What's Not to Love
By: Emily Wibberley & Austin Sigemund Broka
Published Year: 2021
Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
Pages: 400
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): An academic enemies-to-lovers YA with all the nerdy drama, high school antics, and heartpounding romance of the Netflix original series Never Have I Ever
Since high school began, Alison Sanger and Ethan Molloy have competed on almost everything. AP classes, the school paper, community service, it never ends. If Alison could avoid Ethan until graduation, she would. Except, naturally, for two over-achieving seniors with their sights on valedictorian and Harvard, they share all the same classes and extracurriculars. So when their school’s principal assigns them the task of co-planning a previous class’s ten-year reunion, with the promise of a recommendation for Harvard if they do, Ethan and Alison are willing to endure one more activity together if it means beating the other out of the lead.
But with all this extra time spent in each other’s company, their rivalry begins to feel closer to friendship. And as tension between them builds, Alison fights the growing realization that the only thing she wants more than winning…is Ethan.
First Impression
This duo is one of my favorite writing duos. They are married and write some of the best YA couples. While their last book wasn’t my favorite of theirs, they still are on my immediate read list when they come out with a new book. Plus this one has a hate to love trop which you all know I’m immediately all in on.
What I thought
The banter! The conflict! The nostalgia! Everything I could’ve wanted.
Alison and Ethan have been rivals all through high school. They’re in every class together and constantly fight and bicker and push each other. Every day is a competition. Until one day the competition turns into something more.
I loved Alison and Ethan from the beginning. Their constant banter and rivalry was a delight to read from page one. While it definitely becomes a bit exaggerated for storytelling purposes, it never hit the point of annoying for me. Unbelievable at times, yes, but not annoying. For example, at one point Ethan sells his story that he wrote for the high school paper to a real paper because then Alison will have to syndicate it for the school paper. Which seems, bonkers. Especially because by running in in syndication it will only hurt him in the long run. So is this something I think would really happen? No. Did I enjoy it anyway? Yes.
My only issue with this book is that it did feel a bit long. I flew through the first 200-250 pages or so. The last 150-200 pages were a bit slower. Not because the story itself moved slowly, but it just seemed like a lot of the same things happening over and over again. Ethan and Alison bickering, then liking each other, then being suspicious and bickering, then liking each other, then bickering again. The fun thing about this story is that it’s loosely based off of the authors. They were rivals in high school who eventually fell in love.
There definitely was a lot going on in the story but I liked all of the people and it was a fun start to my summer reading. I also felt like it gave some good insight into how seniors in high school feel. There was a lot of insight into the worry that they feel as they leave for college on both sides of knowing who they want to be and not knowing anything at all. I think we read a lot about people who go off to college not knowing what they want to do but not as much on those who know what they want but then worry they’re going to be wrong. I definitely worried that I was picking the wrong school, picking the wrong major, picking the wrong path. I appreciated seeing Alison deal with that as well as seeing how her sister Jamie was dealing with it 10 years later.
Ethan and Alison were a fun pair to read about. Their chemistry jumped off of the page yet the more you read, the more there was to their story which I really appreciated. If I were to rank the 4 books that Wibberley and Sigmund-Broka have written I think I’d put this at number 2, so I highly recommend checking it out.