A review by beautifullybookishbethany
How to Speak Boy by Tiana Smith

3.0

How to Speak Boy is a fun YA romance that reads like a retelling of You've Got Mail, except involving rivals on a high school speech and debate (forensics) team. Having done speech and debate myself back in the day, I really enjoyed that element of it. Also, it's hard to bomb the You've Got Mail setup with rivals falling for each other, while not realizing they are also writing anonymous letters to each other. It's generally a good time. In this case, I did feel like the later part of the book dragged a bit and this would have benefited from including the boy's perspective, at least some of the time. I suspect the idea was to make it a mystery whether he was really the one writing the letters, but anyone who knows the plot to You've Got Mail will figure it out very quickly and I just wanted something more from this emotionally.

If you want this You've Got Mail style rivals to lovers plot in a YA book but very funny and excellently executed, I would recommend checking out Tweet Cute by Emma Lord. That said, it was a good time and I loved all of the debate related things. Worth picking up if you enjoy the trope! I received an advance copy of this book for review from the publisher. All opinions are my own.