As a cishet middle aged white woman, I'm always trying to beef up my LGRBTQ+ readers advisory. This book's a great big lovably geeky cookie with an ooey gooey queer center.

It's about the circles and pop cultures we move in, by choice or by circumstance, and how we decide who we are so we can navigate them, to the best of our ability. (I say decide as in, does one come out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community or not, and not that being gay/bi/nonbinary/trans/queer/etc is a choice all by itself.)

The villain's a bit two-dimensional--there <i>has</i> to be something more to her that allows her to get by gatekeeper after gatekeeper despite her crappy personality, but then again, I've never been involved with pageants or watched reality shows about them. I don't know how horrible of a contestant you're allowed to be and still win pageants.

The challenge of depicting a fanfic community for readers is, if you're a member or knowledgeable observer, the ships here and using Tumblr might seem very dated, but if you're not in the know, the mentions of all the various fandom ships might sail clear over your head.

When you remember the actual timeline of the book it seems pretty fast that Kay And Teagan agree to become an item by the end of the 3-day con, that seems pretty intense. But again, this is more of a fast fun read.

This was mostly cute and fun although far from perfect. The concept of mixing fandom teens with pageant teens was a good one that delivered and the romance was super sweet. I debated whether to give this three stars or four but in the end it was too predictable, involved too many unnecessary details (despite how short it is) and required too much suspension of disbelief (these kids are practically ready to get married and upend their lives after knowing each other for a day and a half). I would recommend it if you're looking for mindless fluff but I wouldn't say it's anything close to a must-read.

✨ The Title/Cover Draw:
The subject of this book seemed so FUN! A cosplay convention and a pageant, I and there. Thanks to @netgalley and @wednesdaybooks for allowing me to read this ahead of publication.

💜 What I liked:
The characters in this book were fantastic and I wanted to live in their world. Teagan has to stay hidden to accomplish their pageant goals and Kay is exploring who she is in a safe space. It was beautiful and made me so happy!

😱 What I didn’t like:
Would have liked more of an epilogue to explore their lives in college (or maybe there can be a sequel?). The book felt like it could have had a bit more, but maybe that was just because I didn’t want to stop reading.

🚦 My face at the end: 🥰

💭 5 Reasons to Read:
1. Sherlock Holmes
2. Tiaras
3. Tea
4. Self Discovery
5. Acceptance

🕧 Mini-Summary:
Teagan and Kay meet at a hotel for 2 separate reasons: a fan convention and a pageant. Will they both find what they are looking for and accomplish their goals?

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Received from Netgalley.

💯 For more details on the books we read, be sure to follow me on TikTok (@zaineylaney) or check out our Podcast - Elated Geek!

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Wednesday Books.

I loved this book so much! I adored Teagan andKay and would love to read more about them.

The book covers the toxic aspects of pageant and fandom culture really well and realistically.

The antagonist reminded me so much of my high school bullies I had to take several deep breaths.

This book made me so happy!

Not sure why I picked this book up, but I enjoyed it even though it is totally outside the norm for me. I have to admit that being straight, that it was a learning experience that helped my understand not only Lgbtq+ terms (I had to look up many of them), but some of the difficulties those who are different face. I also didn't know anything about fan fiction, fandom, etc., and now I do as I also had to google and learn about this phenomenon.

The story is involves a beauty contest in the same hotel as a fandom conference. Teagan, Miss Virginia, meets Kay, a fan-fic author, and they immediately find a connection and become obsessed with each other. This is a coming of age story about the two girls and their weekend of self-discovery of their own strength and confidence and their acceptance of who they really are.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books through Netgalley for an advance copy. This book will be published on March 1, 2022.

This is a cute sapphic story. It is entertaining and easy to read. I loved it. You all should check it out

This was such a fun nerd romance! Half nerd romance, I should say, as half the book is about a pageant contestant and the other is about a widely popular fanfiction author.'

First off, I love M.K. England's writing (Remi K. England is their contemporary YA pen name). It's fun and easy to go along with and you can tell that so many topics in this book (fandom, struggling with gender identity and sexuality, etc.) are important to them. This was a short and sweet read that was truly a nice way to spend a few hours.

Second, Teagan (Miss Virginia) and Kay (@kayforthewinnet) were both so fun to read—you don't always get that with dual-POVs. Both of them had to grow over the course of the story, but I was rooting for them the whole time. The romance is really quick, but the whole thing takes place over one weekend, so that's to be expected. I never didn't really believe it though? Like it wasn't immediately happy-ever-after by any means and both characters did and said the wrong thing plenty of times.

