I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I went into this book unclear that it was a YA book. While I enjoy some YA, this book just wasn’t for me. I found it to be juvenile and I struggled with focusing on it. It took me so long to read because I would stop and read other books in between. I do commend the author for tackling a character with OCD without making it only a story about OCD and without making OCD his only characteristic. I am sure there are people who will love this story.

Celine and Bradley have been friends, but now they are enemies. Navigating this relationship has been difficult for the both of them, because there are unresolved feelings. When they both decide to enter a program, for the opportunity to win a scholarship, they begin to discover even more about each other than they ever intended.

There is so much about this story that really resonated with me including friends growing apart, hiding your true feelings, and dealing with metal health. I thought all of these topics were handled beautifully. Brad quickly grew on me as we followed him on his journey of coping with OCD, but still dealing with everything a teenage boy has to handle. It took me some time to understand Celine, but I found her POV refreshing, because she was so unlike any other female protagonist I've read.

Ultimately, I thought the story was written well, but it could be slow at times. I also hoped that the competition would have a big part in the story, but sometimes it faded into the background.

I was so excited to read this one - thanks to @netgalley, @randomhousekids and @joyrevbooks for early access to this book in exchange for my honest thoughts.

✔️ Friends to Enemies to Lovers
✔️ Forced Proximity
✔️ Mental Health Rep

Highly Suspicious & Unfairly Cute by @taliahibbert was delightful. I loved that it tackled a big coming-of-age question "What am I going to do with the rest of my life?" and the feeling that you're behind on answers. I loved watching the main characters (Bradley and Celine) zealously pursue their set plans for their academic life which mostly succeeds in them getting in each other's way. I love when annoyance turns to attraction in YA. 🤣

I loved the characters and how they went from misunderstanding each other to really getting each other. The romance and mutual pining was sweet and earnest and also funny and awkward - I adored it.

The setup was fun as well - going on outdoor excursions to compete for an exclusive program where scholarships are the prize. It was fun to see Bradley and Celine try to win and figure out each other and make friends along the way.

Highly recommend this one to all the YA readers out there! 4.25⭐️ - pub date Jan 2, 2023!

Cute, Quirky, Romantic. Dual POV held back the plot, but not overwhelmingly. OCD rep was good and well written. The UK slang was guide was very useful.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert

Thank you so much to Random House Children's Books for providing me with an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

I loved this novel and couldn’t put it down! It was something that I had to keep reading. I’d recommend it to anyone. I really like how the characters were written and the overall story.

I love dual pov and the romance in this book. Can’t wait to read more from Talia Hibbert!

This is a cute YA romcom from Talia Hibbert, the author of the Brown sisters trilogy. I really enjoyed this one. There are two points-of-view in this novel: Celine and Brad, former friends turned enemies after a falling out. The two end up in the same scholarship program, an outdoorsy adventure competition testing leadership skills, and the two are forced to interact and figure out where their friendship went wrong to survive out in the wilderness.

I loved this one, Celine is smart, nerdy, loyal, and an all around boss. Brad is mr. popular, sunshine, but hiding his difficulties dealing with his OCD. Celine also has difficulty trusting others because her father abandoned her family, and in part, this leads to the fall out between Brad and Celine. The story essentially goes from former friends now enemies back to friends and then to lovers once Brad realizes he has a huge crush on Celine. I also appreciated that Celine is a plus size main character but that feature isn't the central storyline it's just that yes plus size people exist and are beautiful and are intelligent and are funny and have interests and can do what other people do because they're just normal people who are plus size! (hopefully the reader can now tell that this is a sticking point for me, as an overweight person myself).

The friendship between these two characters is so well-developed I really just wanted to scoot right in and join them. I got choked up a bit because they were so sad without each other, and it wasn't a silly fight either. The two of them really hurt each other but I felt like the repairing of their relationship was ultimately well-earned.

First I want to thank netgalley for the chance to read the arc for this Talia Hibbert’s debut YA romance.

Celine & Brad were once best friends but had a falling out once they went to high school. Of course that turns them into enemies. Celine is a smart girl who has trouble expressing her emotions while Brad overthinks his emotions due to his OCD diagnosis. They both embark on a expedition to win a scholarship and what more could you ask for in romance that forced proximity! They learn a lot about themselves throughout the novel that a lot on YA readers will connect with.

Hibbert did great with the story line and the relationship between the two MCs with dual POV and proper banter. A cute romance read for all ages!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ | Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute by Talia Hibbert

Thank you so much to Random House Children's Books and Joy Revolution Imprint for providing me with an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review!

*This story involves parental abandonment and portrays living with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).


Talia Hibbert outdoes herself in her YA debut. ABSOLUTELY.KILLS.IT

Bradley is a struggling writer yet successful nerd cosplaying as a jock, + Celine is a brilliant and overconfident student who also happens to be a successful TikTok devoted to conspiracy theories. You had me at hello.

