Firstly, what a fun coming-of-age read! It is definitely unlike the writing I’m used to from this author’s other pen name. And I mean that in the best way!

I don’t always gravitate to YA novel although this one will hold a special place in my heart. Vi just wants to be seen and to see others. Her unlikely friendship with Jack is one of my favorite elements of the story.

Definitely a good book to read if you like 90’s nostalgia movies, you’re a fandom lover, and you like when mom’s in books have the “I’m not a regular mom. I’m a cool mom!” Vibe! Except Bash and Vi’s mom is pretty cool.

Alexene Farol Follmuth’s Twelfth Night was such a fun YA read! Although I’m not totally familiar with the Shakespeare play of the same name, I think this was a clever take on the story.

Jack Orsino is the high school star football player, president of the student council, and all-around Mr. Popular. Vi Reyes is the high achieving, AP-class taking VP to student council, who is actually running the show.

When Jack’sinjured in a game, a friend encourages him to play the Twelfth Night, a multi-player online role-playing game, where Vihappens to be a top player. She realizes who the new player is and takes him under her wing.

Meanwhile in school, their friendship is also growing as they work together on a school project.

I am a big fan of Vi- she’s often called a bitch - but she’s unapologetic, smart, creative and strong. Her story reminds me of Taylor Jenkins Reed’s Carrie Soto - she’s criticized for things that male characters totally get away with, just because she’s a woman.

Love the misunderstandings, the dialogue, and playfulness of this book. It’s a very PG read if you’re looking for YA that’s not spicy.

If I’m understanding the authors note rifht then this is the first book Alexene wrote and honestly I’m impressed. I loved her other young adult novel and have an equal adoration for this one.

This book centers around nerdy Viola Reyes who has a hard exterior and a whole lot of (honestly, rightful) anger and Jack Orsiono who is a star on their high school football team and has been injured and simultaneously asked for a break from his girlfriend, Olivia and he is also dealing with a more melancholy anger/frustration.

I really adored this book, the characters and their growth within the story and so if this one sounds like it might be up your alley I’d definitely recommend you check it out!

Five stars
⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor-teen for the E-ARC (and physical ARC; thanks!) in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

This was okay. A cute premise and twist on one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, I enjoyed a lot of parts of this, but others I really was not a fan of.

The third act conflict could be seen a mile away and it was still frustrating to see it all actually play out, especially when with all that buildup it didn't last very long - even though the book itself was probably longer than it should have been. There were other, smaller conflicts that had resolutions that were completely unearned, and gone about in ways that made me feel a little sad for Vi.

I really enjoyed Vi's character. Showing her to be a girl who is passionate about what she loves regardless of whether or not she's welcome in the space and being uncompromising about what she wants was wonderful to see. This characterization fell off by a lot as the book went on, however, which was upsetting.

Overall, I wish there had been a bit more consistency. 3/5.

I really enjoyed Twelfth Knight and LOVED all the modern twist from the original! This book is the perfect Young-Adult Romance :)

I LOVED THIS SOOO SOO SOO MUCH! I wished there had been more romances like this when I was growing up!! I'm thinking so many things and I don't know what to say. Just read this, please.

I got an e-arc of this book on NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Alexene Farol Follmuth aka Olivie Blake absolutely hits it out of the park with this Shakespeare retelling, coming of age story about a girl hiding behind stereotypes and a boy learning to overlook them. This book healed me in ways I didn’t know I needed healing.

It’s angry, it’s feminist, it’s nerdy, and I am so so obsessed. This is for the theatre kids who played dnd, for the gamers who stayed up way too late staring at computer screens, and for anyone who never felt like they fit into a particular group or niche.

Things to love:
•poc rep
•gamer rep
•lgbtq2ia+ rep
•black cat x golden retriever
•bane of each others existence to friends to lovers
•nerd x jock
•shakespeare retelling
•embracing who you are

A modernized Twelfth Night retelling with a gamer twist, I loved seeing themes from Shakespeare’s comedy paralleled to a modern coming of age story. The writing is true to style of other Olivie Blake books in that it’s detailed and academic, but this felt so welcoming too. Every single character felt complete and necessary to the story. It was such a joy to read, and I loved and rooted for the side characters just as much as I did for the main characters.

Viola is messy and unapproachable, but she is strong in her convictions and her ability to be her own person, a true black cat character. But she is also soft and sensitive which is why her rough exterior is the perfect armour to keep her from being exposed.

Jack is a golden retriever, golden boy who gets knocked from his assumed place in the world and has to figure out a new path outside of everyone’s expectations for him, including his own. Once he’s no longer locked in a football huddle, he realizes there is more to life than touchdowns.

