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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
This one was not as good as Lord’s previous book. It had a lot going on between secret sisters, heavy parent expectations, third-wheel friendship, multiple adoption story lines, a dead grandparent, multiple friends to lovers, mysterious bad boy... I think it it had been paired down a bit it could have been better. With everything going on it relied on some questionable stereotypes about birth mothers/adoptive mothers that didn’t sit well with me. 2.5 rounded up.
EMMA LORD HAS DONE IT AGAIN
There were so many things i loved- family dynamics! friendship! an ensemble cast! a dog! friends to lovers! ships that have each other’s backs but call each other out on their bs! it made me so happy, it made me cry on multiple occasions, i loved it
There were so many things i loved- family dynamics! friendship! an ensemble cast! a dog! friends to lovers! ships that have each other’s backs but call each other out on their bs! it made me so happy, it made me cry on multiple occasions, i loved it
3.5/5
I LOVED Tweet Cute but I felt like this dragged on and was trying to be two things at once. The Savvy/Abby storyline and the Abby/Leo storyline could have been two separate books? Like I felt like one of them should have taken a backseat. Still a cute lil YA book tho! Would make a good movie.
I LOVED Tweet Cute but I felt like this dragged on and was trying to be two things at once. The Savvy/Abby storyline and the Abby/Leo storyline could have been two separate books? Like I felt like one of them should have taken a backseat. Still a cute lil YA book tho! Would make a good movie.
*Thanks to St. Martin's Press + NetGalley for the ARC!*
If you loved Tweet Cute, or if you love YA stories that feel relatable, this is a must read.
The pub date is January, so I'll hold off on my full review for a few months but add it to your TBR!
If you loved Tweet Cute, or if you love YA stories that feel relatable, this is a must read.
The pub date is January, so I'll hold off on my full review for a few months but add it to your TBR!
Thanks to the publisher and netgalley for the advance copy!
4.5 stars. This was so cute and heartfelt. It’s so crazy to me the ways different contemporary authors utilize their ~300 pages. All the characters felt so fleshed out, and there were a lot!
I love books about family, and about found family, and this book is about both PLUS a found family who is actually family. I like how the author made this book equally about romance and about family - it didn’t feel like either side of the story was skimped on to make it work.
This is just a story about a messy girl who has a messy summer and makes great friends and gets to know her sister and herself. There’s great open communication, even if it was long overdue, between Abby and her parents. Abby’s best friend, who isn’t even at the summer camp the story takes place at, is still a fleshed-out character. I think there’s a lot of authenticity in this story and it makes it really fun.
I wish this story was more racially diverse. Not quite everyone was white, but nearly everyone was (I honestly could have missed it in people’s descriptions though - that’s one of my weak spots.) There was wlw representation, though, and a *possibly* asexual character.
My other gripe is HARRY POTTER REFERENCES IN MODERN YA. Please, for the love of god. There are other books that exist. There were Shakespeare references in here that were WAY more fun than the old Harry Potter ones. I’ve seen Gen Z ruthlessly mock millennials on tiktok for obsessing over Harry Potter and we still can’t go 300 pages in a book FOR THEM without mentioning it?
Culmination of my constantly mounting Harry Potter disdain aside, I really enjoyed this story and the main character’s growth and development over her summer at camp, and I’m already looking forward to the next Emma Lord story.
4.5 stars. This was so cute and heartfelt. It’s so crazy to me the ways different contemporary authors utilize their ~300 pages. All the characters felt so fleshed out, and there were a lot!
I love books about family, and about found family, and this book is about both PLUS a found family who is actually family. I like how the author made this book equally about romance and about family - it didn’t feel like either side of the story was skimped on to make it work.
This is just a story about a messy girl who has a messy summer and makes great friends and gets to know her sister and herself. There’s great open communication, even if it was long overdue, between Abby and her parents. Abby’s best friend, who isn’t even at the summer camp the story takes place at, is still a fleshed-out character. I think there’s a lot of authenticity in this story and it makes it really fun.
