What I Like About You – Marisa Kanter
Adorable YA rom-coms set around a pair of protagonists who somehow fall in love with the help of technology are kind of a thing right now. (See also: Tweet Cute.) Marisa Kanter’s debut, What I Like About You, continues this trend, but puts an all new spin on it – because this time, it’s about book bloggers.
(Yes, yours truly find this incredibly appealing from a personal standpoint.)
What I Like About You asks the question – can you really have a love triangle with only two people in it? The story of a boy, a girl, and that girl’s online persona, the novel focuses on Halle, who spends most of her time online as Kels, founder of One True Pastry, a review site that pairs custom cupcakes with reviews of the latest books. She’s got a crush on her online BFF, Nash, a talented graphic artist in his own right. But..he doesn’t know that she’s not who she pretends to be.
Things get even more awkward when Halle arrives to spend her senior year at her Grandpa’s, and discovers that Nash lives there too. How can she tell him she’s the girl he likes – when he doesn’t even know she exists?
The synopsis has more details on the story.
"There are a million things that Halle Levitt likes about her online best friend, Nash. He’s an incredibly talented graphic novelist. He loves books almost as much as she does. And she never has to deal with the awkwardness of seeing him in real life. They can talk about anything… Except who she really is. Because online, Halle isn’t Halle—she’s Kels, the enigmatically cool creator of One True Pastry, a YA book blog that pairs epic custom cupcakes with covers and reviews. Kels has everything Halle doesn’t: friends, a growing platform, tons of confidence, and Nash. That is, until Halle arrives to spend senior year in Gramps’s small town and finds herself face-to-face with real, human, not-behind-a-screen Nash. Nash, who is somehow everywhere she goes—in her classes, at the bakery, even at synagogue. Nash who has no idea she’s actually Kels. If Halle tells him who she is, it will ruin the non-awkward magic of their digital friendship. Not telling him though, means it can never be anything more. Because while she starts to fall for Nash as Halle…he’s in love with Kels."
What I Like About You is available on April 7.