Third, the nerdiness of this was just so fun. (I keep using "fun" to describe everything about this book, but it's just what I feel, okay? Kay and their friends are in for a convention for a Sherlock Holmes show (which, all the yes) and even though one huge con for just one fandom seemed like a little bit of a stretch for me, it worked in the scope of the book. I really loved seeing nerd culture celebrated in such a way. I haven't been deeply involved in any fandom since high school, but many of the aspects felt pretty real to me—even if it was also pretty cringy at times haha.

Now for the two main downsides that made this a less than five-star read for me:

1) This may just be me being petty, but the antagonist did not get as much of a takedown as I was hoping for. They did some pretty awful things and deserved so much more.

2) This book just didn't go quite as deep as it could have. One example: racism in the pageant circuit is briefly mentioned, as Teagan's best friend and one of the contestants is Black, but it's not really ever touched on again. No spoilers, but I would have liked to see this come up again at the end.

Overall, this was such a fun read, but it's definitely pretty lighthearted, despite dealing with a couple more serious topics. It's also a bit on the cringy side, but that didn't take away too much from my enjoyment, as I knew what I was getting into from the summary.

Absolutely adorable! Loved this new book by Remi. Can't wait to see what else they write! Realistic characters, believable romance, friendships outside romance. *chef kiss*

This was a nice fast-paced queer romance about fandom and beauty pageants. It was mostly a fluffy story, but it also had a lot of nuance and depth to the characters and their interests. Teagan in particular, I found to be a really full-fleshed character; she's a lesbian, she loves fandom, and she's a beauty queen. She recognizes the problems with the pageant industry but fights to be her true self. Kay struggles with this too, as they have to overcome their own prejudices against pageant girls while also figuring out their own personal queer identity within fandom and the outside world. Plus it was really affirming to see a character explore and celebrate their newfound gender identity.

Really, this book is a celebration of identity. It's a celebration of fandom and queerness and self-love. It's definitely cheesy at times, but it was a really fun read.

Thank you, NetGalley, for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I thought this was just okay. The promise was fun, and I really enjoyed the juxtaposition of the pageant culture and fandom culture. However, I think that the plot fell flat at times, and while the characters were super likable, everything felt a bit one-dimensional at times. I think my main issue was this book was how dated it felt — I felt like I was transported into 2014 in a very bad way. I love Teagan and Kaylee though, and I can’t wait to see what this author writes in the future.

Adult me enjoyed this book, sure, but teen me would have LOVED it. This story is so perfect for queer teens who feel like they don't fit in (both because of their queerness and for reasons beyond it).

The novel follows pageant queen Teagan as she competes in her most important competition yet, and up-and-c0ming fanfic writer Kaylee as they attend their first fandom convention, whose lives intersect when both of these important events are held at the same hotel. Teagan is a member of fandom as well as loving to compete in beauty pageants, but she hides this from her new friends at first. Kay and Teagan have an instant connection, and have so much in common, but they must learn to look beyond the superficial and work understand one another to really have something together.

This book was really adorable and ultimately largely positive and is so perfect for teens involved in fandom and queer teens who deserve to see themselves as the hero of the story.

I’m happy there are more and more books written about nonbinary people and queer relationships, especially sapphic relationships. This book is kind of an opposites attract romance with the pageant queen and nonbinary fanfic writer falling for each other over a convention weekend.

I loved a lot about this book, especially the way the struggles of being nonbinary, finding your fit, finding your pronouns, etc. are expressed. The romance was a bit instalove but sweet.

I found myself skimming over the con and pageant details especially in the first half of the novel. I’m a fanfic writer myself, and I enjoyed the fandom component but some of it went into too much detail to hold my interest.

This is a good YA read overall. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC.

The One True Me and You follows two teens whose seemingly different worlds collide when a beauty pageant and convention take place at the same hotel. Kay, popular fanfic author, hopes this convention will be the perfect opportunity to try they/them pronouns. While Teagan, secretly a fandom nerd, is hoping a big win at the pageant will give her the scholarship money she needs for college. When the two collide they find they have more in common than anyone would have guessed.

I loved the portrayal of fandom in this book. Kay primarily uses Tumblr and AO3, and as someone who was very active on those platforms 10 years ago I thought the fan culture was really well done. While the book focused on acceptance and being able to be yourself when you're surrounded by a fan community, it also touched on the more toxic side of fandoms. So I really appreciated that. However, I also found myself feeling like it was rather dated. I know AO3 is still huge, but I don't think Tumblr is the go-to site for teens any more. But anyway, as someone whose late teen/early adult experience was exactly like that I thought it was really well done.