I wish this story was more racially diverse. Not quite everyone was white, but nearly everyone was (I honestly could have missed it in people’s descriptions though - that’s one of my weak spots.) There was wlw representation, though, and a *possibly* asexual character.
My other gripe is HARRY POTTER REFERENCES IN MODERN YA. Please, for the love of god. There are other books that exist. There were Shakespeare references in here that were WAY more fun than the old Harry Potter ones. I’ve seen Gen Z ruthlessly mock millennials on tiktok for obsessing over Harry Potter and we still can’t go 300 pages in a book FOR THEM without mentioning it?
Culmination of my constantly mounting Harry Potter disdain aside, I really enjoyed this story and the main character’s growth and development over her summer at camp, and I’m already looking forward to the next Emma Lord story.
This was a super-cute YA book, perfect for a summer beach read! When Abby agrees to submit her DNA sample with her two best friends, she isn’t expecting much more than to win a bet about who is more Irish. It comes as a complete shock to find out she has a sister, a little more than a year older than her. How is it that her parents had another daughter that she doesn’t know about? The two meet, and the scheme is hatched – to go to summer camp together and try to learn exactly what their family secret is.
I love the film The Parent Trap (the original starring Hayley Mills), and this book gave me that summer camp vibe as well. Two teens who have discovered they are sisters, trying to sort out their relationship and family secrets at camp. There’s also some teenage love angst going on to throw some extra drama into the mix.
All-in-all a fun read that made me smile. If you are headed to the beach or pool this summer, be sure to toss a copy of You Have a Match in your bag!
Originally reviewed at Hidden Staircase.
I love the film The Parent Trap (the original starring Hayley Mills), and this book gave me that summer camp vibe as well. Two teens who have discovered they are sisters, trying to sort out their relationship and family secrets at camp. There’s also some teenage love angst going on to throw some extra drama into the mix.
All-in-all a fun read that made me smile. If you are headed to the beach or pool this summer, be sure to toss a copy of You Have a Match in your bag!
Originally reviewed at Hidden Staircase.
Do you know how hard it is to make a summer camp book boring?
And not just a summer camp book - a secret-sister family-drama friends-to-lovers finding-yourself summer camp book?
Have you considered how goddamn hard it would be to fit all of that into 300 pages and still find time to make it a snooze and a half?
Because this manages to do it and make it look easy.
This is simply a very meh situation.
I did not like the author's other book, Tweet Cute, very much, but I did not think it was BORING. In fact I thought it was funny and promising but simply annoying.
This had none of the flavor. None of the pizzazz. Nothing in this could have annoyed me, because I was too busy not caring.
A minor tragedy. But I'll get over it.
Due to the whole not-caring thing.
Bottom line: Bummer! But not really.
---------------
pre-review
the defining characteristics of summer aren't "meh" and "boring" and "ugh," so i take back what i said about this being the summeriest thing ever.
review to come / 2ish stars
---------------
tbr review
have you ever seen anything summerier?
also, can you believe summerier is not marked as a typo?
buddy read with lily and all is right with the world
---------------
reading all books with LGBTQ+ rep for pride this month!
book 1: the gravity of us
book 2: the great american whatever
book 3: wild beauty
book 4: the affair of the mysterious letter
book 5: how we fight for our lives
book 6: blue lily, lily blue
book 7: the times i knew i was gay
book 8: conventionally yours
book 9: the hollow inside
book 10: nimona
book 11: dark and deepest red
book 12: the house in the cerulean sea
book 13: the raven king
book 14: violet ghosts
book 15: as far as you'll take me
book 16: bad feminist
book 17: a song for a new day
book 18: one last stop
book 19: to break a covenant
book 20: honey girl
book 21: check, please!
book 22: the subtweet
book 23: if we were villains
book 24: everything leads to you
book 25: you have a match
And not just a summer camp book - a secret-sister family-drama friends-to-lovers finding-yourself summer camp book?