Their journeys to figuring life out was so relatable and rewarding to watch. I felt like their story healed some of mine, and tells readers to embrace who they are and find their people.

I loved the gaming and RPG focus in this book, particularly because it focused on a girl in a space typically occupied by men and the realities of being in such a space as a woman. But also because it portrayed “cool,” “popular” people getting excited about it, which kind of de-stigmatized gaming and RPG’s as a negative hobby. It felt like such a fresh perspective for me and I loved it so much!

Overall, I though this book was amazing and insightful, and so much fun. I HIGHLY recommend!

Mini synopsis: an enemies to friends to lovers, grumpy/sunshine, slow burn, opposites attract romance between grumpy gamer Vi & head jock Jack. After a major injury, Jack finds himself obsessed with the game Twelfth Knight & unknowingly teams up with Vi to beat the game. I think we all know where this is going 🥰🥰

So obviously since I gave this give stars, I clearly loved it! Romcom perfection 😍 It was perfectly paced with Vi & Jack starting out at odds with each other to a slow build to friendship to omg they like each other!!! The whole flow & conversations all felt very natural and authentic to them as characters. I really enjoyed seeing Vi go from being super closed off to growing and opening herself up to people. At the beginning, I was a little worried a certain storyline with her friend Antonia would fall off but it didn’t! It perfectly helped her growth & development. I LOVED Olivia!!! Her subplot with her relationship with Jack/leaning more about herself was my favorite! The way her friendship with Vi came about was so cute!

Besides all the great characters, I really enjoyed the plot. Do I know next to nothing about MMORPG? Yes. But that didn’t stop me from loving everything about it! The description of the in game action (with both the video game and the football game) was so vivid I could actually picture it all in my head! Plus, I loved the new spin on twelfth night (not that I’ve actually read it but I’ve seen she’s the man so that counts right 🙃) honestly reading this was just perfect, right book right time that I needed & im going to preorder a copy now!! ⚔️

This was a good read it took me a long time to realize it was like a gamer She's the Man.
VI is into a video game about King Arthur when Jack tears his ACL he needs something to so they start playing a video game together.

This romance was so good and refreshing. I've got to say, I was intrigued by the themes of this book. At first, both characters were so stubborn it was ridiculous. Thankfully, humour has a big part in this book which I enjoyed. I was really anticipating the first interactions between the two main characters (also, diverse characters yay!). I thought Vi was a really relatable teenage girl and super interesting as a character. Her personality goes against the typical romance girl's one and it was refreshing. A "nerd" and a sarcastic "gamer"? YES thank you! I got really attached to her. I was delighted to find out Jack was more sensitive and mature than I initially thought. The two of them were adorable together, and made me smile a lot. Their relationship develops slowly and naturally which I loved, as well as the depiction of Olivia. No misogyny here, she is sweet and smart which is really good. I wasn't at all bothered by the lack of more "sensual" content, which I often find to be too much in other romances. Also the plot twist about Olivia was unexpected but it was perfect! There's important messages about opening up, being yourself, friendship, consent and adulthood which is wonderful. I enjoyed learning about gaming and football, although these aren't themes I'm familiar with. I also think the author did a good job raising awareness concerning the harassment girl gamers face everyday. Thank you!!
(Will post a review on my socials)

I really wanted to love this book! I absolutely love Twelfth Night retellings (She’s The Man, anyone?!), so I thought it would be up my alley. Unfortunately, it fell flat for me. I really couldn’t connect to the characters or how the story played out.

I personally didn’t like the generalizations in the book. I felt that the nerdy girl and star football player characterization just didn’t quite land. Mostly because the characters weren’t very dynamic and the dialogue was just all over the place. Scenes also seemed to drag on and I didn’t understand the purpose of them, and how they contributed to the plot.

Overall, love the concept but the execution and character development just wasn’t there for me.

Alexene Farol Follmuth does it again! This book was so cute and I loved Viola so much, she's such a mood!

This is the near-perfect modernization of Twelfth Night that I have been dreaming of!

So much character building and dealing with emotions beyond "does he/she like me?" which all come together so well at the end. I love gamer stories so much, and (as someone who played online as a girl) I completely relate with Viola on so many levels. Vi isn't exactly a likeable character at first, but she is kind of grumpiness personified, and I enjoy seeing that twist on the original. There are so many things to love about this book, and I will be recommending it loudly. And now I can't wait to read everything else by this author.