The book also touches on what it means to be a feminist. One of the pageant contestants goes to Kay's school and has a history of bullying them. This unfortunate treatment by one person has reasonably led Kay to have a mistrust of all pageant participants. However, when they take this to a new level by bashing on all girls who could participate in pageants, their friends step in to tell them they're being unfair. I thought it was handled really well. England makes it a point that girls are allowed to have all kinds of interests—fandoms or beauty pageants—and knocking them down for what they choose to enjoy isn't good feminism. Rather, we should support them and treat them with kindness and respect.

Overall I really liked the book. It was a short and sweet read that made me nostalgic for my days on Tumblr, which I never would've thought possible lol. I would recommend this to any queer teens looking for stories of acceptance and community.

TW: gender dysphoria, homophobia, public outing, panic attacks, bullying, grief from past loss of a mother by suicide, mention of suicide & depression

ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
The One True Me and You follows two queer characters, Teagan who is a lesbian but not out because she also competes in beauty pageants and Kay who is non-binary. These two meet at a hotel that is hosting both a beauty pageant and a fandom convention. Teagan is secretly also very into the fandom of this convention. So she and Kay meet when she sneaks out of her room to see some of the convention. From there, their romance blossoms.
I really liked Teagan. She’s driven and thoughtful. She knows who she is and what she must do to reach her goals. I didn’t love how she was to her friend Jess, who is supposed to be one of her best friends, who she blew off most of the weekend to see Kay. But I really actually enjoyed the behind the scenes of the beauty pageant stuff. I felt like we got enough backstory to know who she was a character even though we weren’t seeing her in her day to day life.
Kay on the other hand, is still figuring themselves out. They are trying on they/them pronouns for the first time. They want to kiss a girl for the first time. And they feel that this fandom convention is the best place for that. Being a part of the fandom feels like a safe place for them and I can absolutely appreciate this. I enjoyed following Kay as they learned so much about themself.
I think there was some really great commentary about things that are wrong with beauty pageants. I think it did a great job with that. But I felt like the book was clearly biased in favor of fandom. I think there were some real chances to talk about the ways that fandom can be harmful (the amount of times I see people sending death threats to strangers because of fandoms is gross). But being a part of this fan base is only really ever described as a happy and safe place, when I think in reality that isn’t always the case.
Overall, I think this was a wonderful story about a girl who competes in pageants to promote charity and win some money for college. And about a person finding themselves in a place where they truly feel safe. I think this book will definitely be well loved.

5 stars and 5 pounding rainbow <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

This is *so* cute! I smiled a lot while reading.

Teagan and Kaylee alternate perspectives and share the m.c. responsibilities in this swoony YA romcom. Both are staying at the same hotel for entirely different gatherings: Teagan so that she can participate in a pageant and Kaylee so that they can participate in a fan con. This works out great for Teagan because, though she feels forced to hide major parts of who she is, she loves fandom and is thrilled to sneak into the other activities going on in this hotel. This, of course, is how the two characters meet (cute).

The romance aspect is super engaging and layered, especially considering the audience, but it's the self-discovery piece that make this novel shine. Teagan's facade and inner life do not match and grappling with this issue is a long-term project that she is forced to confront in this space. Kaylee comes into this weekend with a literal checklist of tasks to accomplish on the self-discovery front, and it is pretty fun to watch them check the boxes.

There's great friendship, villainy, competition, soul searching, drama, and triumph. Readers will not miss the central discussions about found family and community, from the absent parents to the fantastic friends to the creepy hometowns to the large-group activities. This is a celebration. Put on your party hat, taste the rainbow, and read this book. That's what I'll be telling students and anyone I can for the long haul!

I can think of no other way to describe this book than as pure and utter fandom and queer joy. This is one of those books that is just adorably sweet, and it feels like a warm hug, especially for readers and really anyone who's been a part of a fandom.

The exploration of gender identity and sexuality feel so genuine and the connection of this process of this process with things like the internet, friends, and fandom is just incredible to see, while also feeling very real, as a lot of queer teens have grown up with things like this. From my personal experience, I didn't find a safe space to be who I was until later in life and fandoms became like a haven, and they were full of incredible people who made me feel like I could be the person I wanted to be, which is what Kay's story reflects.

Then there's the discussions on pageants, changing beauty standards, and making things that have traditionally stifled women, especially queer women and women of color, better, making them celebrate our differences instead of presenting one image of the right way to be.

If anything, I wish this book was a little longer, the romance and characters just didn't feel nuanced enough, and I wish that more time had been given to both of them in order to supplement them as characters and explore the themes even more deeply. But I have to say I love this book, if only for the celebration of fandom and the queer community that it is.

