should have been either Freaky Friday or The Parent Trap. Not both. Everything together seemed like too much, the plot was sort of twisting itself to get even more complicated as the pages went on. They already had the plan going and they could have pulled it off (specially with their parents being such self-absorved and awful people). The magical aspect wasn’t really necessary in the sense that it didn’t really add anything. I would go as far as to say it took away from the story.

It could have worked. Maybe. I really do not know. What I do know is that it wasn’t executed in the best way.

Furthermore, connected to this and to my main problems with the book, comes my next question: who is this book targeted at? It was marketed as YA. Okey. But Jamie and Siri are 20 and 18 respectivly. Also okey. We’re always complaining that we need more books that deal with early adulthood but with a YA feel, because you know Young Adult. I don’t think it’s about the characters’ age. It’s more about the tone. There’s a lot of outlandish comedy throughout the book, there’s this constant push for sort of ridicule. I can’t find the correct words to particularly describe it, but I think it’s comparable to those comedy movies from the 2000’s. They’re sort of for kids but have a lot of adult jokes and there’s a lot of humour that if not done perfectly can come off as cheap. That’s how it landed for me. It doesn’t really matter if I found some of the jokes funny or not because comedy is so subjective but I didn’t find any joke endearing, and that sort of alarmed me. I can appreciate Christine’s sense of humour sort of infiltrating the book because I always like when a bit of the author’s personality is engraved into the story. However, it just didn’t align with the book’s content and sometimes, it made the characters unbareable to read about. The book tried to deal with some very mature themes in the most wacky way possible. So then I wonder, who is this for? It’s definitely not for younger teens because of the themes that it tries to tackle, but I don’t think it’s appealing to older audiences either. I think the book could have been much better off commiting to a certain audience.

Interpreting all of this, I think that the main problem was the execution, it wasn’t very polished. I don’t know how the final version turned out but one thing I noticed was that a lot of things could have been cut out to make it all more cohesive. Not only with how the premise was planned out, but as the things that made the characters’ voice work (or not) as well.

In conclusion, it’s not the worst book ever but there were definitely some choices that sabotaged the story’s potential that could have been avoided with profound editing. Maybe it was undercooked in the sense that some ideas should have been thought out more, in order to give the book structure, a direction and overall, a sense of motive..

3/5 Stars

** I received this as an E-ARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review, Thank you!**

This is essentially freaky Friday meets the parent trap. I have mixed feelings about this book. The writing was just okay. While some of this did hold my attention, a lot of it felt super outrageous. The parents irked me to no end. I honestly couldn't stand them, they were selfish and terrible parents. I think it's odd that other family members just went along with their plot. Overall it wasn't a terrible book, it was entertaining and a quick read.

Jamie is an aspiring stand-up comedian who struggles with stage anxiety. Siri is a ballerina who is nursing a career-changing injury. The two girls have signed up for the same retreat in Colorado to rediscover themselves. Jamie and Siri are long lost sisters who were separated as little kids when their parents had a bitter divorce. Reunited at the retreat by chance after years, the sisters devise a plan to switch places with each other at the end of the retreat. They both want to confront the parent that left them behind. Their plan is aided by some mysterious magic that makes Siri look like Jamie, and Jamie look like Siri. Soon the sisters are living each other’s lives.

This book is super fun. It is full of moments that will have your shedding tears of laughter, joy, and sadness. I loved seeing Jamie and Siri be sisters!

Parent trap meets Freaky Friday and it all goes wrong.
Jamie and Siri are two sister split apart by two awful parents but by chance both girls end up in the same 7 day camp focusing on finding yourself again.
While the original idea is cute and I was excited to see bisexual presentation the story was too long and too sloppy.
Between Siri's mom deciding to trick Siri into believing Jamie was never real, and Jamie's annoying selfish personality the story just drags on from one unbelieve event to the next.
The worst part, despite the length of the book none if the issues ever really get addressed!
Honestly the only redeemable part of this story is the representation of Siri's bisexuality and even that gets overshadow by Jamie's selfish character,

An old twist for a new time. I really loved The Parent Trap movie (org.and remake) the switch is always so much fun. Sadly this book just didn't meat the bar that those stories tell. This was a weird light magic contemporary that just didn't make any sense. I wish the author would have taken out that magical aspect and just kept the switch of a set of twins. I think this one would have worked out better. I have to say that the writing in this one wasn't all that good either. I do not think I will try another book from this author in the future.

