Two teenage girls compete on a dating reality show to win a second chance with their mutual ex-boyfriend, only to fall in love with each other instead. Sophie Gonzales’ Never Ever Getting Back Together is a sweet and feel-good YA romance.

Maya and Skye are adorable together. I love how they initially hate and distrust each other (because of Jordy’s manipulations, obvs), but then actually work things out by talking to each other. Their romance is just fun and light-hearted; each heroine gets her chance at being a knight in shining armour to the other, and I love how openly they communicate with each other about their concerns. The story does touch on some more serious themes, like Maya’s single-minded focus on getting revenge on Jordy, Skye’s inability to trust people due to past trauma, and Jordy’s gaslighting and overall jerky-ness. But these are all treated with a fairly light touch, and I love how both heroines help each other through difficult moments.

I also really love the friendships formed amongst all the girls in general. Each contestant has her own reason for wanting to be on the show, which range from ambitions to be a social media influencer or meet Jordy’s royal in-laws to genuine desire for give Jordy a second chance. Jordy also varies in how he treats each girl badly — for example, he brushes off one contestant who tries to talk to him about her worry over a friend in the hospital. I love how even the other contestants get their own meaningful mini-subplots, so that even as we’re cheering on Maya and Skye to get together, we also get to cheer on other awesome young women to achieve their individual goals.

Finally, how awesome is that title? I love the Taylor Swift reference, and the overall mood of the story fits right in with this song. The ending was also super satisfying, and even though this did not happen in the book, I love imagining Maya, Skye, and other contestants singing along to a Taylor Swift soundtrack and letting Jordy know that they are never, ever getting back together with him.

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Thank you to St Martin’s Press for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A Sara and a Sarah leave a bar and get into their respective Lyfts. Sara realizes their error when her car drops her off in a posh neighbourhood miles away from the much humbler neighbourhood of her basement apartment. She makes the trek home on foot, only to find police cars in front of her apartment, and cops examining Sarah’s dead body.

Who killed Sarah? Worse, even though Sarah was white and Sara is first generation Indian-American, they share the same build and hair colour, and would be easy to mistake for the other in the dark. Was Sara, a law student whose side hustles to pay for tuition weren’t quite all above-board, the actual target?

Are You Sara? is a fast-paced, twisty, and entertaining thriller. As much as I like to think its premise is far-fetched, I’m afraid I find it all too easy to imagine. As if taking ride-shares wasn’t a risky enough venture for any woman, now we have to worry that getting into the wrong one could prove fatal! Lalli did a great job developing the characters of both Sara and Sarah. This results in it being really easy for us to imagine either woman being the target of the crime, but it also means that even Sarah, whom we barely get to know before she gets killed, feels like a real person, one whose death we can genuinely regret.

The novel also explores some of the complex issues that women, and women of colour, have to deal with. We see both Sara and Sarah dealing with sexism and male entitlement, and with having their friends dismiss valid concerns, and we see Sara dealing with racism as a Brown woman pursuing a prestigious career.

Sara in particular is really skilled at getting people to open up to her and do what she wants them to, and I absolutely love how she uses this ability to turn others’ racism and sexism on its head. There’s a particularly masterful scene where Sara tries to negotiate a loan with a white male bank employee about her age. She senses immediately that he’s both attracted to, and intimidated by, her, so she deliberately downplays her accomplishments and lets him ogle her chest. It’s not quite a fully triumphant scene, because the guy was gross and unprofessional, and Sara shouldn’t have had to put herself in that position just to pay for school. But it’s a kind of code-switching I, at least, am familiar with, and I bet other readers are too. And there’s a kind of sweet satisfaction in seeing the guy’s behaviour through Sara’s eyes, and how easily she plays him to respond as she needs him to in order to get that loan.

One, admittedly minor, snag with the book for me was that Sara’s whole “I’m not really a ‘good Indian girl'” confession seemed a lot more dramatic than her actual actions warranted. She didn’t lead the quiet life her family expected, but on the whole, even her shadiest actions didn’t turn out to be all that bad. There’s a moment near the end where she gives the reader a hint of her future plans, and the narrative tone gave major gleeful villain vibes, but really, her big plans weren’t at all shady or even all that shocking. Mostly, it felt like a straight-A student gleefully confessing about how she smoked one joint or cut one class, and part of me wished Lalli had had a bit more fun with the dark side Sara keeps telling us she has.