Kay and Teagan end up at the same hotel in Orlando for very different reasons. Kay is attending Greatcon as a fanfic writer, increasingly anxious as their panel and competition times quickly approach. Teagan is there to win the last pagaent she hopes to ever participate in and make enough in her pageant winnings to pay for college. When they meet they find themselves drawn to each other despite their many differences. I really enjoyed this one by Remi England, it was full of teenage angst and was very entertaining. I identified with the complex emotions of both MCs navigating a world that hasn’t quite been the safe haven it should be for a teenager. The writing was very well done and the story flowed very well. Overall a great read I’d definitely recommend pickup!

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book! I will be posting my review on social media, to include Instagram, Amazon, Goodreads, and Instagram!

Teagan is hoping to win her first national pageant to earn enough scholarship money to pay for all four years of college. But when she arrives at the hotel in Orlando, she finds that her favorite TV show, a Sherlock Holmes adaptation, has its fandom convention at the same hotel. She struggles with keeping her two worlds separate.

Meanwhile, Kaylee hopes to use the GreatCon as an opportunity to try asking people to use their pronouns and to kiss a girl. They are up for a writing award for an original adaptation, the first work they have let others read that wasn't fanfic.

Their romance is fast, as it all takes place in a single weekend. It feels like the pacing matched that constraint well without feeling too much like instalove. The two bond over fandom and also about questions of identity.

I really enjoyed the way this book played with stereotypes, both in terms of gender stereotypes and also in terms of pageant girls and fandom nerds. The title really captures the idea of being true to oneself, and not having to fit in premade boxes. And I loved how feminism was worked in.

Thank you to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. These opinions are my own.

TW: homophobia, public outing, mention of suicide

(This review is based on an advanced readers’ copy provided by NetGalley.)

I didn’t feel super strongly about this, but it was cute, and I liked the questioning rep and fandom portrayal. The representation of Tumblr-era fandom felt very real — I was tickled that many of the characters refer to each other by their usernames (like “Irishtea”) even when they meet in person, and that fandom words like “beta” and “crack” are used without explanation.

I would recommend this for fans of Queens of Geek (which I didn’t like that much, though I liked this book more). That said, if you want fandom books, I think Alice Oseman and How to Repair a Mechanical Heart do it better.

I often think that romantic conflict feels contrived, but this one felt pretty genuine. I like it when you’re like “this character behaved shittily, and I can more or less see why, and also it was still shitty.” Nuance! Character growth!

I wish the main characters' neglect of their friends had been addressed a bit more. One of them does apologize after their friend brings it up, but a) I felt like the other one wasn't being a very good friend either, and that wasn't really addressed, and b) I would have liked to see more development of the friendship post-apology, especially because the friend was Black and her role in the book was basically to constantly clean up the white main character's messes.

One thing that was weird and slightly annoyed me was that the setting felt hard to place in time. I’m not talking about the pandemic — I’m perfectly fine with contemporary fiction just pretending the pandemic never happened. I’m talking about fandom, because the book seems to be set in the heyday of Tumblr (Tumblr is explicitly mentioned many times throughout the book, and it’s implied that all the fans at the convention are on Tumblr), which to me implies circa 2012 (likely 2011-2014). Some of the slang felt dated as well — I can’t remember the last time I saw anyone, let alone a 17-year-old, say “BAMF.” But there’s also a mention of a Hamilton reference in a way that implies that Hamilton lyrics are common knowledge, which couldn’t have been the case until late 2015 at the earliest (when the cast album was released). It’s not that I’m against books being set 8-10 years ago, it’s just that the book gives mixed signals about when it’s set.

Another tiny thing that niggled at me was that fanfiction is portrayed as being on “the Archive,” which is clearly meant to be AO3 (not just in the name but in how the formatting, tags, etc. are portrayed), except that no one I know calls it “the Archive,” and no one in the book ever calls it “AO3” or “Archive of Our Own.” Which would be fine — I could imagine the author wanting to use a less specific name to prevent the book from feeling dated if people are still reading it in a post-AO3 future — except that the book already feels very era-specific because of all the Tumblr references. I just don’t understand why the book is coy about AO3 but very explicit about Tumblr! There’s probably a reason, but I can’t stop wondering why.


Content notes: Past, offscreen parental death by suicide. Forced outing. Homophobia and transphobia (nothing physically violent). Lowkey gender dysphoria. (I would describe it as a generally light, happy book overall, though.)

Rep: Dual POV: One of them uses the words “lesbian,” “gay,” and “queer” to describe herself. The other is questioning their gender and sexual orientation, trying out they/them pronouns, has dated boys and then starts dating a girl, and describes themself as “a queer enby.” Side characters include a Black girl, an Asian-American (probably Korean) girl, and a bisexual girl.