While the concept of this book was fun and engaging, I found it difficult to view the characters as three-dimensional, and the writing style was a bit distracting. That said, I'm sure many will appreciate the humor and hijinks of the story!

I really wanted to enjoy this book and it had its moments but I just could not get into it. I loved Siri but Jamie annoyed me from the beginning. It didn’t improve for me from there. I did appreciate how they developed and grew; how they were not just one happy family once they were reunited. But papa and grams were the real mvps of this story.

As a pre-teen, Freaky Friday and The Parent Trap were among my favorite books. When I saw Christine Ricci's new book Better Together described as a cross between the two I was tempted. But I don't really read much young adult novels anymore but then I thought it's summer why not and gave into nostalgia.

Eighteen-year-old Siri has sustained a career-ending injury and is at a loss as to what to do now that she no longer has ballet. She is also pretty neurotic and overly dramatic. Her mother sends her to a "find yourself" wilderness retreat in Colorado.

Twenty-year-old Jamie's whole life is a mess. She wants to be a comedienne, yet she has horrible stage fright and cannot make it through her entire 10-minute set. While it is never clear why she is having to sign some kind of social contract with her father and grandmother, one of the stipulations is to attend a "find yourself" wilderness retreat in Colorado.

Jamie and Siri literally run into each other at the camp - in the shower cabin no less. While Jamie knew of Siri's existence, it has been 14 years since she has seen her. On the other hand, Siri has been told that Jamie was her childhood imaginary friend. If she wasn't crazy before this, she definitely believes she has fully cracked now. It turns out that when their parents divorced and each took a child a la The Parent Trap, that her mother didn't know how to handle Siri's questions and insisted that Jamie was never real.

While similar in looks, they are not identical twins like the characters played by Hayley Mills. So to pull off the switcharoo and fool their parents a bit of Freaky Friday magic has to come into play.

As this is a young adult book and I'm clearly not a young adult, there were some eye-roll moments as the characters are a bit over the top at times in their attitudes and reactions. As they are technically adults, I didn't feel too bad in thinking they needed to grow up. Even though Siri's neurosis at the beginning was a bit much, I liked her more than Jamie. Perhaps Jamie had more childhood trauma as she knew she had been separated from her sister and mother without much explanation and that is why she isn't a very nice person. At least Siri was interested in getting help whereas all Jamie wanted was revenge and to make everyone else as miserable as she was. Siri wanted to see her father to get answers whereas Jamie, who wanted some answers, mostly wanted to see her mother in order to torment/punish her.

Jamie and Siri are named after characters from A Song of Ice and Fire series. Apparently, their parents were huge fans of the book series. But I'm not really sure as they kept referring to "Thrones". I'm not a fan of either the book series or the show, but I've never heard anyone refer to it as Thrones. The show is either referred to as A Game of Thrones or abbreviated GoT and the same goes for the books being referred to by its series name or abbreviated ASoIaF. Fans of the show or books might enjoy the references, but they just moved right past me.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Brittany Pressley and Karissa Vacker. They did a great job - I didn't actually realize there were two narrators until just now when I went to look up the name. The characters had distinct voices and I couldn't tell when the story switched to the other narrator unlike I can sometimes in books read by multiple people.

As a pre-teen/young teen, I would have enjoyed Better Together. As an adult, I felt it was an entertaining summer read that I didn't have to follow closely to know what was happening in the story. It would be a good book to share as a family - either reading it together in the evenings or listening to it in the car while on a family vacation.

My review will be published at Girl Who Reads on Sunday - https://www.girl-who-reads.com/2021/06/better-together-by-christine-ricci.html

3.5 / 5 stars

Better Together is a Young Adult book that is being described as Freaky Friday meets The Parent Trap.

The narrators are Jamie and Siri (1st person POVs).

Jamie is 20 years old and lives in California. She wants to be a standup comic. 18 year old Siri is a ballerina from New Jersey. They meet at a Retreat in Colorado.

This story has some romance and some comedy. The book also features magical realism.

I didn't read the book blurb before reading this book. So while I knew that there was some connection to The Parent Trap I did not know anything about there being any type of magic in this book. This story reads like contemporary YA fiction. Until the magic part happens. You really need to suspend belief a lot. I thought that the story was so fun until this part. And I really was taken completely by surprise.

This book has short chapters. And was super cute at times. Each girl has a romance. And they were both really fun. But I think that I would have liked the book more without the magic aspect.

The book featured major family drama. And this part of the story was really good.

But overall I found this book to be a bit too long. But it was a fun read.