Have you considered how goddamn hard it would be to fit all of that into 300 pages and still find time to make it a snooze and a half?
Because this manages to do it and make it look easy.
This is simply a very meh situation.
I did not like the author's other book, Tweet Cute, very much, but I did not think it was BORING. In fact I thought it was funny and promising but simply annoying.
This had none of the flavor. None of the pizzazz. Nothing in this could have annoyed me, because I was too busy not caring.
A minor tragedy. But I'll get over it.
Due to the whole not-caring thing.
Bottom line: Bummer! But not really.
---------------
pre-review
the defining characteristics of summer aren't "meh" and "boring" and "ugh," so i take back what i said about this being the summeriest thing ever.
review to come / 2ish stars
---------------
tbr review
have you ever seen anything summerier?
also, can you believe summerier is not marked as a typo?
buddy read with lily and all is right with the world
---------------
reading all books with LGBTQ+ rep for pride this month!
book 1: the gravity of us
book 2: the great american whatever
book 3: wild beauty
book 4: the affair of the mysterious letter
book 5: how we fight for our lives
book 6: blue lily, lily blue
book 7: the times i knew i was gay
book 8: conventionally yours
book 9: the hollow inside
book 10: nimona
book 11: dark and deepest red
book 12: the house in the cerulean sea
book 13: the raven king
book 14: violet ghosts
book 15: as far as you'll take me
book 16: bad feminist
book 17: a song for a new day
book 18: one last stop
book 19: to break a covenant
book 20: honey girl
book 21: check, please!
book 22: the subtweet
book 23: if we were villains
book 24: everything leads to you
book 25: you have a match
After reading Tweet Cute by Emma Lord earlier this year, I jumped at the chance to review her newest work You Have a Match. Lord writes YA in a way that feels authentic to the age group and doesn't come across as cheesy or more like adults having conversations. She includes enough detail about the worries and anxieties of teenages in their last years of high school without coming across as condescending, especially since both these books have a large social media aspect.
Lord's latest work centers around clumsy, photographer Abby as she takes a DNA test in solidarity with her two best friends with little more interest than proving her percentage of Irish ancestry is higher than Connie's. She's in for a huge surprise; however, when she gets the results back and realizes she has a sister. A full-blooded sister named Savannah. Needless to say the shock of such information sends Abby on quite an adventure by agreeing to go to a camp with Savannah, instead of signing up for summer school, in the hopes of solving the mystery that involves both of their parents.
While there is a romance element, the plot centers more a Abby finding herself and how she fits into life than it does her love interests, which I very much appreciated. It was nice to see a female friendship formed that didn't center around a guy. I also enjoyed how Abby and Savannah were characterized as teenages with significant worries that weren't trivialized. As hard as it can be to understand the influence of social media on younger generations, I appreciated that Lord made it seem significant without being dramatic and over the top in a condescending way. Overall, I highly recommend You Have A Match to fans of contemporary YA.
Lord's latest work centers around clumsy, photographer Abby as she takes a DNA test in solidarity with her two best friends with little more interest than proving her percentage of Irish ancestry is higher than Connie's. She's in for a huge surprise; however, when she gets the results back and realizes she has a sister. A full-blooded sister named Savannah. Needless to say the shock of such information sends Abby on quite an adventure by agreeing to go to a camp with Savannah, instead of signing up for summer school, in the hopes of solving the mystery that involves both of their parents.
While there is a romance element, the plot centers more a Abby finding herself and how she fits into life than it does her love interests, which I very much appreciated. It was nice to see a female friendship formed that didn't center around a guy. I also enjoyed how Abby and Savannah were characterized as teenages with significant worries that weren't trivialized. As hard as it can be to understand the influence of social media on younger generations, I appreciated that Lord made it seem significant without being dramatic and over the top in a condescending way. Overall, I highly recommend You Have A Match to fans of contemporary YA.