The plot is sort of a three-car pileup of different contrived convenience plots (it didn't really feel like the main characters needed to BOTH be unknowingly in a corporate twitter war with each other AND be interacting in person at school AND be unknowingly chatting with each other on a different anonymous app) and maybe the added layer of the anonymous app wasn't really necessary, but I actually like plot contrivances, so this wasn't a problem for me. Dan Bittner who did the Jack chapters I've heard in a few other YA books and his style is less for me though he's very much a pro. I don't think I've heard her work before. Retail/customer service is understandably generally portrayed as misery because of soulless corporate environments, but the actual experience of customer service was really positive for me.įor the audiobook specifically, I was a big fan of Emily Schaffer's performance in the Pepper chapters. I've never done food service but I did work retail in a local independent comic shop and it was a super fun environment that I kind of miss.

Happy mom-and-pop customer service work.

And I guess the whole internet once they start shipping them

Secondary characters calling the main characters on how flirty their ostensible war is.

It's up there with Crash and Burn from Hackers It's a small bit but honestly, the thundering revelation that the main characters Jack and Pepper can use the ship name #PepperJack because their names are Pepper and Jack but also their relationship basically started over GRILLED CHEESE RELATED TWEETING is amazing.

Truly brilliant play with the concept of fandom style ship names.

I remember people pointing that out about now-ancient webcomic Avalon High School which I really liked and this touched on some of that.

Stories primarily about teens where the parents have their own stories and inner lives.

Unbeknownst to either of them, they end up on opposite sides of a twitter meme war over the apparent copying of one of his family deli's signature grill cheese sandwiches by Pepper's mom's company.ĪLSO, Jack created an anonymous messaging app specific to the school and Jack and Pepper are unknowingly close under a totally different set of assumed names. And Jack, a more laid-back classmate who also doesn't fully fit in as the son of the owners of a small deli who is just attending the school because his mom from a more privileged background did. It's the story of Pepper, a high-achieving striver in her senior year at a prestigious New York private school who still feels like an outsider because of her background in Nashville before her parent's burger restaurant became a big corporate chain.

so I literally just picked this book up because I was baking and need an audiobook the title/cover caught my eye as I was scrolling through available audiobooks on Libby.

While it looks like Emma Lord has done some big selling in YA, I'm not super plugged into that world.

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