Alexene Farol Follmuth (aka Olivie Blake) is quite seriously the only romance author who has me consistently adoring the male love interest. Tell me how I spent PAGES reading about football and was still rooting for the main guy? It’s that Olivie Blake magic. I love this woman and am so happy to announce that her young adult books have the same melt-worthy dialogue as her adult romances. Seriously, she knocks it out of the park with her banter, relationships, and men in general.

Late 90’s/early 00’s Shakespeare retellings are my jam (see: 10 Things I Hate About You, Clueless, She’s the Man) and this incapsulates that vibe <i>perfectly</i>. Jack “Duke” Orsino is the star football player with his college plans set in stone until he gets injured and is out for the entire season, leading him to check out the MMORPG, <i>Twelfth Knight</i>. While in the game, he comes across a player, Cesario, named after a main character in the popular show <i>War of Thorns</i>. As he has been struggling with the game and can literally never be into anything casually, he teams up with Cesario to complete a quest and get taught the ropes. On the other end, Viola Reyes, annoying (to Jack) student body vice president (to his president), avid gamer, and renaissance festival and convention lover, has been playing as a man in order to avoid the rampant sexism that continually experiences when men in nerd spaces learn that she is a girl. When confronted with the fact that she obviously knows Jack, she panics and says that she’s her twin brother, Sebastian (Bash). As a series of unforeseen circumstances bring them closer in and out of game, Vi has a choice to make, and she fears it may be too late to come clean.

There is this air of loneliness that pervades both Viola and Jack’s POVs. Jacks is due to a rather simple cause: he has lost his identity because he can no longer play football. While still popular, there is now a disconnect between him and his friends that he doesn’t feel when he plays <i>Twelfth Knight</i> with Cesario until the wee hours of the morning. Viola’s loneliness is more internal. Her fear of letting people in is borderline debilitating and definitely self-sabotaging and she continually makes “wrong” decisions and digs herself in deeper holes, incapable of adequately communicating, in part because of how much she feels like a burden. This book was great at showing that, even if you’ve been burned by people before, there are people out there that will have your back and it is so important to not shut everyone out. We’re all human, we’re all living our first lives, and we all need community. A support system is so important, and it can’t just be your significant other. I really love how much Follmuth emphasized that point.

Follmuth has a real knack for writing interpersonal relationships and characters. Olivia is possibly the sweetest human in the entire universe? And her relationship with Vi made me so happy. I was really happy with what Follmuth did with her, especially because of how I feel about the source material (by source material I am referring to the 2006 film <i>She’s the Man</i>, I have never read <i>Twelfth Night</i>). Bash and Vi’s mom were also stand out characters that I’m lumping together because I just adore the family dynamic that Follmuth created here. The brother/sister relationship was filled with love and annoyance and just general stupid arguments that really do only exist siblings, and having a single mom trying to reign them in and almost always just giving up was honestly so funny. They truly do all know and love each other so much and it permeates through the pages. Every interaction that Jack and Viola had together had me giggling like an idiot. Their banter was unmatched (well, unless you’re comparing their banter to any other Olivie Blake book, especially <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5477938539">One For My Enemy</a>) and had me kicking my feet. Both characters were also incredibly strong on their own, and I loved having this be a dual-pov book. Jack is laid back and seemingly only focused on football, but is incredibly vulnerable, kind, and a bit nerdy. Viola was my favorite, though. She’s more than a bit abrasive, but it’s because she has to be. Being involved in a nerdy space as a woman opens the door for so much harassment and sexism and she does not deal with the bullshit, but it still wears on her. In her eyes she’s a bitch, but she’s really just strong and smart.

This book is also just incredibly nerdy and, as an incredibly nerdy person who loves everything that Viola loves (renaissance festivals, ttrpgs, a silly little fantasy video game, just fantasy in general), I loved it. It was so fun to watch a main character get excited about the same things I get excited about. It also made me incredibly grateful that I got lucky with my group of nerdy boys and have not had to deal with misogyny while looking for a group to play games with or interact with nerdy things with because this group fell into the palm of my hand five years ago and I haven’t let them go since.

Bottom line, this is a really enjoyable one. There are a few very minor spoilery things that I wish were a little different, but the bottom line is that this one hit the mark and executed what it set out to do perfectly.

Thank you netgalley & Tor for the e-arc

3.5 stars (rounded up)

As someone in fandom (specifically some pretty male-dominated fandoms) I just gotta say...I feel seen. I was so excited for this book. Shakespeare retellings are always loads of fun, and I was very hyped to see all the DnD and fandom references in this book. While miscommunication is one of my absolute least favorite tropes, it didn't stop this book from being an enjoyable read.