Three things that should put this on your “I desperately want to read this” list:

1. The chemistry/banter between Bradley and Celine is so sharp and full of wit and plays up the BFFS to enemies to lovers relationship.
2. The exploration of both characters’ respective emotional and mental struggles combined with miscommunication trope gave the story an “I cannot put it down” investment into Celine, Bradley, and the story.
3. How absolutely hilarious most of the characters were, especially Bradley (i.e., whenever he can’t figure out what he’s feeling between two emotive words, he’ll combine them into one word…I cackled)


Nicola and David Yoon created the imprint Joy Revolution. It is devoted to love stories written by POCs about POCs. I was affected by the Mission Statement, and I cannot wait to read more of their works that will focus not only center love but also joy.

I want to shout from the rooftops how much I loved this book! It. Was. Adorable.

I’m the first to admit I’m not a YA reader but I’m officially a Talia Hibbert reader. This book was so fabulous and so well done. I might not love a lot of will-they-or-won’t-they in an adult romance, but when the teenage characters are written by Ms Hibbert it is absolute perfection! This book brought me right back to my own teenage angst and first crush (who sadly was no Bradley Graeme).

I loved these characters so much. Brad is an absolutely adorable heartthrob and Celine is my grumpy sarcastic spirit animal. This was easily the cutest book I’ve ever read but it wasn’t sugary sweet. It had depth and heart and humor and I can’t recommend it enough.

Thank you so very much to netgalley and joy revolution books for the ARC.
PUB DATE: JANUARY 3rd

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I love Talia Hibbert’s Brown Sisters trilogy and a few of her previous titles. I think she’s an amazing writer who weaves mental illness into her stories in an organic way. I love her storytelling style and it’s a delight to read.

But I didn’t feel it in this. Is this Hibbert’s fault? I don’t think so. I’ve been on a downward slide of YA reading and found that I outgrew the genre. I wanted to read this because of my love of the author and so that may explain why I was so irritated with it. In short, you may want to take this review with a grain of salt.

The format of this book is 19 chapters broken into five sections. There’s an author’s note about parental abandonment and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). There’s a glossary of British colloquialisms and cultural references for American readers.

I’ll be forthright that I enjoyed Brad. From his authorial ambitions to his very honest and real portrayal of OCD, I felt for him throughout the whole novel. There were times when I wanted him to think things through a little more, but I was okay with it.

Celine reminded me of someone in my life who is very much like her and I had a hard time cheering for her. I made it about halfway through and was ready to DNF it because of Celine. The line “Only boring people give a crap what everyone else thinks” was particularly rich since her motivation in life is to do that very same thing. (Side note: I wish we had some idea of Celine’s relationship with her dad before he left because it would give an extra layer to her motivation. Also, it would explain whether or not her whole “I’m going to destroy him” is an overreaction.) I couldn’t get over the utter hatred Celine had for Bradley throughout the first half of the book and then the switch to romantic feelings. It felt a little like narrative whiplash. If Celine felt that Brad was such a bad guy, then why keep him as competition because you wouldn’t want to compete against a horrible person? Once he realized his feelings, Brad was working double time to make Celine feel safe and that bugged me.
I would actually love to see Celine work to get on Brad’s good side since she spends a lot of the time insulting him (and I can’t read it as flirting because she’s mean about it). At one point, she even says she won’t change (reminds me of the boring people line above) but Brad will. That reads as insulting, not something you say to woo a guy since it’s the same things you said to him when you were archenemies. Yes, you can chalk her whole thing to parental abandonment, but I don’t think that can lead to believing you’re better than everybody else (it’s one of the first things you learn about her). Now, I admit that the similarities between a fictional character and a real-life person should cloud my reading judgment, but unfortunately, it did so you may read her whole character differently.

By the way, I loved Giselle and she needed to be more of a presence.

Ultimately, it came down to a simple question: Am I at the tail end of my YA tolerance or was Celine so annoying it ruined a really good premise? I don’t know, but judging by other reviews so far, my YA tolerance is getting low.

Will my irritation with this book prevent me from reading another Talia Hibbert book? No.

Will I select my YA reads a lot closer from here on out? I really should.

Another great story from Talia Hibbert! I was curious if she could pull off a YA romance and keep the same elements of her writing that make her books so devour-able. Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute has fun, relatable characters and will leave you smiling. I especially enjoyed the atypical characters!

NetGalley provided an ARC of Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute. Publication date: January 3, 2023.

This was a cute and easy read that I blew through because I really loved the characters and the storyline. Something I especially liked about this book was that, while it was about Brad and Celine’s relationship, I could also see both of them developing as individuals as the book progressed. Each of the characters grew and became different people alone as much as they did together.

I also found the side characters and use of teenage things to be well done. Normally, when an adult writes YA after writing adult books, it’s so painfully obvious that they are an adult who is very out of touch with teenagers, but I found Brad, Celine, and all of their friends to be relatively believable teenagers who didn’t over-or-misuse slang. I especially found this with Celine’s TikTok account - the inclusion of it wasn’t too cringey.

The one thing about this book that held me back a bit was the pacing. I feel like this book dragged on a big, especially when it felt like Brad and Celine both obviously wanted to be together but kept letting miscommunication or other factors get in the way.