Another, also admittedly minor, snag is that I wish I’d gotten to know Sarah a bit more. The relationships within her friend group were interesting and felt realistic; I especially love how she was helping her best friend get alone time with her crush, and it’s not because Sarah believed in their compatibility. Rather, Sarah knew her best friend deserved better, and she wanted her friend to get this dude out of her system so she can finally move on. I found it a pretty rational and thoughtful approach to her friend’s crush, and actually a kinda mature (or cynical?) idea given their youth. Still, that kind of detail made her an intriguing character to me, and I wish we’d seen a bit more of her as a person outside of her relationships. I almost wish she’d survived the attack so we could follow both women through the aftermath. Which is a testament to how well Lalli writes characters, and hooks readers into their stories.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading Are You Sara? It’s a page-turner, and I finished it in a single day, which is pretty significant considering how long it’s been taking me to read stuff these days. I highly recommend it!

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Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Beyond a few nominal nods to character names and social standings, Epically Earnest bears little resemblance to the Oscar Wilde play that inspired it. Algie does share the rakishness and devilish wit of Wilde’s Algernon Moncrieff, and heroine Jane does share Jack Worthing’s origin story of being an abandoned baby. But all of Wilde’s madcap plot points, particularly the hilariously incredulous notion that both heroines in his play have such a love for the name Ernest, have been stripped away.

The result is a much less biting, much more, well, earnest and sincere young adult romance. Epically Earnest is delightfully unrestrained in the adorableness of its central love stories. Jane has nursed a secret crush on her best friend Algie’s cousin Gwen for years; with high school graduation just around the corner, she’s desperate to shed her sweaty palms and dorky witticisms and muster the courage to ask Gwen to prom. Everything about Algie turns Jane’s younger cousin Cecil into a heart-eyes emoji, yet Algie is notorious for wanting nothing more than a good time. At least until a mishap at a bowling alley reveals Cecil’s courage and heroism, and while Algie continues to speak of their dates as being all about fun, it’s pretty clear there’s more heart-eye-emoji stuff going on than Algie cares to admit.

Both couples are adorable; both romances are just really sweet. With such unabashed, fluffy joy throughout, I was surprised to see the author’s narrative restraint in detailing the big, splashy climax scene in Central Park, and the grand finale scene at prom. Part of me wishes she had gone all out in those scenes as well — I wanted to enjoy every last bit of giddy cheesiness from those moments. Yet another part of me is also glad that she did pull back when describing the spectacle — rather, the scenes focused on the emotions Jane experiences, and the ways in which her connection with Gwen deepens. If this were a movie, the spectacle around Jane and Gwen would turn fuzzy, and music would swell as the cameras zoomed in to focus on the characters. As an artistic choice, it’s smart, and a move that reminds us of the humans at the heart of these moments.

Horan also expands on the subplot about Jane’s parentage. While her counterpart in Wilde’s play, Jack, turns out to have a family history that plays right into the outlandishness of Wilde’s plot, and conveniently sets up Jack’s happy ending, Horan’s heroine Jane takes a much more thoughtful and realistic journey along this front. As a baby, Jane was found in a bag abandoned at a train station. The man who found her eventually adopted her, and then married a wonderful woman, so Jane got to grow up with a loving family. Still, she sometimes can’t help but wonder about her birth family, particularly when she gains Internet fame as Bag Baby Babe.

This subplot kicks off when Algie secretly sends a sample of Jane’s spit off for DNA testing, and the results reveal a potential cousin. Jane’s dilemma about whether or not to meet this cousin is momentous, as is the question of what to do with the knowledge if and when they actually do meet. I love where Horan takes this subplot, and how wonderfully the love and support of Jane’s family plays into it. On a side note, the moment when Algie tells Jane why he sent her spit off in the first place is probably my favourite scene in the entire novel; the surprising and unexpected depth of vulnerability of Algie’s true motivations tugged at my heartstrings, and made me want to give him a big hug.

Overall, Epically Earnest is a really sweet, feel good romance. Younger readers looking forward to their own proms may enjoy it even more than I did, but overall, this was a fun, fluffy way to spend a few hours.

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Thank you to Clarion Books for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.