Plot:
Normal for dual pov books one of the perspectives is significantly stronger than the other. While I did prefer chapters from Jack's pov more, I never felt myself dreading reading Vi's. The sections of gameplay were probably my favorite part of the entire book. Retellings can be difficult to do well, especially in the plot department. But this book suceeded in not only hitting the beats of the original story but also adding fresh new ones that fit with the modern setting.

Characters:
First things first I absolutely LOVED Jack. His plotline of recovery after his injury and gaining a new interest was so an engaging read and definitely my favorite plot thread. He's just so likeable and you can't help but want the best for him! While I wasn't a huge fan of Vi at first, her character arc was great. I also have so much respect for the author letting one of the main characters (and a girl character no less) actually have FLAWS!! Their relationship was very cute and the other characters were also very fun additions to the cast.

This book was fun, cozy, and a real love letter to fandom culture from the beginning to the end. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes RPG's, fandom, and romance.

Things haven't been going right for Viola Reyes. Her gaming campaign was shut down, her best friend thinks she could be more likable, and she has to work with football star Jack Orsino on student counsel. Lately, her favorite way to escape has been planing the online game Twelfth Knight, as long as she plays as a boy.

When Jack Orsino finds his way onto Twelfth Knight after a football injury, Vi is surprised to see that they're well matched. However, Jack doesn't realize he's playing with Viola--he thinks he's playing with her brother. As the two start getting closer in real life, their online and their real lives start to get more complicated.

Thanks to Tor Teen and NetGalley for an advanced copy of Twelfth Knight by Alexene Farol Follmuth to review! Twelfth Night retellings are always so fun, and remind me of She's The Man which is just a great movie. If you like fun nerd references, rivals to lovers, and just cute high school romance, this is the book for you!

We get alternating perspectives between Vi and Jack throughout. Which means we get to see their feelings for each other unfold in real time. It also allows for some good character development, both for them and for some of the side characters. If you're familiar with the original play, you'll see a lot of Shakespeare references throughout. If you're a fan of fantasy or video games, you'll get a lot of those references throughout as well. Even if they are slightly changed because of copyright.

Personally, I enjoyed Vi's character arc more than Jack's. She's not afraid to stand up for herself from the beginning, but she learns that maybe not everyone is out to get her all the time. Jack learns that there might be more to life than football, finding interets outside the sport. They both had great chemistry, both when playing the game and when they're interacting in person. It's really fun to read.

If you're looking for a fun romance to read going into the summer, definitely pick this one up when it comes out at the end of May!

I really like Twelfth Night and I think this was a good retelling. I didn’t like Violet or Jack though. It made it hard for me to get into the book not liking either of the main characters. It was alright.

If you’re a fan of Shakespeare inspired books where you can clearly see the inspiration, but want the book to stand on its own, then this is definitely one to check out! While it’s obvious that the inspiration for this book came from Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, you don’t have to know Twelfth Night backwards and forwards to understand what’s happening. Something that I think Fullmuth does so well is pepper in multiple Shakespeare references — there were so many and they were so fun — and some of them anyone with a general knowledge of his works will get, and some you’ll only know are Shakespeare references if you’re well versed in his works. I think she makes his work accessible to people who may not know it super well, and I think that’s something really important in a retelling.

I absolutely loved this one, and read it in one sitting. It was fast paced, entertaining and very heartfelt.

I tried really hard with this one, but I was only able to make it about 40% through.

I don't mind an unlikable character, but I honestly didn't like either Violet or Jack. It's hard to get into a book when you don't like either main character. Violet wouldn't listen to anyone (although she had some valid points) and Jack was kinda boring. I can see how they both probably would have had a nice character arc toward the end of the book, but I wasn't sticking around to find out.

I love Twelfth Night and I honestly think the author was setting up the story nicely. It felt unique enough to stand on it's own, but familiar enough to be a retelling of a Shakespeare classic. I'm sad I didn't like the characters or the pacing because I genuinely think the story could have played out nicely.

Overall, this isn't a win for me. But since I enjoyed My Mechanical Romance, I'll be back for Follmuth's next YA novel.

4.5 Stars
As I was reading this book all I could think was that this is the perfect 2000's teen Rom-Com. Obviously, it had the Shakespeare retelling going for it--think She's the Man and strong 10 Things I Hate About You vibes.
I love that this was not an exact copy of past retellings. The gaming and cosplay aspects of the story made it feel fresh and modern. The banter between Vi and Jack was top-notch. They made me laugh and kick my feet.
I loved the side characters Bash and Olivia and the different perspectives they brought to each situation. Follmuth hits the nail on the head with the human experience--especially coming of age--and how messy and beautiful it can be. I want to go on and on, but mostly I'll just say, read it when it comes out! It was so well written and so much fun.