This was a cute and easy read and I loved every page of it. The author was able to capture everything that was beloved about these characters and turn it into a perfectly wonderful read. I cannot wait to read what is next from this author.

Talia Hibbert’s YA entry is highly delightful and full of her trademark laugh-out-loud banter between characters and nerdy, wonderfully rounded protagonists. I’m a huge sucker for the enemies to lovers trope, and this book delivers on that in spades.

Celine and Bradley may have been friends once and both at the top of their class, but they couldn’t be more different now: Bradley is super popular, like any good star football player, while Celine has a huge social media following but few (okay, one) friend in person. Both are pursuing a scholarship by braving the outdoors for a leadership bootcamp and rediscover their tangled roots and old wounds along the way.

I loved watching these two spar with each other at every moment, while also reluctantly showing care and concern at pivotal moments. There is excellent mental health rep, beautifully described settings, and so much joy. I hope everyone who loves Talia gets the chance to read this when it comes out, and teens and young adults get to discover her if they haven’t already. Fun and feels — the complete package!

Thanks to NetGalley for an early review copy, all opinions are my own.

Ahhhhhh I loved this book! I devoured it in a day like the most delicious box of truffles. Talia Hibbert has been one of my favorite authors ever since her Brown Sisters trilogy was published, so it's not a surprise that this was wonderful, but oh, it was even better than I'd hoped & expected! It's just the most delightful rom-com with two starring characters I adored, SO MUCH fabulous banter and such heartfelt emotions, and I adored every moment of it. I will be re-reading it a lot in the future! And this definitely turned out to be one of my very favorite books of the year, in any genre.

I was lucky enough to get an e-ARC; the actual book will be published in January, and I highly recommend preordering it! I'm also planning to buy a paper copy once it's published.

I love best friends to lovers and enemies to lovers so this book was honestly the best of both worlds. Talia Hibbert is such a great writer and I felt like she did both of those tropes so well!

Celine and Brad were so likable and I absolutely loved their banter!! Their spats were so much fun to read and their eventual love was so sweet. I also loved the personal journeys they both took throughout the book.

I really loved the inclusion of Brad’s OCD! As someone with OCD, it was so nice to see it portrayed in such a thoughtful and positive way, and to see that he’s found such success with managing it through therapy.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Random House Children's for giving me access to this book!

Ok this was so cute though…. Almost unfairly so.. Talia is such a talented author and this will broaden her fan base immensely by stepping into the YA genre. This book had me hooked with the witty banter and internal monologue of both main characters instantly. The story is charming and honestly my only gripe is that it’s obvious Celine is the Scorpio not Aurora …. I mean this quote “ She doesn’t care about people easily, but once you’ve got her, you’ve got her. Until you give her up. Or let her down.” That came straight from the Scorpio handbook. But I digress. The book is fantastic and I know it’s going to be a favorite among teens and adults alike. It deals with struggles all teens can relate to on some level; relationships, friendships, popularity, sexuality. minority, parental pressure, parental abandonment, mental health, self loathing, academic pressure.

Talia Hubert always does a great enemies to lovers that pulls you in and feels realistic. Some wording/phrases can be a little cringe with an attempt to be cool/modern. Her characters are always lovable and endearing and Brad and Celine did not fall short. Some loose ends with Celine and her dad that I wish were wrapped up a little more.

SQUEE!! Talia Hibbert can do no wrong!!

Celine Bangura, daughter of one Ms. badass Bangura and her unfortunate coupling with a Mr. slimy-two-timey-no-good-dirty-rotten-whats-his-name, has an epic plan for her life starting her senior year of high school. She's going to make her crumby dad rue the day he ever crossed her family. First, Oxbridge. How? Well, on top of her perfect scores, perfect applications, and entrepreneurial spirit (hello, she has 3ok followers on tiktok) she's going to get a scholarship through #KatherineBreakspeare 's excellentoverachieverleadershipcamp thingy. Unfortunately, her ex-bestie-now-arch-nemesis Bradley Graeme somehow manages to ruin everything on the first day of school. Feeling slightly guilty, he takes it upon himself to help her get to the excellentoverachievercampthingy and now, they're forced to share a space while competing for a once in a lifetime opportunity.

THIS WAS GREAT. Talia writes really fabulous banter and makes the chemistry/flirting between her two MCs feel really believable. For instance, even though there's a miscommunication type conflict going on, it feels authentic to those characters thought processes (since it's dual-POV, we get to see inside both of their thoughts, which also helps!). One MC is struggling to communicate with their partner because of their trust issues, self-doubt, and general defensiveness, which is totally understandable when you read that character's backstory. The other character is not speaking up because they're convinced that patience and not pressuring their partner is the way to get their relationship to the next step - a conclusion which is also understandable when you know their logic! I think the characters just really make this story.
I also really loved the supportive and understanding parents in this book, the casual bi rep, the fun friends, the silly setting. It was just such a nice, lighthearted and romantic story.

4 ⭐️’s

While I’m beginning to think that YA is maybe not the genre for me, there is no doubt that Talia Hibbert can write a book. Even though there were moments where I wish we would have gotten more from the story, I’d recommend this to my YA friends for sure.